Workfare

About: Workfare is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1100 publications have been published within this topic receiving 26223 citations.

Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity

Abstract: The punitive turn of penal policy in the United States after the acme of the Civil Rights movement responds not to rising criminal insecurity but to the social insecurity spawned by the fragmentation of wage labor and the shakeup of the ethnoracial hierarchy. It partakes of a broader reconstruction of the state wedding restrictive “workfare” and expansive “prisonfare” under a philosophy of moral behaviorism. This paternalist program of penalization of poverty aims to curb the urban disorders wrought by economic deregulation and to impose precarious employment on the postindustrial proletariat. It also erects a garish theater of civic morality on whose stage political elites can orchestrate the public vituperation of deviant figures—the teenage “welfare mother,” the ghetto “street thug,” and the roaming “sex predator”—and close the legitimacy deficit they suffer when they discard the established government mission of social and economic protection. By bringing developments in welfare and criminal justice into a single analytic framework attentive to both the instrumental and communicative moments of public policy, Punishing the Poor shows that the prison is not a mere technical implement for law enforcement but a core political institution. And it reveals that the capitalist revolution from above called neoliberalism entails not the advent of “small government” but the building of an overgrown and intrusive penal state deeply injurious to the ideals of democratic citizenship. Visit the author’s website.

The Future of the Capitalist State

Abstract: List of Boxes. List of Tables and Figure. Preface. Abbreviations. Introduction. 1. Capitalism and the Capitalist Type of State. 2. The Keynesian Welfare National State. 3. The Schumpeterian Competition State. 4. Social Reproduction and the Workfare State. 5. The Political Economy of State Rescaling. 6. From Mixed Economy to Metagovernance. 7. Towards Schumpeterian Workfare Postnational Regimes?. Notes. References. Index.

Towards a Schumpeterian Workfare State? Preliminary Remarks on Post-Fordist Political Economy

Abstract: The Keynesian welfare state regimes that emerged during the long postwar boom are widely held to be in terminal decline but there is far less agreement upon the nature of the successor to such regimes. This is too large a topic to be covered in any detail here. Instead I will advance three general and somewhat speculative claims about current changes. First, a tendential shift is under way from the Keynesian welfare state (wherever it came to be established) to the Schumpeterian workfare state; second, national states in advanced capitalist economies are subject to an admittedly uneven three-way 'hollowing out'; and third, both tendencies are related to the transition in western economies from Fordism to post-Fordism. Although clearly linked to the same overall economic dynamic in the third claim, the first two claims can nonetheless be considered independently from each other. Conversely, all three claims could also be condensed into the single audacious aphorism that a 'hollowed-out' Schumpeterian workfare state provides the best possible political shell for post-Fordism. The basic assumptions and ideas involved in all four claims are summarized in this paper's first section. Further sections then contextualize the tendential shifts themselves, outline the mechanisms generating them, and outline three ideal-typical variant forms of the emerging regime. This theoretical work will also help to make the initial claims more concrete and indicate how they might be utilized in further research.

Crafting the Neoliberal State: Workfare, Prisonfare, and Social Insecurity1: Crafting the Neoliberal State

Abstract: In Punishing the Poor, I show that the ascent of the penal state in the United States and other advanced societies over the past quarter-century is a response to rising social insecurity, not criminal insecurity; that changes in welfare and justice policies are interlinked, as restrictive ‘‘workfare’’ and expansive ‘‘prisonfare’’ are coupled into a single organizational contraption to discipline the precarious fractions of the postindustrial working class; and that a diligent carceral system is not a deviation from, but a constituent component of, the neoliberal Leviathan. In this article, I draw out the theoretical implications of this diagnosis of the emerging government of social insecurity. I deploy Bourdieu’s concept of ‘‘bureaucratic field’’ to revise Piven and Cloward’s classic thesis on the regulation of poverty via public assistance, and contrast the model of penalization as technique for the management of urban marginality to Michel Foucault’s vision of the ‘‘disciplinary society,’’ David Garland’s account of the ‘‘culture of control,’’ and David Harvey’s characterization of neoliberal politics. Against the thin economic conception of neoliberalism as market rule, I propose a thick sociological specification entailing supervisory workfare, a proactive penal state, and the cultural trope of ‘‘individual responsibility.’’ This suggests that we must theorize the prison not as a technical implement for law enforcement, but as a core political capacity whose selective and aggressive deployment in the lower regions of social space violates the ideals of democratic citizenship.

Between the state and the market : can informal insurance patch the safety net?

Abstract: Most households in low-income countries deal with economic hardships through informal insurance arrangements between individuals and communities rather than through publicly managed programs or market-provided insurance schemes. Households may, for example, draw on savings, sell physical assets, rely on reciprocal gift exchanges, or diversify into alternative income-generating activities. These mechanisms can be highly effective in the right circumstances, but most recent studies show that informal insurance arrangements are often weak. Poor households, in particular, have substantial difficulties coping with even local, idiosyncratic risks. Public policy can help reduce vulnerability by encouraging private, flexible coping mechanisms while discouraging those that are fragile or that hinder economic and social mobility. Promising policies include creating self-regulating workfare programs and providing a supportive setting for institutions working to improve access to credit, crop and health insurance, and safe and convenient saving opportunities.