Social policy as knowledge process: How its sociotechnical links to labour reconfigure the social question

Abstract

The relationship between labour and social policy is at the heart of the social question. Scholars often treat this link as either a causal relation out there or a conceptual connection in policy makers’ minds. This article examines its sociotechnical materiality instead. It follows anthropologists who ask how bureaucrats practice policy and scholars of science and technology studies who explore how social and technical aspects are interrelated in knowledge processes. China studies has suggested that the minimum livelihood guarantee ( dibao) was originally designed as a market-oriented response to transformations of labour such as mass layoffs, peasant proletarianisation and associated unrest but later revamped to only combat extreme poverty. Ethnographic insights into dibao policy in a village in Sichuan show how its designed links to labour were erased and transformed through different methods of bureaucratic targeting, as well as expectations about the bureaucratic ability to know. For a time, dibao was even integrated into alternative rural development projects aimed at decommodification. Studying social policy as a knowledge process uncovers how its sociotechnical links to labour reconfigure it as an answer to the social question.

Reconfiguring labour and welfare in the Global South: How the social question is framed as market participation

“…Lammer’s (2023) account of the Chinese rural dibao (a cash transfer programme aimed at guaranteeing minimum living standard), and Luong and Nguyen (2023)’s analysis of the Vietnamese national assembly debate around overtime work in factories explore the dynamics of social and labour protection policy making and implementation. At first glance, these cases have little in common.…”

“…With little of people’s life untouched by the global circuits of capital and dominant ideas of the good life, the new kinds of universal welfare programmes end up ensuring that the population participates in the most optimal ways in a market economy. Hence, social support from the state to citizens such as poverty allowance or income grants, even in the context of high level of structural unemployment such as South Africa, are often met with discourses about the recipients’ reduced willingness to work or to enterprise, adding to the stigmatization of those who are unable to find work (Lammer 2023; Luong and Nguyen 2023).…”

The commodification of poverty in the Global South: The emergence of a social policy market (São Paulo, Brazil)

“…These inter-related dimensions contribute, globally, to the commodification of poverty in a context characterized by high levels of structural informality. This article unpacks the different levels of social policy making and implementation, including the point of view of their beneficiaries and their ‘street-level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky, 1980; Lammer, 2023). The goal here is not to understand ‘how government works’ but the implications of these policies may have on the commodification/decommodification of labour, or the relations in between labour and social protection.…”