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Home , Economic mobility, Welfare, Welfare state

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Neoliberalizing the : Marketizing / Disciplining Clients

Sanford F. Schram

Introduction increasing number of practices throughout society. Most dramatically, it has led to a wholesale revi- We live during a time of transformation for the sion in in a number of domains so . Across the developed world but else- that they are more consistent with logic in where too, changes in social welfare policies the name of better promoting market-compliant reflect the growing influence of the market-cen- behavior by as much of the citizenry as possible. It tered philosophy of (Schram, 2015: places increased emphasis on people practicing Ch. 1). It has become the default logic for public personal responsibility by applying economic policymaking today. A long time in coming to logic to all forms of decision-making across a ascendancy, neoliberalism arose in response as the variety of spheres of life. People are expected to welfare state gained traction during and after the practice personal responsibility by investing in of the 1930s (Peck, 2011). their own to make themselves less Neoliberalism’s basic tenets were promulgated by of a burden on society as a whole or face the con- , , Milton sequences of a heightened disciplinary regime. It Friedman, and Gary Becker. It came to be associ- is this last part that is often neglected (Harcourt, ated with the ‘Chicago School’ of . 2010). Neoliberalism’s emphasis on personal Especially as articulated by Becker and Chicago responsibility for the choices people make has School fellow travelers, neoliberalism is centrally led to a more get-tough approach to social wel- about the superiority of economic logic as the fare policy. basis for all decision-making, public as well as The ongoing neoliberalization of social welfare private, collective and individual. A critical feature policy itself is now taking place during a time of of neoliberalism is that it blurs the boundary transformation that is fraught with risks for indi- between the market, and the state. viduals, families and societies as a whole, indeed Neoliberalism disseminates economic rationality for the global overall. The ascendency to be the touchstone not just for the market but for of neoliberalism as the prevailing rationality of civil society and the state as well. Its emphasis on our time is unfolding during what policy analysts economic rationality as standing in for what is call a ‘critical juncture’, where a well-ingrained rational per se promotes the marketization of an ‘path dependency’ in social welfare policies has

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come under increased pressure to change (Pierson, welfare policies that lay the groundwork for more 2000). This critical juncture is associated with a progressive changes down the road. cyclical swing back from policy commitments that have dominated the social welfare state in the post- World War II era (Stiglitz, 2012). The waning of support for the welfare state is, however, compli- cated by changes in the economy in recent years. In The rise of neoliberalism: today’s world, post the Great , where the from explicit theory to default economy seems to be recovering but in an increas- practice ingly unequal way, there is a return of what we can call ‘ordinary ’ that has provided a new Neoliberalism evolved in the twentieth century neoliberal normal of growing inequality and dwin- from being the preoccupation of economic theo- dling economic opportunities for people on the bot- rists to becoming the default logic for public poli- tom of the socio-economic order (Schram, 2015: cymaking across the globe. At first, it was sustained Ch. 1). Under neoliberalism’s insistence on the largely in the writings of Ludwig von Mises and pervasive reliance on economic logic as the basis Friedrich Hayek and their followers in the Mont for all decision-making, public as well as private, Pèlerin Society (Jones, 2014; www.salon. collective as well as individual, the state buttresses com/2013/03/09/the_world_according_to_milton_ markets rather than counters them and inequality friedman_partner/). It most centrally is reflected in grows virtually unabated, as not a bug but rather as their critiques of the welfare state, but especially in a feature of this latest (neoliberal) iteration of the the thinking of and the idea return to ordinary capitalism (Sassen, 2006). that the state should be a bulwark to counter the In this context, the neoliberalization of social market. For Keynes, only the state was large and welfare policy indicates a stark shift in orientation. poOkwerful enough to counter the excesses that While the state’s social welfare policy in capitalist come with swings in the market. The rise of societies has always been attuned to market forces, Keynesianism and its emphasis on countercyclical neoliberal welfare policy represents a significant policy provoked a strong reaction from theorists shift away from a state that sought to buffer the like Hayek in particular. effects of the market for those who were least able Hayek believed that the state could not be to participate in it effectively to