Towards an Inclusive Social Policy for the UK: The Need for Democratic Deliberation in Voluntary and Community Associations

In western capitalist societies the state has become increasingly criticized for its inadequacy as a mechanism for distributing welfare inclusively. In particular, it has been criticized for its lack of flexibility in meeting the needs of increasingly plural populations, and for being too distant to enable service users to participate in the meeting of their welfare needs. Consequently, in many countries, including the United Kingdom, voluntary and community associations have been used to distribute welfare with the belief that it can remedy the defects of universal state provision. This paper suggests the voluntary and community sector can only achieve this if the organizations are democratically organized, ensuring participation from staff and users. Moreover, participation should be based around the norms of deliberative democracy. The paper argues that this form of participation will best ensure that the needs, preferences, and interests of subordinate groups are included in social policy delivery, due to the fostering of public reason.

Women's entrepreneurship,neoliberalism and economic justice in the postfeminist era: A discourse analysis of policy change in Sweden

Since the early 1990s, there has been investment in women's entrepreneurship policy (WEP) in Sweden, which continued until 2015. During the same period, Sweden assumed neoliberal policies that profoundly changed the position of women within the world of work and business. The goals for WEP changed as a result, from entrepreneurship as a way to create a more equal society, to the goal of unleashing women's entrepreneurial potential so they can contribute to economic growth. To better understand this shift we approach WEP as a neoliberal governmentality which offers women ‘entrepreneurial’ or ‘postfeminist’ subject positions. The analysis is inspired by political theorist Nancy Fraser who theorized the change as the displacement of socioeconomic redistribution in favour of cultural recognition, or identity politics. We use Fraser's concepts in a discourse analysis of Swedish WEP over two decades, identifying two distinct discourses and three discursive displacements. Whilst WEP initially gave precedence to a radical feminist discourse that called for women's collective action, this was replaced by a postfeminist neoliberal discourse that encouraged individual women to assume an entrepreneurial persona, start their own business, compete in the marketplace and contribute to economic growth. The result was the continued subordination of women business owners, but it also obscured or rendered structural problems/solutions, and collective feminist action, irrelevant.     

Marketing ‘madness’: conceptualising service user/survivor biographies in a period of deinstitutionalisation (1975–2014)

This article aims to present the lived experiences of psychiatric service users/survivors who have experienced the transition from institutional care in the 1970s and 1980s to community care services in the 1990s and post-2000s. By using a biographical narrative approach the study compares service users’ historical experiences with their contemporary experiences of community and residential care. Sixteen biographical narratives were analysed to explore how mental health services have changed over time, from the perspective of service users/survivors, their families and mental health practitioners. The study examines how the closure of NHS mental hospitals in the 1980s, which were replaced in the 1990s with new types of community and residential care services, has changed the lives of service users/survivors. Thus, the article presents these lived biographical experiences which, for the majority of service users/survivors, were defined by the process of trans-institutionalisation rather than de-institutionalisation, within a neoliberal context.     

Young people's reproductions of the ‘father as provider’ discourse: intersections of race,class, culture and gender within a liberal democracy

ABSTRACT

Despite a plurality of paternal forms available to men, certain enactments of fathering remain immobile. In South Africa the ‘father as provider’ discourse, which establishes the legitimate father as one who provides financially for his family, continues to be regarded as the primary mark of a good father. Using photo-elicitation interviews to interrogate the persistence of this discourse, this paper examines how adolescents from two low-resourced South African communities construct fathering. Using a critical intersectional discursive framework, the analysis focuses on how gender, race, class and culture are implicated in the reproduction of the ‘father as provider’ discourse. Participants’ constructions suggest that the father’s duty to provide is intensified within marginalised contexts. Central to participants’ reproductions of the ‘father as provider’ discourse was a neoliberal conception of ‘freedom of choice’. The paper concludes that South Africa’s post-apartheid reliance on discourses around liberal democracy has cast the low-income father’s ability to fulfil the provider role as a conscious choice. While the father is made responsible for his failure to provide, broader structural oppressions are in turn rendered largely invisible by such discourse.     

