When fat meets disability in poverty porn: exploring the cultural mechanisms of suspicion in Too Fat to Work

There has been a distinct neglect of dis/ability in socio-cultural analysis of poverty porn. This paper applies framing analysis to reality TV documentaries that feature larger bodied, disabled, welfare claimants to examine how cultural literacies of fatness and ‘obesity’ are drawn upon to cast suspicion upon disability welfare claimants in so-called poverty-porn. With a focus on Channel 5's Benefit Britain series, Benefiits Too Fat to Work we demonstrate that enduring and harmful representations of ‘obesity’ are put to the work of securing public consent for a post-welfare society in the UK.     

Presenting welfare reform: poverty porn,telling sad stories or achieving change?

Much is written about the suffering resulting from welfare reform and other cuts for disabled people and others on the receiving end. Usually this is seen as a ‘good thing’. But is it as simple as that? It may not be the same as so-called television poverty porn, but what is the point of constantly recycling welfare reform’s effects? Judging from last May’s general election, doing this does not seem to have had a significant effect on public politics/attitudes. So perhaps we need to look at it more carefully. When might discussion of welfare reform be helpful and when unhelpful? Is not the real task to develop alternatives, rather than hope as the Fabians did, that if we show how awful things are, ‘then something will have to be done’?     

The big story about small stories: Narratives of crime and terrorism

The ‘big story/small story’ distinction has emerged as a discrete approach to narrative analysis. Proponents of this approach are critical of the ‘big stories’ elicited by structural analysts, which they see as highly structured narratives of past experiences, typically elicited in an interview context. In contrast, they highlight the importance of studying the fragmented, contextualised ‘small stories’ that arise in everyday conversation/interaction. We question the basis of this distinction and we suggest that it unnecessarily proliferates analytic categories. Further, we suggest that the methodologies followed by ‘small stories’ analysts are often similar to those used to elicit ‘big stories’ and are hence open to similar criticisms; in particular, a failure to fully consider the issue of (contextual) naturalism. Drawing on interviews of crime/terrorism in Northern Ireland, we show how these data comprise both ‘big stories’ and ‘small stories’ within the same context and often within the same narrative.     

‘You’ve got autism because you like order and you do not look into my eyes’: some reflections on understanding the label of ‘autism spectrum disorder’ from a dishuman perspective

The psychiatrists and health professionals who ‘updated’ the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 2013 changed how ‘autism’ is meant to be interpreted. For example, Asperger’s disorder merged into an overall collective of ‘autism spectrum disorders’, rendering Asperger’s non-existent as a separate disorder. Yet the terms ‘Asperger’s’, ‘autistic’ and ‘autism’, in general, are used on a daily basis by people who have been diagnosed/labelled in this way over the course of their lives, or indeed are used by people to label others in stereotypical and prejudicial ways that leads to their marginalisation. With this thought in mind, the author briefly reflects on his own experiences of being labelled with ‘Asperger’s’ or as being ‘autistic’ (a label he rejects), whilst thinking from a ‘dis/human’ perspective, a viewpoint that seeks to unpack and challenge the dominant concepts of what it means to be human in the twenty-first century. While it is difficult to avoid being labelled in ways that lead to discrimination and rejection, a dishuman perspective offers a viewpoint against the narrow versions of what it means to be human, relating to how disability can trouble the notion of what it means to be human and indeed inform the very meaning of what it means to be human.     

Poverty,exclusion and child protection practice: the contribution of ‘the politics of recognition&respect’

The affective dimensions of poverty, including the impact of wider policy discourses and services that ‘other’ and shame people in poverty, are increasingly recognized. In response, Lister [(2013). Power, not Pity: Poverty and Human Rights. Ethics and Social Welfare, 7(2), 109–123] advocates for ‘a politics of recognition&respect’ that centralizes the voices, participation and lived experiences of those who live in poverty. This paper considers how applying Lister’s theory could improve child protection (CP) social work in England, from a human rights and social justice perspective. The paper draws on findings from an ATD Fourth World participatory research project aimed at updating the course content for a pre-existing social worker training module on poverty awareness. The project brings together families with experience of poverty and CP interventions, social work practitioners and academics.     