now re-purposing omniscient and that the decentralized market pro- the welfare state to be one that explicitly is com- duced more points of information and was there- mitted to working to buttress the market rather than fore a more intelligent system of decision-making. to counteract its most deleterious effects (Schram, Hayek’s Road to Serfdom (2007 [1944]) critiqued 2015: Ch. 1). Examining changes in major social the idea of a welfare state that would undermine welfare policy primarily in the US, but also in the autonomy of markets. He did concede the need other countries, provides evidence of how the for the state to provide for those who could not neoliberalization of social welfare policy today participate in the market enough to sustain them- includes putting in place a heightened disciplin- selves and their families. Hayek’s went on to ary regime for managing subordinate prove to be catalytic in rolling back welfare state who are deemed to be deficient in complying with policies, not just in capitalist societies but eventu- the dictates of an increasingly marketized society ally also in communist countries after the fall of where people are expected to leverage their human the Soviet Union. capital in order to provide for themselves and Hayek, however, was no simple conservative their families. or classic economic liberal who prized individual In what follows, I trace the rise of neoliberalism in some unreflective way. His neoliberal- as the default logic of today’s ism is well captured when he said: throughout the world. I examine in detail its ani- mating sources and its underlying philosophical We assign responsibility to a man, not in order to roots. I review how it has come to be the com- say that as he was he might have acted differently, mon sense of capitalist political across but in order to make him different.… It is doubt- the globe, and how it operates to structure public less because the opportunity to build one’s own policymaking and policy design in those societ- life also means an unceasing task, a discipline that ies. I specify the way neoliberalism has influenced man must impose upon himself if he is to achieve welfare policy implementation in the United his aims, that many people are afraid of . States. I conclude with considerations on how to (Hayek, 1960: 70–5) get beyond neoliberalism in social welfare policy via what I call a ‘radical incrementalism’ that While vigilant in highlighting unwarranted forms makes small changes within the existing social of coercion, Hayek was in many ways the father

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of what would come to be called ‘responsibi- what was called the ‘Washington Consensus’ lization’ and the idea that society needed to be (Williamson, 2004). The Washington Consensus structured to discipline subordinate populations involved committing international lending prac- to be economically compliant. Hayek saw neo- tices to promoting economic liberalization in the in the practices that worked to produce debtor countries. Most famously, donors such as a certain type of citizen/subject who was market the World and the International Monetary savvy and compliant in all their choice-making Fund came to impose ‘’ poli- activities. cies on the borrowing countries in exchange for was distinctively influential the loans received. Latin American, African and in developing the Chicago School of economic Asian countries in particular commonly found the theorizing. His biggest contribution to the rise of new terms of loans to involve conditions that led neoliberalism was to pose his ideas of monetar- to the of the economy, reductions ism to that of Keynesianism (Jones, 2014). Rather in , cuts in social welfare spending and the than an active state counteracting the swings of the of state operations as well as the market, the state should back away from such fis- imposition of monetarist policies. Problems of cal policies that raised or lowered taxes and spend- growing and accelerating inequality ing and instead impose a stabile monetary system again were immediately noticeable but did not of moderate predictable growth. The goal of the deter the growing insistence for ‘structural adjust- state should not be to aggressively respond to mar- ment’. The Washington Consensus extended ket swings but instead should tamp things down beyond the state to include the non-governmental by putting in place a stable flow of money. By the organizations and others involved in promoting late 1970s, in the US in particular, the problems ­development to economically parts of simultaneous high and low economic of the world. growth – i.e., stagflation – produced growing frus- Neoliberalism is not anti-liberalism; instead, it tration with Keynesian policies, the election of is a new form of liberalism. It is about both eco- as president and the institution of nomic and political liberalism (Brown, 2015). It Friedman’s monetarism as official policy by the is very much an attempt at a return to the classic US ’s Federal Reserve Board, which laissez-faire, of was charged with primary responsibility for man- . But it is also based in an apprecia- aging the monetary system. Friedman’s ideas had tion that with the in the US and social gone from the classroom