Agency in advanced liberal services: grounding sociological knowledge in homeless people's accounts

This paper aims to understand how people who are homeless respond to advanced liberal social services that endeavour to promote their autonomy and responsible actions. We prioritize the experiences and positions of people who are homeless, and what agentic action means to them. Sociological literature is selective about what accounts are deemed agentic. Agency is associated with accounts that resist or subvert dominant neoliberal framings of homelessness as failure of individuals. When people experiencing homelessness or poverty themselves foreground autonomy or responsibility, sociologists treat them as cultural dopes who have internalized neoliberal discourse. Our analysis is driven by an ethnographic study in an Australian homelessness shelter. We demonstrate how people who are homeless neither outright reject nor completely embrace advanced liberal practices to influence their actions and promote autonomy. People engaged in relational reasoning. Paternalist and advanced liberal social services were both lauded and rejected for their capacities and limitations to realize a good life. We contribute to the discussion for sociology to value people's accounts and experiences, rather than broader social process explaining their accounts. From the perspectives of people who are homeless, we show that just because something appears neoliberal does not mean it should be automatically rejected.     

Subjectivation processes and gender in a neoliberal model of science in three Spanish research centres

From a Foucauldian approach, neoliberal rationality in science can be understood as a form of governance of the self that produces mechanisms through which the subject is constructed and subordinated at the same time. In this study we examine subjectivation processes and gender in centres of research created under neoliberal scientific rationality. We analyse 19 semi‐structured interviews of men and women researchers conducted in three highly competitive centres of excellence — a context rarely addressed in the literature of academic subjectivities. Following a critical discourse analysis, we show how subjectivation processes of neoliberal rationality result in two main discursive mechanisms of subjection that prevent or hinder alternative subjectivities and collective resistance, especially for women, presenting a double turn that we call: a ‘turn on oneself’ and a ‘gendered turn on oneself’. We conclude that these centres are spaces which provide the conditions of possibility to develop a scientific entrepreneurial self, excluding ‘other’ scientific subjectivities and preventing possible resistances that could emerge from them.     

‘If I was a different ethnicity,would she treat me the same?’: Latino parents’ experiences obtaining autism services

This article reports on an ethnographic study with 12 Latino families of children on the autism spectrum related to obtaining autism services in Los Angeles County. Using critical discourse analysis of interviews, observations, and records, we consider the experiences of the Latino families in relation to: a discursively constructed ‘autism parent’ subject position that mandates ‘fighting’ service systems to ‘win’ autism services for children, originating from White middle-class parents’ socioeconomic resources and social capital; a neoliberal social services climate that assumes scarcity of available resources and prioritizes austerity in their authorization; and a media and institutional ‘cultural deficit’ discourse that attributes disparities in autism services for Latino children to their parents’ presumed culturally-based ‘passivity.’ We argue that parental discourse about fighting, or not fighting, for autism services is engendered by a tension between a parental logic of care, and the logic of competition of the economic market.     

Disconnections and exclusions: professionalization,cosmopolitanism and (global?) civil society

In this article, we address the ways in which theories and practices of cosmopolitanism and professionalization intersect in the sphere of global civil society. We emphasize the experiences of grassroots development activists, arguing that although they have so far been pivotal to the legitimacy of these spaces and discourses, such activists are increasingly absent from the practices of global civic spaces. We explore this process of change over time using the example of grassroots health promoters in Peru, explaining it in terms of the articulation of neoliberal processes of professionalization with a particularly neoliberal version of cosmopolitanism. We argue that the two are mutually reinforcing and produce a particularly narrow, and arguably less cosmopolitan, rendition of global civil society, with implications for the possibility of building critical and transformative encounters across difference as a foundation for more equitable ideas and practices of development and democracy.     

Neoliberal feminism: The neoliberal rhetoric on feminism by Australian political actors

Feminism seems to be experiencing a resurgence. This research examines an Australian case where this resurgence produces some bizarre outcomes and an uncomfortable mix of moderate and neoliberal feminisms, as conservative women distance themselves from the term feminist and conservative men embrace it. We rhetorically analyse the discourse of four conservative leaders using an ideographic analysis to reveal how political actors evoke ideologically laden terminology to support specific courses of action. For the conservative women, the ideograph feminist was too heavily laden with history. A more feminine‐liberal political discourse allowed them to explain their own success in individual terms and, by substituting support for feminism with a broader gender equality agenda, they could explain the government's policy approach of individualized rather than collective or state support to advance the needs of women. They are articulating a postfeminism sensibility themselves and neoliberal feminist other. For the conservative men, the ideograph feminist did not reflect on their own personal success or careers; they were happy to embrace it for purely political purposes to advance their standing with the voting public and saw no significance in terms of the government's policy approach of neoliberal feminism.     

Shared decision making from the service users’ perspective: A narrative study from community mental health centers in northern Norway

This article aims to contribute to the understanding of shared decision making as an important aspect of user involvement in mental health care from the perspectives of service users. A thematic analysis of interviews with 25 individual service users in three different community mental health centers in Norway identified different understandings of shared decision making. Shared decision making was identified as essential in four contexts: 1) during admission, 2) in individualized treatment, 3) in different treatment contexts, and 4) in user-professional relationships. We consider shared decision making to be intertwined with treatment from the service user perspective.     