Low-income young people's problematic relationship with individualised policy in England

There is much debate within youth studies regarding whether or not, or to what extent, young people subjectively experience individualised life-pathways. This article suggests that alongside these debates, it might be fruitful to also explore if young people are being institutionally individualised ‘from above’. Using the current UK Government's child poverty policy as a case study, it explores the extent to which this policy individualises low-income young people, arguing that it strongly pushes them towards the project of self-making and choice-biographies. This is regardless of whether or not they subjectively see themselves as self-makers, or whether or not they are equipped for the task. Working with 38 young people around England, who were some of targets of this policy, this article then goes on to document how this individualisation ‘from above’ was actively rejected. Given the opportunity to write their own, ideal child poverty policy, created as part of this research, these young people instead underscored the importance of structural inequalities in shaping the problems of poverty as they saw them. Their policy highlighted a desire for collective, universalistic interventions to correct for these inequalities, rather than individualised solutions imposed ‘from above’.     

The Defeat of the Guitar Army: Don DeLillo,John Sinclair,and the Rock Revolution

Abstract

Don DeLillo’s 1973 novel Great Jones Street is seldom analysed as a serious engagement with the rock music and countercultural politics of the 1960s, yet these constitute its historical context, its subject matter, and its central concerns. An historicized reading positions the novel as an intervention into contemporary debates about the causes and consequences of the defeat of the 1960s ‘rock revolution’. These debates were most thoroughly synthesized by the rock culture’s chief agitator and organic intellectual John Sinclair in his 1972 book Guitar Army. Like Guitar Army, Great Jones Street dwells on the connections between the political failure of the rock revolution and the provenance and validity of rock’s anti-rational aesthetic. Sinclair finds political hope in re-emphasizing rock’s anti-rationalism, rooted equally in black music and the psychedelic experience. More sceptical, DeLillo offers a very different reading of the rock culture’s view of African American aesthetics and its use of psychedelics.     

Disability,family and technical aids: a study of how disabling/enabling experiences come about in hybrid family relations

Research regarding disabling situations generally focuses on disabling situations within a public society ‘out there’. In our research, however, the intimate family setting itself appears central to the emergence of dis/enabling experiences. Moreover, the relationships that shaped these experiences not only involve human family members but also the technical aids associated with people’s specific impairments. Biographical narratives with users of three different technical aids including hearing aids, arm prostheses and incontinence products demonstrate that studying the making of (dis)ability in hybrid family settings is essential for understanding the emergence of (dis)ability in general.     

The problem with inspiration porn: a tentative definition and a provisional critique

The term ‘inspiration porn’ is associated with disability advocacy in general and the late activist and comedian Stella Young in particular. It has come into widespread usage over the last few years. I propose the following definition: ‘Inspiration porn is the representation of disability as a desirable but undesired characteristic, usually by showing impairment as a visually or symbolically distinct biophysical deficit in one person, a deficit that can and must be overcome through the display of physical prowess.’ Inspiration porn superficially appears linked only to medical model/personal tragedy framings of disability, but on closer inspection resonates strongly with the disability movement’s advocacy of empowerment and affirmation.     

Calling for accounts: numbers, monsters and membership1

This article questions how accounts are marked. In asking why some accounts ‘pass muster’ and others fail, the analysis brings into focus the extent to which membership work helps hold the social and the technical apart. The analysis contrasts a long insistence on narrative forms of interaction as defining conditions of co‐presence with numerical regimes in which there is an implicit deletion of social contact under fashionable slogans like ‘action at a distance’. Taking numbers to act as ‘bearers of culture’, the paper contests the idea that numerical forms of accountability delete the membership work traditionally associated with narrative forms of account. Attending closely to ‘occasions’ in which it is appropriate for members to deploy numerical accounts rather than verbal accounts, the argument challenges the idea that a face to face negotiation of social order has been superceded by a pervasive use of perfonnance targets. The article begins by exploring how ‘calls to account’ are created by a reporting of adverse budget variatices within organizations. Using an extended example to consider how such ‘gaps’ affect a manager's conduct towards a spouse who is sick, the analysis shows how the use of numbers becomes crucial to sustaining one's affiliation across a range of memberships. As illustrated, the rehabilitation of numerical artefacts into conceptions of the social greatly expands possibilities for interaction beyond that anticipated by the sociological ideal of ‘co‐presence’.     