and his textbooks to the in there was the rise of the halls of government. Now the state’s job was not welfare state that was justified by a pro-government to counter the market but to support it. interventionist form of political liberalism which The ‘Reagan Revolution’, as it was called, unavoidably remade the relationship of the state produced reductions in social welfare spend- to the market. Neoliberalism might have at its ing, deregulation of the economy, cuts for core a wish or desire to roll back the state to the wealthy (Moynihan, 1988). It was mirrored return to laissez-faire economic policies and put in the policies of in her long in place a market fundamentalism. In this sense, run as Prime of (Krieger, 1986). neoliberalism is a form of that It was Thatcher who gave us TINA (there is no seeks to undo the welfare state as a counter to alternative) as the most thoughtless version of the market. Yet, as much as conservatives might the need to back away from Keynesianism (Hay have wished that that would happen, they quickly and Payne, 2015). As would become a com- saw that history was not something that could be monplace slogan, the era of big government was simply undone. over. While poverty rose and inequality accel- Instead, neoliberals were with time to appre- erated, the momentum had swung away from ciate the implications ’s understand- the Keynesian welfare state toward a neoliberal- ing of history as an undeniable force in shaping ized political economy where the state facilitated people’s ability to act. In 1848, Marx wrote in The rather than counteracted an economy that had Eighteenth Brumaire Louis Napoleon: these inequitable outcomes. Growing poverty and inequality were not unintended bugs in the system Men make their own history, but they do not of neoliberalism as much as they were defining make it as they please; they do not make it under features of a system where the state facilitated eco- self-selected circumstances, but under circum- nomic growth that produced winners and losers. stances existing already, given and transmitted By then neoliberalism was more a ‘thought from the past. The tradition of all dead generations collective’ than an explicit ideological program weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. (Mirowski, 2014). Its tacit nature is represented And just as they seem to be occupied with revolu- in how it came to be implicitly associated with tionizing themselves and things, creating

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­something that did not exist before, precisely in a hybrid practice that has evolved out of histori- such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously cal circumstances. In practice, neoliberalism is conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, not about market fundamentalism as much as it is borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and about marketizing the state. It is less about doing costumes in order to present this new scene in away with the state than getting it to operate in world history in time-honored disguise and bor- market-compliant ways. In fact, it might be best to rowed language. (Marx, 1937 [1848]: 1) refer to neoliberalism not as an at all, but instead as a more subordinate meaning system, a For Marx, people are not completely free to act, ‘practical rationality’, i.e., the common sense for individually or collectively, but they are free to making public policy today in a post-Keynesian act in response to structured conditions in any one era (March and Olsen, 2010). place and time. In other words, they had to account Jamie Peck aptly speaks of ‘zombie neoliber- for what came before and not simply wish it away. alism’, where neoliberalism policy changes get This was very true for neoliberals who wished to enacted simply because they go unchallenged as roll back the welfare state and enact a return to the default logic for making public policy in the some type of market fundamentalism. current era (Peck, 2010). While neoliberalism This points toward what has become a critical might have been an explicit theoretical orientation feature of neoliberalism, especially in its rela- at one point, today it is more an implied under- tionship to the welfare state. While neoliberals standing of what is to be done. Today, almost no might have wanted to repeal welfare policies, as one admits to being a neoliberal, even if they pur- attempted under Reagan and Thatcher, more often sue neoliberal marketizing strategies for chang- than not, something else happened. Repeal was ing the relationship of the state to the market. It perhaps Plan A, but given that the welfare state is generally understood as the common sense of had come to be entrenched, they could not sim- public policymaking in the US most especially, ply undo it. The welfare state had become institu- but increasingly elsewhere as well, that when the tionalized. Its policies had acquired their own path welfare state cannot be rolled back, we search for dependency that generated a positive ‘policy feed- ways to marketize it so that it becomes less of a back’ (as policy analysts call it) (Mettler and Soss, counter to the market and something that runs 2004). As people came to be accustomed to the along market lines