Manufacturing Responsibility: The Governmentality of Behavioural Power in Social Policies

Peeters, Rik

doi:10.1017/s147474641700046x

Cited by 40 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…What is worse, some theorists worry that by shifting the focus towards individual choices and making individuals responsible for social ills—what Foucauldians call “responsibilitization”—governments and society overall will become even less likely to address the real, underlying socioeconomic causes (Leggett, , pp. 15–16; Peeters, ). Some have argued that the Conservative government in the UK, for example, have indeed sought to utilize nudging as part of a neoliberal agenda (Jones et al, ; Leggett, , pp.…”

Section: Arguments Against Nudgingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ethics of nudging: An overview

2020

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So‐called nudge policies utilize insights from behavioral science to achieve policy outcomes. Nudge policies try to improve people's decisions by changing the ways options are presented to them, rather than changing the options themselves or incentivizing or coercing people. Nudging has been met with great enthusiasm but also fierce criticism. This paper provides an overview of the debate on the ethics of nudging to date. After outlining arguments in favor of nudging, we first discuss different objections that all revolve around the worry that nudging vitiates personal autonomy. We split up this worry into different dimensions of autonomy, such as freedom of choice, volitional autonomy, rational agency, and freedom as nondomination. We next discuss worries that nudging is manipulative, violates human dignity, and prevents more important structural reform. Throughout, we will present responses that proponents of nudging can muster. On the whole, we conclude that the objections fail to establish that the nudge program as a whole should be rejected. At the same time, they give us important guidance when moving towards an ethical assessment of nudges on a case‐by‐case basis. Towards the end, we provide some possible ways forward in debates around the ethics of nudging.

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Section: Arguments Against Nudgingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ethics of nudging: An overview

2020

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“…Responsibilization is the umbrella concept that refers to the process by which individual people are taught to see themselves as the solution to problems of poverty, unemployment, drug use, crime, and other social ills (Birk ; Miller ; Miller and Rose ; Peeters ; Van Oort ). Studies of job training for the poor show that the goal of being “job ready” demands that acknowledging personal responsibility and demonstrating submission to authority (Hackworth ; Purser and Hennigan , ; Van Oort ).…”

Section: Workfare Kitchens and The Management Of Affectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dignity Strategies in a Neoliberal Workfare Kitchen Training Program

Wilcoxson

Moore

2019

Sociological Inquiry

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Welfare‐to‐work training (workfare) programs are designed to technically and affectively prepare marginalized people for jobs that are often routinized and dirty. They are expected to accept personal responsibility for their situation and demonstrate submission to bosses as means of “working off” their “debt” to society. Ethnographic observation at workfare training sites has tended to emphasize the indignities that trainees suffer, with less attention to how workers maintain dignity in the face of these experiences. Using ethnographic observation and interviews in a Chicago workfare kitchen training program, we show that neoliberal kitchen training work encompasses paradoxical expectations for trainee‐workers; they must demonstrate high levels of discretion and creativity required in professional kitchen work and demonstrate submission to charismatic authority as a means of getting kitchen work done and of affective compliance with the goals of the program. To combat the direct efforts of others to produce indignities, trainees developed two dignity strategies that are highly dependent on the structure of kitchen work: operating in a slipstream, and banking confidence that allows them to take liberties normally allowed for chef‐trainers. These findings contribute to sociological understandings of workplace dignity, a privilege that has been especially elusive for the poor under welfare‐to‐work programs.

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“…Lemke (2001, p. 201) argues that social risks (such as illness, unemployment and poverty) have been transformed into problems of personalised self-care. Citizens' responsibilisation is thus linked to the retreat, 'irresponsibilisation', of the public governance and to the shifting of responsibilities to individuals and communities (Cradock, 2007, p. 162;Liebenberg, Ungar, & Ikeda, 2015;Peeters, 2017).…”

Section: (P 276)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Responsibilisation, social work and inclusive social security in Finland

Raitakari

Juhila

Räsänen

2018

European Journal of Social Work

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In this article responsibilisation is studied in social work by analysing two Finnish state-level policy documents (called final report and research report) which concern a current activation initiative called inclusive social security (ISS). It is asked how social workers and clients are constructed as responsible subjects in these documents. Responsibilisation refers to the advanced liberal mode of governmentality, which aims to strengthen citizens' abilities to selfgovernance through various techniques that include the intertwined elements of surveillance and empowerment. It is demonstrated that the policy documents construct the social workers' and the clients' responsibilities partly in different ways. The final report leads activation to be based on shared responsibility and social work to be more community-based, whereas the research report strengthens more individual-based responsibility of clients and social workers. For the clients the interpretation of ISS based on shared responsibility would probably be less stigmatising and paternalistic than the one based on individual responsibilities, i.e. approaching long-term unemployed citizens as being personally 'at risk' and thus a justified target group of individualised techniques for activation. For social workers and clients future activation appears to be a wide mix of different techniques, moral expectations and possible ways of being a responsible subject.

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Manufacturing Responsibility: The Governmentality of Behavioural Power in Social Policies

Cited by 40 publications

References 76 publications

The ethics of nudging: An overview

The ethics of nudging: An overview

Dignity Strategies in a Neoliberal Workfare Kitchen Training Program

Responsibilisation, social work and inclusive social security in Finland

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