Benda Bilili – ‘look beyond the images’: representations and visual narratives of disability in Kinshasa

In this article we address a number of visual narratives that represent physical disability in Kinshasa, D.R. Congo. Drawing on visual material that was collected before and during anthropological fieldwork (between 2010 and 2014) we offer an insight into the interrelation between representations and physical disability within a Congolese context, as represented in four documentaries. The text briefly reflects on representations of the ‘Other’ and wants to add a reflection on representations of disability that originate from an African urban context. Our examples are complemented with in situ analyses derived from fieldwork that question how particular narratives portray disability and dis(en)ablement within a Congolese socio-cultural context. Thus we invite to look beyond the images. Finally, the article adds a critical reflection about these visual narratives as dis/enabling through their specific construction of dis-ability.     

Empire,emotion, exchange: (dis)orienting encounters of/with post-9/11 US cultural diplomacy

ABSTRACT

This article disentangles how empire, emotion and exchange intersect and work to orient and disorient processes of identity formation within post-9/11 US cultural diplomacy. Focusing on everyday cultural exchange practices, it challenges the particular cosmopolitanism embedded in these programmes that hinges upon the affective and the colonial. It reflects on how this entanglement of empire, emotion and exchange operates through modes of governmentality that produce energized, more governable subjects and masks such operations of power. Analysing one particular exchange – YES – this article disorients colonial logics of subjectification by exploring affective exchange encounters that are always already (dis)orienting. It then serves as a disorienting encounter with cultural diplomacy through four provocations, illustrating how empire is (always) (dis)orientating, can (dis)orient, can be disoriented, and must undergo disorientation. First, post-9/11 US cultural diplomacy and its logic of cosmopolitanism suggest empire is always (dis)orientating via its manifestation in ‘unusual’ sites; while exchange programmes’ onus on celebrating difference appears to conflict with ‘where’ empire ‘normally’ orients itself, as post/decolonial scholarship reveals, it is in the seemingly benign/unquestionable where empire does its work most profoundly. Second, the entanglement of emotion, empire and exchange can (dis)orient exchange subjects through how they are governed to perform and oscillate between ever-shifting ‘ideal’ subjectivities (familiar national/cosmopolitan global/enterprising neoliberal). Third, tracing colonial echoes and spectres in these exchanges reveals empire as disoriented, as that which is analytically ‘less conventional’. An arguably ‘conventional’ analysis oriented around a neo-colonial logic and an imperialistic ‘America’ while seductive in its simplicity obscures the governmental and performative complexities operating within these programmes. Finally, disorientation enables empire to be challenged and disrupted, opening up possibilities for post-9/11 US cultural diplomacy, and the self-Other relations comprising it, to be reimagined. In short, this paper’s analytical disorientation can lead to a reorientation of cultural diplomacy.     

Strangers asking strange questions? A methodological narrative of researching belonging and identity in English rural communities

This paper emerges from a current research project that examines the relationship between contemporary English rurality and notions of identity and belonging. While this is primarily a methodological narrative we argue that this narrative speaks to an analysis of current rural relations. The paper concerns itself with two key methodological issues that have arisen during the ‘doing’ of the research. First, it examines our own relationship, as ‘outsider’, urban-based researchers, to the rural and the use and/or relevance of our biographies as resources for making ourselves seem less ‘strange’ and for accessing, and being in, rural environments. At the same time as providing us with a map into our micro rural worlds the paper draws on this biographic-research relation in order to problematize notions of homogenous rural identities and polarized rural/urban identities. The second part of the paper argues that who we were/how we were perceived had a relation to what ‘truths’ and accounts we were told by our respondents. More particularly, we show how our use of focus group interviews had a direct role in the rehearsal and presentation of these ‘truths’. Given the current contestations and tensions over what and who ‘the rural’ is, it was clear that those involved in the focus group discussions wanted to give us particular stories that often fell into a consensus pattern of either ‘rural idyll’ or ‘rural crisis’ narratives. Drawing on Simmel's notion of the stranger and focus group data we argue that for these narratives to be told we, as researchers, were ascribed by the group members to shifting positions of intimacy and remoteness.     