Changing the narrative: the role of frontline worker attitudes and beliefs in shaping dementia-friendly services in England

Applying the main principles of the social model of disability as a guide, this article argues that the attitudes and beliefs of staff and volunteers employed in frontline service delivery can play an important role in the achievement of dementia-friendly communities, particularly through influencing the types of services offered. This position is supported by findings from an evaluation of an awareness-raising intervention run by Age UK, aimed at organisations which provide services for people living with dementia in England. The article contributes to an understanding of the cultural climate within frontline service delivery, which is often neglected in favour of discussions around meeting more immediate care and support needs. More specifically, the article reflects on whether there is a need for an additional conceptualisation within the discourse around dementia-friendly communities which ensures inclusion of the cultural environment.     

The Global Uprising of Labour? The Korean Labour Movement and Neoliberal Social Corporatism

The role of organized labour as expression of dissent or social resistance to neoliberal economic globalization has attracted increasing scholarly interest. Several writers have argued that we are witnessing the emergence of a ‘global uprising of labour’. In particular, reference is made to the labour movements of the industrializing semiperiphery, such as South Korea, South Africa, and Brazil, which are argued to show a way forward for the labour movements of the North. Such analysis as above, however, focuses on only one aspect of labour movements at the expense of their larger historical context and position within the capitalist world system. By privileging the strictly ‘global’ level of analysis, it ignores a key transformation in the nature of national state-society configurations in the semiperiphery, i.e. the general trend towards both democratization and neoliberal restructuring. Through examining the case of South Korea, I argue that the transition from developmental authoritarianism to neoliberal democracy has dramatically narrowed the terrain from which militant unionism might be expected to emerge. Since the 1980s, the Korean labour movement has undergone a transformation from a militant and almost revolutionary movement, to being co-opted, albeit imperfectly, into the new capitalist democracy. Thus, the threat of neoliberal restructuring has led not to resistance but to labour to seeking a role as responsible partner to government and business in pseudo-social corporatism forums, despite the fact the striking thing about Korean industrial relations is the absolute absence of prerequisites for such a system of social agreement politics. This co-optation reflects general political conditions in the semiperiphery, where simultaneous processes of democratization and neoliberal restructuring have made the assumption of unified resistance to globalization more problematic.     

Co-Production in the Context of Finnish Social Services and Health Care: A Challenge and a Possibility for a New Kind of Democracy

Alongside the ongoing renewal process of the Finnish welfare state, the role of the citizens is also revisited. So far the attention has mainly focused on how the responsibility for service provision is shared between the public sector and the service users, while the role of public services as a part of the democratic system has been more or less ignored. Based on the results from a 3-year participatory action research project called KAMPA, this article will discuss if the development of co-production in the context of public welfare services shows the way forward toward a new kind of society where democracy is an inseparable part of the structures and procedures of the service provision. The data gathered during the project (textual material, interviews, notes from meetings, and observation diaries) are analyzed using thematic analysis. The results show that while legislation and official policies strongly highlight the participation of citizens and service users, there are still many obstacles to overcome at both the attitudinal and practical level. The development of co-production and arenas of a new kind of democracy requires continuity in the attempts and recognition of the achievements, but it also has the potential to demonstrate the way in which a new more lively democratic society can come true in practice.     

Mobility at the margins: The facilitating and risk-reducing role of clustered migration in migration for begging between Romania and Norway

This article describes the social and economic organization of migration for begging from Romania to Norway. Drawing on a survey among homeless Romanians in Oslo and qualitative interviews conducted in Norway and migrant-sending communities in Romania, we describe how migrants gain access to resources such as information, transport, places to beg and places to sleep, as well as social and emotional support when abroad. We argue that the particular, clustered structure of these migration flows makes migration available to persons who otherwise would not have opportunities to migrate, eases their adaptation in cities of destination and serves to protect the migrants from exploitation and abuse from external actors. This migration structure does, however, reflect a strong dependence on kinship networks, which may create vulnerabilities in itself.     

