RGS-IBG Annual Conference, 26-28 August 2009, Manchester
2nd Call for Papers
“Governing Temptation: the emerging geographies of soft paternalism”
Sponsored by the Political Geography and Economic Geography Research
Groups
Co-conveners: Rhys Jones and Jessica Pykett (Aberystwyth University)
The notion of soft paternalism has emerged as an important mechanism and
rationality of state government in recent years. Soft paternalism is
distinct from the related concepts of ‘new paternalism’ and
‘self-government’. In contrast to harder kinds of new paternalism, which
refer to the efforts made by states to promote social welfare by enforcing a
social contract defined through strict behavioural requirements and
motivational engineering (Mead 1997; Peck 1999; Jones and Jones 2004), the
term soft paternalism (Thaler and Sunstein 2003) is used to describe a kind
of paternalism in which private and public institutions seek to promote
individuals’ welfare in a less coercive manner and in which subjects are
afforded an element of choice. Similarly, soft paternalism is different
from more liberal notions of self-government. The notion of soft
paternalism refers to a more overt process through which subjects are
encouraged and, indeed, actively buy in to particular kinds of behaviour to
improve their own welfare.
This session invites both theoretical and empirical papers which analyse
contemporary discourses of government and the actions of state authorities
in the government of different human affairs, particularly (but not limited
to) through ‘behaviour changing’ policies in the spheres of personal
finance, health and the environment. Examples might include: pensions
policy; personal debt advice; healthy eating; anti-smoking campaigns; sexual
health promotion; changes in benefits and social welfare policies; family
education and parenting advisory services; carbon management; sustainable
transport. We are particularly interested in the wider significance of soft
paternalism for understanding the cultivation of state and self, the notions
of governmental reach, interference, influence, protection, welfare, freedom
and choice, and the development of new modes of governing reflexive
citizen-subjectivities. The session will also provide an opportunity to
think through the geographical implications of soft paternalism in a range
of policy sectors.
Papers could address the following questions:
– How are soft paternalist policies currently being implemented and
narrated, and by what kind of institutions?
– What are the political motivations for and implications of the rise of
soft paternalist polices?
– What historical precedents demonstrate the principal characteristics of
soft paternalism, and how do these differ in different countries/regions?
– How do these ‘behaviour changing’ policies reconfigure (or indeed rely on)
the spatial and temporal nature of state-citizen relations in terms of
responsibility and action?
– How do notions of soft paternalism challenge our conceptions about the
character of governmentality and the negotiation of different kinds of
citizen identities in the contemporary liberal state?
– How do citizens respond to such policies? To what extent to citizens seek
to regulate themselves with regard to these policies, and how are
alternative citizen identities produced in resistance to soft paternalism?
Please send abstracts of 200 words to Jessica Pykett ([log in to unmask]) by
27th January 2009.
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