Dear colleagues,
For its first 2022 research seminar, the British Studies research centre of Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris will welcome Tom Boland (University College, Cork) on 22th February from 3.00pm to 5.00pm GMT. Tom Boland will present his latest book (co-authored with Ray Griffin): The Reformation of Welfare: the New Faith of the Labour Market (Bristol University Press, 2021).
Please send a message to [log in to unmask] to register and receive the link to the seminar.
Kind regards,
David Fée
Sorbonne Nouvelle
Paris
From Reformations to Transformations: Activation policy as a process of conversion
Tom Boland, University College Cork
Welfare reforms are a perennial concern of social policy, with whole disciplines directed at producing effective interventions – from statistics to economic modelling to behavioural psychology. The governmental imperative to evaluate and transform the labour market and individual jobseekers is widespread and re-emphasised by the contemporary turn to activation. Described by many as a neo-liberal modification of the welfare state – for instance, Wacquant’s ‘liberal authoritarianism’ or centaur state – we suggest that there is a strongly cultural and historic dimension at work, the legacy of Puritanism, but one which increasingly spreads across the OECD.
Standard histories of the welfare state emphasise how it emerges from and secularises how religious organisations – monasteries, churches, parishes, cared for, organised and punished the poor. Despite this assumed ‘secularisation of welfare’ which created L’Etat Providence, religious modes of thinking about work and welfare persist. Most central among these is the idea that the unemployed should be transformed by being put through tests and trials; evaluation and retraining by welfare offices and the challenge of the labour market. Thus, unemployment is governed as a purifying transition wherein waiting and self-reflection supposedly serves to improve people, jobseeking becomes a pilgrimage seeking signs of salvation rather than a market transaction, and CV writing becomes a form of confession whereby the fault for unemployment is located within the self. In short, both theology and contemporary theoretical disciplines, the self is imagined as transformable, via activation, a redemptive conversion.
Arguably, these deep cultural underpinnings of contemporary welfare states contribute the ‘workfare’ or coercive activation trend in social policy, even despite COVID and climate change. Recognising the cultural, value-based character of these perspectives is important to changing them, as is recognising the persistence of alternative values, for instance, refraining from judgement and valuing alleviating suffering rather than using suffering to transform individuals.
Related reading:
Book: The Reformation of Welfare’ with Ray Griffin, Policy Press, with two chapters available on Oapen.
Articles: Avowing Unemployment Foucault Studies. ¦ Jobseeking as Pilgrimage Culture, Theory & Critique
Blog: Working on Ourselves Sociological Review ¦ Europe gets back to work? Social Europe
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