so as to better promote markets. benefits they gained from relying on the welfare Wendy Brown has insightfully noted that neo- state, they became more politically supportive of liberalism is more about the state than the market maintaining these policies. So, in that sense, there (Brown, 2015). She notes that it is most centrally was no real chance of totally going back to a set of about changing so that it too operates in policies like those that pre-dated the welfare state. market-compliant ways, as in allowing to That would be Plan A. And if Plan A was not pos- dominate the electoral process and monied lobbyists sible then a Plan B was needed. If the welfare state to draft the that get enacted as well as rewriting could not be repealed so as to reinstate market fun- public policies to be more supportive of markets and damentalism, then the next best thing would be to those who dominate them. Neoliberalism’s greatest marketize the state. Over time, this has come to be effects are perhaps seen in its being the default logic a hallmark characteristic of neoliberalism, perhaps for the politics of remaking the state more so than more than monetarism, deregulation, and tax cuts. how it works to reshape markets. Instead, of repealing the welfare state, neoliberal- The zombie-like quality of neoliberal thought ism involves marketizing welfare state operations today is perhaps no accident, as Henry Giroux notes: so they run more like a business in the name of getting everyone involved in them, policymak- Neoliberalism is not merely an , ers, program administrators, and clients to act in but also a cultural apparatus and pedagogy that ­market-compliant ways. are instrumental in forming a new mass sensibility, In this sense, neoliberalism is really Plan B for a new condition for the widespread acceptance of market fundamentalists (Schram, 2015: 28–31). the capitalist system, even the general belief in its It is what they had to do given the historical sig- eternity. Seeking to hide its ideological and con- nificance of the welfare state, the path dependency structed nature, neoliberal ideology attempts of its policies, the positive policy feedback that through its massive cultural apparatuses to pro- they generated and the unavoidable reality that duce an unquestioned common sense that hides history is a real force that cannot simply be dis- its basic assumptions so as to prevent them from missed or wished away. Therefore, it is not sur- being questioned. (Giroux, 2015) prising that neoliberalism is most often confronted with confusion when it is introduced as a topic Therefore, a good case can be made that neolib- of analysis. It is less a full-blown ideology than eralism has gone from being an explicit economic

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philosophy to an implicit understanding about private providers, where clients are turned into the politics associated with remaking the state. consumers who get to make choices, and both It is the common sense of the politics of public are held accountable via performance measure- policymaking. It reflects history as a real force ment systems that indicate whether market-based to be contended with. It raises the issue of what objectives have been met. Examples in the US Hegel called the ‘cunning of reason’, where actors include: where private provid- unknowingly enact what history has led them ers now dominate in placing clients in jobs, to do in spite of their own best intentions.1 The managed-care systems for regulating the private thoughtlessness of neoliberalism today may only provision of publicly funded health care, Section make it that much harder to counteract. It is some- 8 vouchers for subsidizing low-income fami- thing that people do simply because that is the lies’ participation in private markets, way things get done at this point in time. As result, and education vouchers that subsidize parents’ neoliberal failures often lead to a doubling-down placing their children in private charter schools where they are replaced or modified with other (where students must score sufficiently high on even more intensified forms of neoliberalism. standardized tests for the schools to continue Nowhere is this tragedy more noticeable it seems to participate in the privatized public education than when we look at the neoliberal marketization system in that locality). of US welfare policy for the poor. Neoliberalism involves both carrots and sticks; it is about discipline more than just punish- ment (Soss, Fording and Schram, 2011a: 6–9). Discipline is not just negative in limiting people’s Marketizing the welfare state: behavior; it is also productive in seeking to bring into being a new type of responsibilized citizen/ neoliberal social welfare policy subject who applies economic rationality to all their choice-making practices. To help usher in Neoliberalism as enacted today is producing noth- this new citizen/subject, service providers across ing less than a regime-wide transformation of the the social welfare state are also being disciplined welfare state. We can see this transformation as in ways that make for profound transformations traversing the continuum of domestic policy in the delivery of all kinds of public services. As across the