Futurelessness,migration, or a lucky break: narrative tropes of the ‘blocked future’ among Serbian high school students

ABSTRACT

This article uses ethnographic discourse analysis to understand how Serbian high school students at ‘Belgrade Professional’ (BP) respond to coursework and discussions about their individual futures. Contextualizing the conversations at BP within broader local and international social forces, the paper shows how students’ perceptions of their future chances are mediated by both the school’s outdated promises of secure skilled employment and a broad understanding of Western liberal democracies as ‘meritocratic’. In short, I argue that BP students recognize the elective ‘choice biography’ as a real pathway to adulthood. However, they primarily imagine the choice biography as existing outside of Serbia, while feeling constrained by – even hostile to – such an idea within the country. To counter choice biography framings of futures in Serbia, students mobilize a discourse I call the ‘blocked future’, comprised of three related narrative tropes informed by the decades-long recession: domestic futurelessness, meritocracy abroad, and local chance. These narrative tropes illuminate the emerging cultural structures in Serbia which reflect how people cope with and processes the conflicting structural demands and unfulfilled promises of the post-socialist transition in everyday life.     

A Feminist Moral-Political Economy of Uneven Reform in Austerity Britain: Fostering Financial and Parental Literacy

Abstract

This article draws on two empirical case studies to draw out the way in which the causes of poverty in austere times in the UK are inverted, from their socio-economic causes to making the poor themselves responsible for their misery but also responsibilising them for fighting their way out of poverty. We particularly focus on how austerity policy in the UK has involved a return of moral language of the ‘undeserving poor’. We highlight the way in which this ‘moral-political economy’ has gendered effects, targeting single-mothers and their children and families, through the lens of ‘literacy’. The first case study show how promoting ‘financial literacy’ is seen to solve indebtedness of the poor and the second case study highlights how ‘parental literacy’ is employed to turn around ‘troubled families’. Indeed, these two studies demonstrate how the morality of austerity is shaped through deeply gendered practices of the everyday in which women’s morality is what ultimately needs reforming.     

Narratives from the neighbourhood: The discursive construction of integration problems in talkback radio1

This paper examines how speakers deploy narrative devices in talking about Sudanese refugees. Particularly, we show how narrative constructions form an important basis for the advancement of accounts about integration problems into the local polity. We analyse talkback ‘phone‐in’ calls to a local Adelaide radio station that provide callers an opportunity to give accounts of events and social phenomena that concern them in their local settings. Analysis shows that speakers regularly deployed narrative constructions, first‐hand ‘witnessing’ devices that functioned to legitimate accounts as veridical versions of events, and contrast devices to explicate the moral and behavioural aberrance of Sudanese refugees. The analysis illustrates how these discursive devices function rhetorically in interaction, in ways that differentiate Sudanese refugees as problematic. Through this analysis, we contend that narrative devices precipitate and bolster socio‐political policies that have serious, negative consequences for Sudanese refugees.     

From products to publics? The potential of participatory design for research on youth,safety and well-being

This paper considers how ‘participation’ features as a key concept in contemporary approaches to research, policy and interventions to promote young people's experiences of safety and well-being in digital society. In particular, it examines the potential of participatory design (PD) methodology as a way of expressing, surfacing and supporting engagement with youth perspectives in research and design projects. In doing so, we explore how the language, materials and processes of a PD approach can help reconfigure the aims of research beyond the production of ‘products’ towards fostering ‘youth-inclusive publics’. Drawing on the concept of ‘infrastucturing’ and ‘attachments’ [Le Dantec, C. A., and C. DiSalvo. 2013. “Infrastructuring and the Formation of Publics in Participatory Design.” Social Studies of Science 43 (2): 241–264. doi:10.1177/0306312712471581], the paper reflects on an Australian research project to develop online campaigns to promote youth safety and well-being in digital society. From our analysis emerged three commitments of PD with young people that help articulate, make visible and unpack ‘attachments’ to concepts of youth, technology and well-being and provide new opportunities for engagement with youth experience in research and intervention design. We find that these commitments – the embodiment of context; the enactment of creativity and the emergence of connectivity – offer novel insights on youth participation in complex research projects. Moreover, foregrounding these commitments through PD can build shared vocabularies, artefacts and processes of engagement with young people in research projects focused on youth safety and well-being.     

