Roll-out neoliberalism and hybrid practices of regulation in Australian agri-environmental governance

In the last 15 years, agri-environmental programmes in Australia have been underpinned by a neoliberal regime of governing which seeks to foster participation and ‘bottom-up’ change at the regional level at the same time as encouraging farmers to become entrepreneurial and improve their productivity and environmental performance without government interference. However, while experiencing a degree of success in terms of farmer involvement, considerable tensions are evident in such programmes. Drawing on an ‘analytics of governmentality’, this paper argues that while current agri-environmental programmes enable authorities to combine often competing and contradictory imperatives under the rubric of single political problems—what has been termed hybrid forms of governing—it also contributes to the continuing failure of these programmes to achieve their desired effects. As a consequence, neoliberal forms of governing tend to be characterised by experimentation with a range of governmental technologies in order to make programmes workable in practice. We explore two different types of technologies—standards schemes and direct government regulation—that have emerged in recent years, and how these have sought to address the limitations evident in ‘participatory’ programmes. The paper concludes by arguing that while these initiatives seek to encourage farmer compliance in seemingly divergent ways, their capacity to be workable, and have broader effects, in practice will depend upon their capacity to manage the competing imperatives of environmental degradation, capital accumulation and private property rights.     

Risk and Social Work Practice

Abstract

Risk assessment and risk management have emerged as central organising principles for an increasing number of health and welfare programs. As a consequence, the language, technologies and imperatives of risk have assumed considerable prominence in the practice of many social workers. The present paper addresses three significant and contemporary explanations for the rise of risk in the day-to-day work of many social workers. In the context of these approaches, the paper examines some of the challenges risk presents to professional and ethical social work practice. Four issues with particular meanings and impacts for social work are discussed, namely the priority of risk over need, changing professional roles, relocation of responsibility to individuals, and the culture of blame.     

Governmentality of adulthood: a critical discourse analysis of the 2014 Special Educational Needs and Disability Code of Practice

Produced and published by the coalition government, the publication of the 2014 Special Educational Needs and Disability Code of Practice: 0–25 years (2014 SENCoP) sets out to overhaul the management of special educational needs (SEN) provision across England and Wales. This paper employs a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the 2014 SENCoP to reveal the ideologies and aims that this policy is built upon. Following a Foucauldian framework of governmentality, this article focuses upon the way in which ‘a successful transition to adulthood’ is constructed within the policy, particularly in relation to the wider Conservative narrative of a ‘Big Society.’ Developing this analysis, the article draws upon the current political landscape of a Conservative government and the shift towards the creation of a ‘shared society’ in attempt to locate ‘adulthood’ within its wider political, economic, and cultural context. This analysis reveals the neoliberal values underpinning the 2014 SENCoP, whereby educational support is reduced to the practice of shaping and sculpting the future generation of citizens. By deconstructing notions of employment, independence, participation, and health, this article reveals the 2014 SENCoP as a tool of government, written to the demands of the economy rather than the unique needs, aspirations, and ambitions of children and young people labelled with SEN.     

Making distinctions in TV audience research: Case study of a troubling interview

This article explores contemporary self-help literature as a strategy for enlisting subjects in the pursuit of self-improvement and autonomy. Appropriating democratic liberalism's and neo-liberalism's ways of seeing the individual and the social world, self-help promotes the idea that a good citizen cares for herself or himself best by evading or denying social relations. Yet a hyper-responsible self, the result of self-help practice, is intrinsically linked to the governmental management of populations, and so to less individual autonomy rather than more.     

Enforcing Mobility: Spatial Mobility under the Regime of Activation

Abstract

Spatial mobility is rarely investigated with a view on social policy and welfare administrations. Yet, recent activation and workfare policies have increased pressures on the unemployed, with one of these pressures concerning spatial mobility, i.e. the requirement to accept jobs that entail long commuting hours or even relocation. This paper investigates the shift towards activation in Germany, focusing on increased demands on job-seekers’ mobility, and uses a governmentality perspective, supplemented by the concept of symbolic violence, to gain insight into the strategies and practices deployed by Public Employment Service (PES) staff to produce ‘mobile selves’. It demonstrates that perceptions of (im)mobility figure prominently in the assessment not only of job-seekers’ labour market prospects but also of their character and motivation to seek work. Thus, the personal and familial implications of mobility are considered as mitigating circumstances mainly in the case of older jobless with poor labour market prospects. The majority of job-seekers, and particularly those living in regions with high unemployment, are subject to efforts on the part of PES staff to make them understand the necessity of being as mobile as possible; if such insight is found wanting, pedagogical devices are deployed to enhance job-seekers’ mobility.     