welfare state. The idea of state policy part of the effort, public policies across the social existing on a continuum is put to good use by welfare continuum are themselves undergoing Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu has noted that the state a fundamental transformation as they are being is riven with conflict and that it is better to charac- neoliberalized to shift to imposing discipline to terize it as a ‘bureaucratic field’ (Bourdieu, 1994). achieve market compliance by all actors in the Bourdieu suggests that within this bureaucratic system, service providers as well as clients. From field there is a continuum of domestic policy, with income redistribution programs such as public the left hand of the state providing aid and the assistance for the poor to criminal justice policies right hand of the state imposing discipline. Yet for such as the system of mass incarceration that has Loïc Wacquant, there has been a joining of the left arisen in the era of the war on drugs, social welfare and right hands of the state in recent years as poli- policies are becoming more alike as they feature cies have become more punitive, emphasizing a strong disciplinary approach grounded in mar- punishing the poor for their failure to conform to ketized operations. Increasingly, for-profit pro- social and legal norms, especially regarding work viders are required to demonstrate they can meet and family (Wacquant, 2009). Social welfare and performance standards. Clients must manage to criminal justice policies, for instance, have make do with whatever limited opportunities the become more alike, aiding and disciplining the economy provides. poor simultaneously so that they will be less likely Getting people to be self-reliant in an economy to engage in deviant social practices. Neoliberalism that offers them dwindling opportunities inevi- is spreading punishment across domestic policies tably intensifies the disciplinary core of social in the name of disciplining the poor to become welfare’s neoliberalization. Today, many people personally responsible, market-compliant actors are still struggling with the effects of the Great (Soss, Fording and Schram, 2011a). Recession and the growing inequalilty and eco- Yet neoliberalization involves more than pun- nomic hardship it has produced. It has proven to ishment in the name of disciplining the poor. be a pivotal moment not just economically but also The marketization of social welfare policies politically. Just as the roots of the economic trans- actually has been the most noteworthy develop- formation stretch back before the Great Recession, ment under neoliberalism. In policy after policy, the influence of wealth to forestall state action to there has been a dramatic shift to relying on address issues of social welfare has been growing

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for just as long (Bonica et al., 2013). The grow- who can develop and leverage their own human ing inequality in income and wealth has led to capital, the state works to inculcate market-com- massive expenditures in lobbying by the wealthy pliant behavior via a panoply of incentives and to lower taxes, reduce regulation of business, and penalties. And when that does not work, especially limit social welfare legislation. As a result, there as the inequitable economy grows in ways that do is now the distinct possibility of the not create economic opportunities for them, then moving to a tiered society. At the top, there is a coercive controls are imposed. The goal is to con- limited stratum of upper-class and upper-middle- trol and contain those left behind so as a dispos- class people, ensconced in positions of corporate able they are less of a burden on the oversight and needed professional occupations. rest of society. Social welfare institutions must of At the bottom is everyone who is increasingly necessity be adjusted accordingly. In the trans- deemed as not deserving of the state’s attention, formed context, we see a shift from redistributing in part because they failed to position themselves resources to the economically disadvantaged to an as successful participants for the globalizing emphasis on enforcing compliance to behavioral economy and are therefore seen as a burden that standards so that subordinate populations become a globally competitive corporate sector cannot and less of a burden on society. will not carry. At the extreme, those in poverty are Given its disciplinary focus, neoliberal social cast aside as disposable populations who are to be welfare unavoidably has moralistic and tutoral monitored, surveilled, disciplined, and punished dimensions, focused on telling the poor how to more than they are to be helped. behave more so than providing them with needed The hollowed-out welfare state has less to assistance. The inculcation of personal responsi- offer those disadvantaged by economic transfor- bility becomes central to the welfare state. In this mation. Increasingly what it does have to offer is highly neoliberalized paternalistic context, the not so much assistance as discipline – discipline helping professions that provide the critical social focused on getting people to internalize mar- services are inevitably transformed. It is here at