Postmodernity and the Fragmentation of Welfare

John Carter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415163910
• eBook ISBN: 9781134712984
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

Postmodern ideas have been vastly influential in the social sciences and beyond. However, their impact on the study of social policy has been minimal. Postmodernity and the Fragmentation of Welfare analyses the potential for a postmodern or cultural turn in welfare as it treats postmodernity as an evolving canon -from the seminal works of Baudrillard, Foucault and Lyotard, through to recent theories of the 'risk society'.
Already disorientated by globalisation, new technologies and the years of new right ascendancy, welfare faces a significant challenge in the postmodern. It suggests that, rather than universality and state provision, the new social policy will be consumerised and fragmented -a welfare state of ambivalence.
With contributions from authors coming from a variety of fields offering very different perspectives on postmodernity and welfare Postmodernity and the Fragmentation of Welfare also keeps social policy's intellectual inheritance in view. By exploring ways in which theorisations of postmodernity might improve understanding of welfare issues in the 1990s and assessing the relevance of theories of diversity and difference to mainstream and critical social policy traditions, this book will be and essential text for all students of social policy, social administration, social work and sociology.

Chapter 1

Preludes, Introductions and Meanings

John Carter

Introduction

Postmodern ideas and attitudes have been rattling around the social sciences and humanities for a number of years now. Thus far, however, they have gained little purchase on the field of academic welfare, particularly in the United Kingdom. That domain has seemed at once both resistant and indifferent to what has elsewhere become intellectually established and influential. Not surprisingly this collection seeks to question that situation and argues that indifference is no longer an option. A non-engagement with significant ideas smacks of isolationism and limits the topics of conversation we can enter into with adjacent intellectual disciplines. Social policy then should at least explore the postmodern – but in doing so should subject it to a critical gaze. Recognising the need for a cultural turn in welfare does not imply that that literature be awarded the status of biblical text. Moreover, any sortie between social policy and the postmodern must keep the former in view as a developed intellectual field with its own concerns and constructs. Such a debate therefore needs to be conducted in both directions and may serve ultimately to enrich our conceptions of both welfare and postmodernism.

Throughout, the volume addresses the diverse and contested meanings of postmodernity and the postmodern. These include of course the contributions of Lyotard, Foucault, Derrida and others who, over the last thirty years, created what should properly be understood as a new perspective. Their value has been not only in the addition of specific new theoretical insights, but in critiquing and expanding the very notion of theorisation itself. Yet just as postmodernity did not begin with, say, Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition (1979), neither did it end there. Writers such as Giddens, Beck and Bauman continue to map our present condition and so feature heavily in this volume.

Mention of Beck and Giddens leads on to a parameters question. These writers would not necessarily regard themselves as postmodernists but might prefer to say that they are charting the later reaches of modernity. This sits happily and easily within the scope of the book which is really the wider ‘epochal thing’ rather than just the ideas of those authors who claim the title of ‘postmodernist’. Indeed the often contradictory mix of the late and post-modern to be found in recent welfare reforms is a substantive theme of the volume.

Of course the book is also about social policy itself – how it theorises, how it understands a changing world and how it meets intellectual and political challenges. The issue of whether postmodernity and its associated conceptions of power and identity can act as the midwife of a new, radical welfare politics is taken up by a number of contributors. In an age where real people are increasingly poor and exploited this is a far from abstract question.

Nevertheless, abstract and conceptual issues are posed for social policy by postmodernism. Even without ruling on the ‘late’ versus ‘post’-modernism conundrum we should note that what we used to call the welfare state has passed through something. We are no longer living in the crisis years of the 1970s wherein welfare capitalism ground to a halt (more with a bang than with a whimper). Neither for that matter are we quite at the epicentre of Conservative and new right responses here and abroad – the 1980s – though of course the process of creative destruction still rumbles on. That which we also used to call reality has moved on as conservatives from Thatcher to Blair seek to translate globalising (and other) forces into a new welfare settlement. Despite any lingering emotional and indeed occupational attachment we might feel, that world has vanished up its own contradictions. It belonged to an earlier conjunction of political, economic and cultural forces. Anyway it has become commonplace to point out that the welfare of Beveridge and of our own social administration tradition was marbled through with its own conservative assumptions and hierarchical power relations. We are of course reminded quite forcefully that this was no golden age by the postmodernists.

What then is the new world in social policy – a subject constructed and developed amid the apparent certainties of modernity and the twentieth century? To what extent should we assume that all bets are off and that a postmodern welfare template has been forged for the new age of anxiety? Not surprisingly the different authors included here offer different answers and vary in their interpretation of the new times. They also come at this from different directions and from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. This issue of intellectual allegiance is itself significant. It may be that those outside of the social policy tradition feel able to apply postmodern ideas to that realm in a reasonably direct and clear way. For those writers working in welfare, the directional dynamic may be somewhat different. Their problem is one of matching postmodern predictions and propositions with an existing canon of welfare writings and a subject that has developed its own intellectual and political concerns over the years. There may therefore be a relationship between disciplinary background and conclusions drawn on ‘postmodernity and welfare’ (reflected in a creative tension which runs throughout this book).

