Construction and deconstruction of ‘family’ by the ‘bedroom tax’

Greenstein, Anat; Burman, Erica; Kalambouka, Afroditi; Sapin, Kate

doi:10.1057/s41293-016-0033-5

Cited by 10 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Yet a subject position, and evaluation, of mother was inferred and interpellated (or hailed into being and identified with) through the research focus on children. Perhaps this is not surprising, given wider discourses around women and children that conflate their positions (Burman, 2008;in press), but also (as we have already indicated) in relation to the ways the 'bedroom tax' consolidates age, generation and gendered identities through its space allocations (Greenstein et al, 2016).…”

Section: 'Tell Your Professor We Are Good Mothers'mentioning

confidence: 72%

“…4 It documented both the material and emotional effects of these cuts in welfare support (which are financially quite significant) 5 on parents and children, which were accompanied by other welfare cuts affecting the same groups (see Bragg et al, 2015;Greenstein et al, 2016), with a particular focus on exploring their impacts on children's educational engagement.…”

Section: The 'Bedroom Tax' And/as Neoliberal Discourses Of Work and Fmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By this statement we do not only mobilise well-known claims of how little education happens in schools, or alternatively how children learn how to fail or perhaps more accurately how they successfully learn the various 'hidden curricula' of social stratification (according to class, gender, or 'race', for example) via schooling. Rather, the approach informing this paper is that education and education policy need to be understood in their broadest senses (Fielding & Moss, 2011;Burman, 2016a;Greenstein, 2016), to include contexts of and for educational engagement that lie outside the schoolgates. This includes the range of discursive as well as material practices that policies inform and produce (taking the perspective here that the material and discursive are closely related), including how they address and engage with institutional contexts that lie outside, but closely interface with, schools and schooling, such as families, communities and workplaces (Wallace, 1961).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The colloquial name change points to the general perception of the policy as a tax rather than a removal of subsidy, while the topicalisation of 'bedroom' highlights a focus on intimate relations and sleeping arrangements. Through defining these, the 'bedroom tax' works to prescribe and proscribe family forms and ties, and in this sense can be read as going beyond mere economic considerations (of cutting welfare costs) to intensify the psychological gaze upon families (see Greenstein et al, 2016, for further discussion). This point is important to our later analysis, as such presuppositions are at play in particular within our final example discussed below, while it may also account for why the 'bedroom tax' is generally understood as both indicative of, and perhaps the most despised example of, general welfare reforms.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Subjects of, or subject to, policy reform? A Foucauldian discourse analysis of regulation and resistance in UK narratives of educational impacts of welfare cuts: The case of the ‘bedroom tax’

Burman¹,

Greenstein

Bragg

et al. 2017

EPAA

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This paper draws on material generated from a qualitative study of educational impacts of a British welfare reform affecting housing rent subsidy, size and location commonly known as ‘the bedroom tax’ (Bragg et al., 2015), which was partly taken as a topic for study specifically because of its iconic status as a controversial and unpopular welfare ‘reform’ (or cut). The analysis draws on Foucauldian understandings of subjectification or subject-formation - as elaborated both from within and in relation to the social (Foucault, 1970; 1983; Ball, 1990; Olssen, 2006; Popkewitz & Brennan, 1998), read through new and newly available perspectives (Allen, 2015; Pêcheux, 2014). This approach is applied to discuss how those addressed by educational policy, and also as research participants, are both subject to prevailing political and practice-oriented discourses (of educational ‘problems’, and of the neoliberal frameworks by which poverty and welfare cuts are discussed), but also – at times – how they can become the subject of – in the sense of reformulating – these discourses in their accounts of everyday activities. After outlining our approach and the context for the study, we focus on four examples drawn from the narratives of the various stakeholders in the study – parents/carers, school staff and other community-based organisations as illustrations of how this discursive approach can provide rich readings of relevance to educational policy debates. From these we not only take further discussions of the production and regulation of subjectivities via social and educational policy practices, but also offer indicative glimpses of resistance to this as expressed by those who are its primary subjects, and where in one case such resistance brings our own research commitments under critical scrutiny. As such, the contribution of this article is both topic-related (concerning the educational impacts of policy) but, crucially, also conceptual and methodological, in motivating for a Foucauldian-influenced discursive approach that is sensitive to struggle and resistance.

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Section: 'Tell Your Professor We Are Good Mothers'mentioning

confidence: 72%

Section: The 'Bedroom Tax' And/as Neoliberal Discourses Of Work and Fmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Subjects of, or subject to, policy reform? A Foucauldian discourse analysis of regulation and resistance in UK narratives of educational impacts of welfare cuts: The case of the ‘bedroom tax’

Burman¹,

Greenstein

Bragg

et al. 2017

EPAA

Self Cite

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“…As other contributions to this volume demonstrate (Cain, 2016;Greenstein, 2016) state institutions under austerity politics are acting to reinforce what are perceived to be family structures supportive of reproduction suitable to both the state and capital, with women and mothers particularly targeted to bear this responsibility by interventionist state programmes (Daly and Bray, 2015;Montgomerie and Tepe-Belfrage, 2016). Similarly, household formation and experiences of the education system interact with a wider range of other institutions such as housing markets, childcare provision or the openness of occupational regulations.…”

Section: As Household Inequalities Have Increased and The Efficacy Ofmentioning

confidence: 98%

The production and reproduction of inequality in the UK in times of austerity

Nunn

2016

Br Polit

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. The paper also benefited from the very helpful comments and input of three anonymous reviewers.Thanks and gratitude to all, but errors and omissions are the author's alone. AbstractInequality appears to be back on the intellectual and political agenda. This paper provides a commentary on this renewed interest, drawing on an empirical discussion of inequality in the UK. The paper argues that inequality should be seen as produced in the inherently unequal social relations of production, drawing attention to the role of social struggle in shaping dynamics of inequality. However, inequality is not just produced in dynamic class struggle in the formal economy, but also through the social reproduction of labour power on a day-to-day and inter-generational basis. As such, inequalities of household resources at any point in time may be reproductive of greater future inequality. It is argued that inequality has risen in the UK over recent decades because of changes in the social relations of production in the formal 2 economy and social reproduction in the domestic sector, both of which have witnessed significant state interventions that have increased structural inequalities. It is argued that, absent of significant change, the underpinning structural dynamics in the UK will lead to further increases in inequality over the short and longer-term.Given this, we might expect to see an already emergent 'New Politics of Inequality' intensifying in the coming decades.

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From Subjectification to Subjectivity in Education Policy Research Relationships

Burman

2017

Discursive Perspectives on Education Policy and Implementation

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Construction and deconstruction of ‘family’ by the ‘bedroom tax’

Cited by 10 publications

References 23 publications

Subjects of, or subject to, policy reform? A Foucauldian discourse analysis of regulation and resistance in UK narratives of educational impacts of welfare cuts: The case of the ‘bedroom tax’

Subjects of, or subject to, policy reform? A Foucauldian discourse analysis of regulation and resistance in UK narratives of educational impacts of welfare cuts: The case of the ‘bedroom tax’

The production and reproduction of inequality in the UK in times of austerity

From Subjectification to Subjectivity in Education Policy Research Relationships

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