Gritty citizens? Exploring the logic and limits of resilience in UK social policy during times of socio-material insecurity
February 2019
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Journal article
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Critical Social Policy
In recent years, resilience has been invoked as both a pre-emptive and responsive strategy to tackling socio-material insecurity. This article outlines a number of discursive and administrative features that distinguish the rise of resilience from longer-term shifts towards ‘active citizenship’ in British social policy. We use data from two studies of financial hardship to examine how the fetishised ideal of resilience is reified and negotiated in the everyday experiences of low-income citizens. We argue that resilience is practised as ‘a way of being’, but in contorted ways that reflect restrictions to agency, resources and autonomy. This article makes an original contribution by exposing a current paradox within resilience as a governing agenda: it is principally pursued in ways that compromise the material and ontological security necessary for its productive potential. The article concludes by reflecting on what conceptual and applied agendas this presents for policymakers, practitioners and academics in the UK and further afield.
When rhetoric does not translate to reality: Hardship, empowerment and the third sector in austerity localism
October 2018
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Journal article
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Sociological Review
Austerity localism powerfully explains dynamics of (dis)empowerment at the local level, especially regarding the autonomy and accountability of local authorities and third sector organisations (TSOs) in the UK. Yet these dynamics at institutional level have also a clear impact on individuals, especially the socio-economically vulnerable. This is especially true in a time of cost-containment and welfare retrenchment. This article addresses a gap in the literature by focusing not only on TSOs but also on the experiences of vulnerable individuals under austerity localism. The discussion is centred on two types of TSOs: foodbanks and advice/advocacy organisations. Drawing upon primary qualitative data from three locations in England and Wales, the article argues that the emphatic rhetoric of empowerment within austerity localism, which others have shown to be problematic at the institutional level, does not translate into real-world empowerment for service users and other vulnerable individuals. In making the argument the article contributes to work on expanding the analytical scope of austerity localism, as well as further exploring the roles and prospects of TSOs in the current long period of austerity in the UK.
empowerment, third sector, food banks, vulnerability, austerity, UK, localism
Resilience, agency and coping with hardship: evidence from Europe during the Great Recession
October 2018
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Journal article
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Journal of Social Policy
This paper aims to contribute to the growing literature on resilience by focusing on coping with hardship during the Great Recession, drawing upon primary data gathered through household and key informant interviews in nine European countries. As the resilience approach highlights agency, the paper examines the nature of household responses to hardship during this period on the basis of the ‘structure - agency problem’. An important contribution of this paper is to identify different forms of agency and discuss their implications. More specifically, we conceptualise three different types of agency in coping with hardship: absorptive, adaptive and transformative. Analysis of the findings indicates that structural constraints remain prominent. Most coping mechanisms fall under the category of absorptive and adaptive agency characterised here as burden-bearing actions that ‘conform’ to changing circumstances rather than shaping those circumstances.
structure and agency, poverty, Europe, resilience, Great Recession, hardship
Back to the future of community cohesion? Learning from New Labour
July 2018
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Chapter
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Social Policy Review 30 Analysis and Debate in Social Policy, 2018
New Labour developed an ambitious programme to address what it saw as increasing social divisions in British society caused, primarily, by ethnic and cultural difference. Developed in 2001, community cohesion became embedded in many other social policy areas, especially regarding social inclusion, a commitment to empowering both individuals and communities, and developing a sense of British identity compatible with a rapidly globalising world. Though it was marginalised during the Coalition and Conservative governments, rising uncertainty and increasing division in the current period warrants a re-assessment of the utility of a discrete social cohesion policy framework. This chapter assesses New Labour’s approach to community cohesion, drawing out lessons from its use in the New Labour years and asks whether policymakers should return to a focus on social cohesion and what, if anything, should be done differently in a uncertain political and social landscape.
social cohesion, integration, New Labour, inequality, ethnicity
Beyond hegemony: elaborating on the use of Gramscian concepts in critical discourse analysis in political studies
October 2017
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Journal article
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Political Studies
The work of Antonio Gramsci is important to the theoretical underpinnings of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). However, many scholars’ engagement with Gramsci’s work within CDA remains surprisingly thin. This article seeks to highlight the detriment to CDA of having only a surface engagement with Gramsci. It critically assesses how Gramscian concepts such as hegemony and ‘common sense’ are currently employed within CDA, and provides more detailed discussion on the import of these concepts for CDA. The article also argues that introducing the Gramscian concepts of the war of position and spontaneous and normative grammars enable the further realisation of CDA's ambition to be an emancipatory tool in political and social science. In so doing, the article contributes to work on CDA as a method in political studies, particularly concerning the role of discourse in reproducing and maintaining asymmetrical power relations between classes and social groups, and potential challenges to this.
Discourse, Hegemony, Common sense, methodology, Gramsci
The narratives of hardship: the new and the old poor in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis in Europe
January 2017
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Journal article
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Sociological Review
<p>This paper examines poverty and hardship in Europe after the 2008 crisis, using household interviews in nine European countries. A number of findings deserve highlighting. First, making a distinction between ‘the old poor’ (those who lived in poverty before as well as after the crisis) and ‘the new poor’ (those who fell into hardship after the crisis), we show that hardship is experienced quite differently by these groups. Second, the household narratives showed that while material deprivations constitute an important aspect of hardship, the themes of insecurity and dependency also emerged as fundamental dimensions. In contrast to popular political discourse in countries such as the UK, dependency on welfare or family was experienced as a source of distress and manifested as a form of hardship by participants in all countries covered in this study.</p>
insecurity, crisis, hardship, dependency, new poor, material deprivations
Cohesion as ‘common sense’: Everyday narratives of community and cohesion in New Labour’s Britain
May 2016
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Journal article
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Politics
This article engages with popular narratives of community and cohesion, explored through a series of focus groups in Bradford and Birmingham. This article argues that the participants interviewed used discourses propagated by government to make sense of these narratives in their neighbourhoods and communities. The use of these discourses constructs what Gramsci calls a ‘common sense’ position, which legitimises a specific and targeted notion of cohesion. However, participants can contaminate these discourses, which can lead to subtle changes or explicit challenges to dominant discourses on community and cohesion in the United Kingdom.
discourse, cohesion, narratives, Gramsci, SBTMR, community
Resilience, hardship and social conditions
July 2015
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Journal article
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Journal of Social Policy
This paper provides a critical assessment of the term ‘resilience’ – and its highly agent-centric conceptualisation – when applied to how individuals and households respond to hardship. We provide an argument for social conditions to be embedded into the framework of resilience analysis. Drawing on two different perspectives in social theory, namely the structure-agent nexus and path dependency, we aim to demonstrate that the concept of resilience, if understood in isolation from the social conditions within which it may or may not arise, can result in a number of problems. This includes misidentification of resilience, ideological exploitation of the term and inability to explain intermittence in resilience.
SBTMR
Welfare and cohesion contested: A critical discourse analysis of New Labour's reform programme
April 2013
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Journal article
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British Politics
4407 Policy and Administration, 4408 Political Science, 44 Human Society