Structure of the Book

Postmodern Frameworks and Social Policy

We begin Part I with my chapter’s view that the very notion of a postmodern social policy itself needs to be deconstructed, contextualised and understood as an interaction between established intellectual communities. Of these, social policy has rightly been criticised in the past for its narrow focus and theoretical calcification. Whilst this is less valid now, academic welfare has demonstrably failed to parley with the postmodern. This in turn reflects a shortcoming on the part of the postmodernists, in failing to consider what social policy is and the conceptual tools it has developed. Ironically, though, the very construction of welfare as a field of study may itself have erected barriers against the cultural realm and thus a postmodern turn.

A more wholehearted account of postmodernity’s potential role in social policy is offered by John R. Gibbins. He particularly promotes the possibilities of a poststructural and deconstructionist variant for welfare – itself a creature of the Enlightenment. Against traditional notions of academic ‘coherence’ stand ambivalence, eclecticism and diversity – postmodernity’s Holy Trinity. Taken together, these not only open up new theoretical possibilities but also hint at a new thought style for social policy.

Martin O’Brien and Sue Penna are similarly upbeat about the postmodern, which they display as a diverse field of meanings. Their chapter distinguishes between the different conceptual strands which make it a contested but dynamic intellectual endeavour. This perspective is deployed to critique the modernist assumptions that underpin ‘anti-oppressive practice’ in social work and training.

Finally in this part, Barbara Fawcett and Brid Featherstone focus on the postmodernism located within feminist analysis. However, notions of quality assurance and evaluation (as currently used in social work) actually form part of a modernist project applied in a postmodern era. In this, the large confidences of the past are supplanted by the ‘small certainties’ of modernism in an effort to try to retain fixed points of reference within the fluidity of the postmodern scene. This is illustrated through a case study of the supports provided for a disabled woman and her family.

Critical Social Policy and Postmodernity

Kirk Mann turns the tables on the post- and late modernists, suggesting that they have things to learn from academic social policy. This can be seen in the works of Bauman and Giddens, which display an overly traditional and limited conception of welfare itself. Contrary to received wisdoms, the ‘orthodox’ welfare tradition has of late converged with its more radical cousin, critical social policy. Anyway, the latter has itself raised interesting questions about identity politics and the operation of power. This in turn challenges the presumed newness and uniqueness of the postmodern critique of welfare.

Ambiguity about the postmodern case also characterises the contribution of Suzy Croft and Peter Beresford. At first glance, by its very nature, a post-modernist position appears to offer opportunities for users’ groups and other marginalised and previously unheard welfare voices. However, these same groups are interpreted rather than engaged with in postmodern discourses – a process of tokenisation. In this way, ironically, the postmodernists repeat one of the failings of ‘orthodox’ social policy.

Social Divisions and Social Exclusion

By way of a contrast, Jean Carabine sees a more positive role for the postmodern in debates about social exclusion. She argues that sexuality should be used as a theoretical framework in social policy rather than simply as a bolted-on extra topic to study. In particular, Foucault’s notions of normalisation and regulation illuminate the inequalities and assumptions that have created a heterosexual welfare logic. This logic in turn interacts with and reinforces the other social divisions of gender, race, age and disability.

Chris Smaje notes that postmodern critiques undermine the normative universality of older philosophical traditions, but finds this problematic as a way of advancing debates about race and identity politics. Accordingly he is less keen to abandon all aspects of modernist thought and particularly revisits Richard Titmuss’s notion of the ‘gift relationship’. This typifies an approach to be found in many of these contributions: responding to the catalyst of postmodern analysis, we need not abandon our intellectual past, but can instead reinterpret and retune it.

Drawing on the work of Beck and Giddens, Sarah Nettleton and Roger Burrows smuggle the concept of reflexive modernisation into social policy debates. In an era of economic insecurity, reflexive modernisation illuminates a society dominated by uncertainty and the search for ‘ontological security’. Various policy instruments have served to privatise forms of risk and have emphasised the choices that individuals must make to secure their own wellbeing. This is particularly evident in the realms of housing and health.

Governance and New Technologies of Control in the New Social Policy

John Clarke develops the notion of managerialism, to be distinguished from the idea of management as a neutral ‘skill’ or tool. Managerialism acts to transform welfare structures, provision and relationships and thus to realise that which the various narratives of socio-economic change only sketch or imply. Indeed Clarke expresses concern that analytic frameworks such as Fordism/post-Fordism and now modernism/postmodernism are expressed as simple developmental binaries. Such a framing may serve to encourage ‘post-modernism wars’ in social policy in which contributors are forced into ‘for’ or ‘against’ positions.

Stephen J. Ball also reveals the unevenness of actual development. Recent educational changes in the UK have left the system perched between modernity and postmodernity, an uneasy mix of the old and the new. Ball uses Lyotard’s notion of performativity to organise what would otherwise seem to be random trajectories in educational management – the disciplinary rise of the market, total quality management, inspection, forms of self-evaluation, etc. Collectively these are aspects of the shift from a welfare state to a competition state.