Agency and clientship in public encounters: co‐constructing ‘neediness’ and ‘worthiness’ in shelter placement meetings

This article seeks to develop our understanding of the agency of vulnerable groups who at first sight may not seem to have much agency in their lives. It explores the co‐constructed nature of agency in three Danish homeless shelters. Unlike earlier interview‐based studies, our research is based on naturalistic data drawn from 23 video‐recorded placement meetings. Using concepts from Goffman, we examine how versions of the neediness and worthiness of homeless people are negotiated verbally and bodily between staff and clients. We find that homeless people have to juggle two partly contradictory roles when they are given or take the roles of either a (active) citizen or a (passive) client. Clientship is actively negotiated by both parties and demonstrates the agency of homeless people: they can collaborate with (as clients) or challenge (as citizens) the staff’s attempts to formulate solutions to their troubles. We further examine how the professional ideology of client centredness affects the meeting between the two parties. However, we show that, like any discourse, client centredness has no intrinsic meaning and is played out by actors in very different ways. In work with the homeless, the discourse of client centredness is related to discourses of ‘neediness’, ‘worthiness’ and ‘value for money’ that define agency in different ways and make three different client positions available: the resolute client, the acquiescent client and the passive client.     

Having a say in health: involving young people with a chronic illness or physical disability in local health services development

Increasing attention is being paid to involving users in local NHS service development, and to involving young people as users in their own right. However, we know little about the views and experiences of young participants, especially those with a chronic illness or physical disability, which could inform more effective approaches to their involvement. The paper reports on research investigating the views of young patients and staff who have taken part in NHS service development projects, and suggests a range of issues for consideration when involving young patients in future. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Making Sense of Neoliberal Subjectivity: A Discourse Analysis of Media Language on Self-development

The influence of neoliberalism on culture and subjectivity is well documented. This paper contributes to understanding of how neoliberal ideology enters into the production of subjectivity. While subject formation takes place in multiple and contradictory ways and across multiple social sites, we focus on the increasingly popular media discourse of self-development, and examine it as a technology of neoliberal subjectification. Drawing on Foucauldian understandings, we analyze data from two different newspapers from two different national contexts, both of which are heavily influenced by neoliberalism. Based on our analysis, we detail four interrelated discourses—rationality, autonomy and responsibility, entrepreneurship, and positivity and self-confidence—demonstrating how these discourses constitute the neoliberal subject in ways consonant with neoliberal governmentality. There is no observable resistance to subject positions offered within these discourses. Self-development discourse instills stronger individualism in society, while constraining collective identity, and thus provides social control and contributes to preserving status quo of neoliberal societies.     

Philanthrocapitalism as a Neoliberal (Development Agenda) artefact: philanthropic discourse and hegemony in (financing for) international development*

ABSTRACT

Based on a critical analysis of the structurally neoliberal financing for development (FfD) system established by the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, this article contributes to the literature that views the 2030 Agenda as a new phase of the Neoliberal Development Agenda (NDA), which has been consolidated as hegemonic within the international development (ID) field in recent decades. Additionally, considering philanthrocapitalism as an ideological framework that proposes its own diagnoses and prognoses, we analyse various discourses of relevant Philanthrocapitalist Institutions and International Organizations to point how they legitimate themselves. This article shows how philanthrocapitalism has been constituted not only as a key element within the current model of FfD but also as a genuine neoliberal artefact designed to encapsulate the NDA apparatus, and fostered by the discourse of international agencies to contribute to the meta-objective of consolidating the neoliberal model as hegemonic in the ID arena.     

Empowered and self-managing users in methadone treatment?

Empowerment is a keyword in treatment. Users should have the means and possibilities to influence their treatment and become self-managing. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a Danish methadone treatment project, we find that the practices of users and staff are often not carried out in accordance with governmental intentions. We identify a gap between the official notions of treatment and practices. We analyse the notions and practices of empowerment by applying two analytical perspectives. First, we apply a constructionist perspective in which empowerment is analysed as wanting to set users ‘free’ but also as ways to govern. We elaborate the analysis by applying a more practice-oriented focus. Drawing on this perspective, we analyse the ways in which staff and users constantly produce, construct and negotiate institutional practices that differ from the governmental intentions for treatment.     

‘Warren Buffet is my cousin’: shaping public understanding of big data biotechnology,direct-to-consumer genomics,and 23andMe on Twitter

Scholars, educators, regulators, pundits, and other observers are advocating for regulation and oversight of direct-to-consumer (DTC) genomic testing. As a result, the technology has been subject of highly visible public and regulatory controversy. In this article, we explore the nature and the shape of the sentiment of public discourse about the DTC company, 23andMe. We conduct a quantitative content analysis and qualitative framing analysis on Tweets. We find that the discourse surrounding DTC genomics and 23andMe is largely positive. We also identify a number of frames users deploy to debate, discuss, and share their experiences with DTC genomics and 23andMe. We argue that these frames create meaning around this emerging technology for its users.