压制、矫正与赋权：社会工作与农民工治理术的理路

农民工问题需不需要治理已经不再是问题，如何治理才是真正的问题。本文援引福柯治理术的概念，探析权力技术、自我技术与社会工作的同源性，进而论证了社会工作作为一种治理术的合理性。以此为关照铺陈了建国以来国家、群众自治组织和社会工作等主体单独或交叉对农民工实施的治理状况。研究发现，我国的农民工治理术可分为三个阶段：“劝止、防止、制止、强制”的软硬兼施的治理术；“安抚、教育、治疗、矫正”的内外交互的治理术；以及未来治理应该诉诸于“赋权”与“行动”的治理术。     

Discourses of Mobility: Institutions,Everyday Lives and Embodiment

This article seeks to contribute to the growing body of literature on the politics of mobility, revealing the ways in which the governing of mobility intersects with everyday mobile lives. We suggest that dominant and enduring institutional discourses of mobility, which are pervaded by a privileging of individualised automobility, can be conceptualised around a framework of morality, modernity and freedom. By examining everyday discourses of mobility in this context we highlight the ways in which these discourses reflect and resist normative sets of knowledge and practices. It is argued that by emphasising the everyday and mundane in an analysis of discourses of mobility, and acknowledging their situatedness in prevailing normative discourses, we are then able to focus on how movement is a social and cultural practice in constant negotiation and (re)production.     

Out of the Generosity of Your Heart: Are We Creating Active Citizens through Compulsory Volunteer Programmes for Young People in Australia?

Using governmentality as a theoretical framework, we examine two Australian policy areas where young people are disciplined into becoming good, active citizens. These policies—mutual obligation through the work for the dole programme, and school‐based active citizenship programmes similar to American service learning programmes—both mirror volunteer‐type activities, in a social context where volunteers are viewed as good citizens. In this study, we present findings from a qualitative study that addresses the question of whether young people will develop active citizenship through compulsory volunteer‐type programmes. The findings show that first, young people are very conscious of the lack of choice involved in these programmes and that this weakened their sense of agency. Second, the programmes failed to develop positive community attitudes and active social behaviours. These results suggest that policies that compel individuals to contribute to society may actually weaken their citizenship identities.     

PUBLIC PEDAGOGY AS CULTURAL POLITICS: STUART HALL AND THE CRISIS OF CULTURE

This article argues that Stuart Hall's work provides an important theoretical framework for developing an expanded notion of public pedagogy, for making the pedagogical central to any understanding of political agency, and for addressing the primacy of public pedagogy and cultural politics in any viable theory of social change. Hall's work becomes particularly important not only in making education crucial to the practice of cultural studies, but also in providing a theoretical and political corrective to recent attacks on cultural politics, which cut across ideological lines and include theorists as politically diverse as Harold Bloom, Richard Rorty and Todd Gitlin.     

A corporate responsibility? The constitution of fly-in,fly-out mining companies as governance partners in remote,mine-affected localities

In some remote parts of Australia, mining companies have positioned themselves as central actors in governing nearby affected communities by espousing notions of ‘voluntary partnerships for sustainability’ between business, government and community. It is argued in this paper that the nature and extent of mining company interventions in nearby communities constitutes a new problematic for these corporate actors. Drawing on research conducted in two remote areas in Australia, this paper undertakes an analytics of government to ask how mining companies have become leading actors in determining the future of local, mine-affected communities. It is suggested that their interventions arise from two processes: industry priorities for securing a ‘social license to operate’ by making a positive contribution to affected communities; and the restructuring of the state which has created an institutional void in these remote localities. As a result, mining companies are ‘filling the gaps’ in local service delivery through a mode of governing that takes the form of patronage rather than partnership. This raises questions about the future viability of these communities once the mines eventually close, and new challenges of governing for corporate actors.