The theme of unevenness and epochal boundaries is developed in Robin Bunton’s account of the changing management of drug use. In this, he charts a shift from the addiction model to more flexible forms of governance centred on the body and the regulation of habit. Drawing on Foucault he suggests that the pertinent transition here is not necessarily or directly from modernity to postmodernity. Instead, drugs policies and approaches indicate a move between different modernist disciplinary regimes.

Brian D. Loader considers the significance and impact of the explosion of new information and communication technologies. From their origin in the private sector they show signs of invading both the organisation and provision of welfare and of creating more ‘self-serviced’ forms. This adds to general individualising tendencies in social policy and to the fragmentation of public services. However, the progress of these new technologies is not yet determined and will be played out on the palette of welfare’s social divisions.

Citizenship Amid the Fragmented Nation State

Paul Hoggett and Simon Thompson seek to combine the universalism of old labour with the particularism of the new social movements. Drawing on Hirschman’s distinction between exit and voice they assess the potential of the new ‘associationist vision’. These new ways of coming together – at present putatively represented by the voluntary sector – may over time become the primary sources of welfare and social policy. Moreover, they contain more inclusive and participatory possibilities and could serve to reanimate welfare’s pre-collectivist tradition.

Beginning with Marshall’s seminal account of post-1945 social policy, Allan Cochrane goes on to consider the possibilities of a local welfare citizenship amid conditions of globalisation. In this context he also acknowledges that the new associationalism appears to have radical possibilities. However, these forms of ‘intermediate government’ are far removed from present conditions in which the apparatus of local democracy has been dismantled as opposed to reconstructed. How we can move from here to there is accordingly an awkward tactical and political question.

Norman Ginsburg concludes the volume at the supra-national level. Just as the domestic welfare state was an essentially modernist leviathan, so too was the original vision of a social Europe – a vision of social cohesion based upon class. Ginsburg detects the fading of this Delors dream and signs of a post-modern turn in recent European Union policy documents. This is particularly so in the recognition of non-traditional family structures, but can also be seen in the way that labour flexibility has been deployed of late. However, interpretative caution is still in order and it may be that this reflects no more than the reassertion of capital.

Some Definitions

This section seeks to introduce the very notion of the postmodern and its attendant concepts – particularly to those for whom this is relatively new territory. Further explorations of this material can be found in John Gibbins’s chapter and indeed in a number of texts which present and chart the post-modern. Of these, Bertens (1995) is particularly useful and readable.

As much as anything my purpose here is one of reassurance. Those new to these debates may feel they have failed to catch hold of a totalising definition of postmodernity or even some neat and comforting encapsulation. Yet this is the very nature of what has become an increasingly prominent but amorphous beast. Whilst it does contain specific and important ideas from seminal thinkers, postmodernity has transmuted as it has extended into more and more intellectual fields (and indeed into wider public parlance). It now stands as both a generalised motif and an incisive framework for academics. In these circumstances we will all have to learn to live with definitional ambiguities. We are therefore faced with the same problems as Uspensky’s policeman: ‘Quickly I seized the rascal by the collar! But what do I see? The confounded fellow has no collar!’ (Luxemburg 1970: 78).

Of course this background does not make postmodernity definitionally untouchable. One point of entry is the way in which the term has been used as a form of periodisation or epochal shorthand. In this way writers in different fields have deployed modernity and postmodernity as somewhat reductionist organising concepts, to distinguish between historical eras and patterns. Of course these same authors see different dates and turning points and some prefer ‘late-modern’ to postmodern as a label for the present. Nevertheless treating postmodernity as an account of historical change allows access to many important issues produced under that wider canon. The following sketch is therefore an attempt to present the main aspects of that case and to set out the general postmodern position. It is presented without critique (for the moment) and may therefore cause opponents of the very idea to bristle. My own powder remains fairly dry, however, and I allow myself no more than the ghost of a cynical smile as I type:

Modernity was a child of the Enlightenment (Science 1, Superstition 0) which developed through the industrial revolution to reach its highpoint in the twentieth century. This ‘victory’ saw its predominance in the structures and thought systems of western societies and, at least from the perspective of Max Weber, was near universal. The story for non-western cultures is more complex – with regard to both modernity and postmodernity – but is not really the subject of this book (which might be sub-sub-titled ‘our little corner of globalisation’). The essential characteristics of twentieth-century modernity begin with widespread industrial and economic development. These in turn have been supported by different types of planning regime or, to be more specific, the belief that things can be planned. Organisationally, this saw the predominance of the bureaucratic-hierarchical form and a belief in the rational ordering of human affairs. Society itself was separated along a number of fault lines (gender and class most notably), though these divisions were presumed to be objective and stable. The identities clustered around region, religion or even race were taken to be hangovers from the preindustrial era that would fade under the march of progress. In Britain this produced a particular kind of class politics and saw labourism fill in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Preludes, introductions and meanings
• Part I: Postmodern frameworks and social policy
• Part II: Critical social policy and postmodernity
• Part III: Social divisions and social exclusion
• Part IV: Governance and new technologies of control in the new social policy
• Part V: Citizenship amid the fragmented nation state
• Index