Being and Landscape: An Ontological Inquiry into a Japanese Rural Community

This essay aims to reflect on the idea of landscape and our relationship with it by taking the Japanese notion of furusato (native place) in its ontological dimension. Grounded in Heidegger’s ‘phenomenology of Being’ and ‘ontology’, a phenomenological understanding of fieldwork experience in a Japanese rural community will be developed in order to rethink both the furusato and the ‘Being-landscape’ relation. As a consequence, we will be concerned not with how people speak about landscape, but with how the landscape speaks through people. What will be brought to light are the landscape’s moral and relational dimensions: namely, (i) the responsibility towards both our communities and future generations and (ii) a more-than-physical understanding of landscape that alerts us to our belonging to a common world comprised of relationships and tasks.     

Young people and the gendered and aesthetic dimensions of ‘enterprise’: stories from a ‘Rust Belt’ city

ABSTRACT

In the ‘Rust Belt’ city of Geelong in Victoria, Australia, discourses of young people’s enterprise and innovation provide a counter-narrative to the prevailing material and symbolic consequences of industrial decline, job losses, and the growing insecurity of employment and income. GT Magazine is a weekly, large circulation magazine in Geelong with a significant focus on the activities and aspirations of enterprising young people. In this paper, we examine, by utilising techniques of content analysis and discourse analysis, the particular ways in which young people’s innovation and enterprise are framed and enacted in GT Magazine. Our analysis reveals that ‘youth’ and ‘enterprise’ are, in GT Magazine, given an embodied form that is powerfully marked by aestheticised, normalised enactments of gender, class and race. In doing this work, we make productive contributions to three key themes in contemporary youth studies: new work orders and the youthful self as enterprise; the gendered and aesthetic dimensions of affective labour in these new work orders; and the emerging spatial turn to examine young people's embodied, place-based experiences of employment and enterprise. We seek to make problematic the sense that solutions to multiple disruptions and crises in capitalism and the environment are to be found in young people’s enterprise. Particularly when that enterprise is given form in ways that are aestheticised, gendered, classed, individualised and responsibilised.     

Young people in a city of culture: ‘Ultimate beneficiaries’ or ‘Economic migrants’?

There is burgeoning literature on cities that host major cultural events. However, there is surprisingly very little empirical research focusing specifically on young people and cities of culture, so we have limited knowledge in terms of how young people actually experience and interpret cultural events. Given this, we offer an important and timely contribution to such debates. Our spatial focus is Derry/Londonderry (D/L) in Northern Ireland. During 2013 D/L was the UK’s inaugural City of Culture (CoC). The bid document and legacy plans for CoC stated that young people would be ‘cultural assets’ during 2013 and the ‘ultimate beneficiaries’ of the CoC legacy [Derry City Council 2010. Cracking the Code. City of Culture 2013. Derry: Derry City Council, 2013a. Our Legacy Promise. Building on the Success of 2013. Derry: Derry City Council, 2013b. Legacy Plan 2013–2023. Derry: Derry City Council]. This paper unpacks and analyses the extent to which young people in D/L related to and engaged with CoC and, arguably more importantly, how CoC affected their plans and aspirations for the future. Our research problematises the claim that young people were the ‘ultimate beneficiaries’ of CoC; most strikingly, it shows that young people, despite offering very positive views, both expect and desire to live in cities other than D/L. As such, the debilitating long-standing trend of economic migration of young people will continue raising important issues for local stakeholders.