ket logic and accept personal responsibility for this neoliberal terminus that we find a transformed the need to find whatever means, however lim- , depoliticized and refocused on man- ited, to get by in the changing economy (Soss, aging disposable populations. Social work no Fording and Schram, 2011a: Ch. 2). This is the longer stands outside power but now is more than core of what is being called neoliberalism, a new ever thoroughly assimilated to it. Across a wide liberalism that restructures the state to operate variety of populations in need of various forms consistently with market logic in order to better of assistance and treatment, social work shifts to promote market-compliant behavior by as many technologies of the state, forms of governmental- people as possible (Brown, 2003, 2006). ity, practices associated with getting served popu- Neoliberalizing social welfare programs pri- lations to internalize an ethic of self-discipline and oritize people learning to be economically minded personal responsibility. The goal of this responsi- about everything they do so they can more prof- bilization is for subordinate populations to handle itably develop their human capital and become their own problems as best they can on their own, less in need of relying on the government for with the aim that they become less of a burden assistance. Everyone must learn to think about all for the constrained state. As a result, they should aspects of their lives in terms of return on invest- become more willing to take up whatever limited ment (what is commonly now called ROI) (Heady, positions in the globalizing economy that they are 2010). Even government programs for the poor afforded. come to be centered on inculcating this neolib- Social work increasingly comprises forms of eral ethos (Schram, 2006: Ch. 5). The result is psychological services focused on helping real- that self-governance replaces the government. It is ize the disciplinary demands of the neoliberal- the ultimate form of privatization. Neoliberalism izing state, which is now ever more dedicated to is heavily invested in getting ordinary people to managing rather than serving disposable popula- be not just factors in production, but sources of tions. When examining changes across a number capital themselves. Activating those on the bot- of different areas of human service provision tom of the socio-economic ladder to participate today, most striking are the parallel shifts in more extensively in investing in their own futures treatment toward a more disciplinary approach through acquiring , whether for schooling, to managing service populations (Schram and buying a home, or other purposes, becomes an Silverman, 2012). It is the end of social work important source of in an econ- as we knew it and the ascendancy of a neolib- omy led by the financial industry.2 eral regime that disciplines subordinate popula- Yet, for those who fail at becoming on their tions to be market compliant regardless of the own financially savvy neoliberal citizen-subjects, consequences.

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Marketizing US welfare policy for the pervasive reality of the fraudulent nature of the poor: from medicalization to the choice system neoliberalism puts in place, whether it is about choosing a social welfare ser- neoliberalization vice provider, charter school, or low- job. Emerging out of pre-existing ‘culture of pov- Especially for the poorest populations in the most erty’ arguments that got inflected as part of the neoliberalized regimes, like the US, the mar- right-wing reaction to progressive social policy ketized welfare policies we see being put in place in the 1960s, by the 1990s the US-led western rely heavily on the medicalization of the problems welfare states, increasingly focused on with get- they ostensibly confront. Medicalization is, argu- ting the poor to accept responsibility for their ably, the main way that welfare policy discourse bad choices. The idea of bad choices had become today creates a stage for enacting what Michel ascendant in welfare policy discourse and had Foucault called ‘neoliberal ’, helped frame ‘welfare dependency’, rather than where the state is in the business of disciplining poverty, as the problem that needed attention the poor to become self-disciplined citizen- (Schram, 2000: 62–3). This amounted to noth- subjects who will be less of a burden on the rest of ing less than an aphasic shift, where welfare dis- us in spite of the persistent poverty they endure course operates to impair our ability to put into (Lemke, 2001). Neoliberal governmentality is words the trauma of poverty, and we use euphe- premised on the idea that all of social life, public mistic substitutes such as ‘welfare dependency’ and private, in civil society as well as in the state to paper over our complicity in perpetuating other and the market, should be seen as a venue for people’s destitution, while simultaneously shifting developing and deploying one’s personal human the blame away from the structure of society to the capital so as to perform as a social actor consistent individual behavior of those who are forced to live with market logic. This hypertrophy of market in poverty (Schram, 2006: 136–9). With this old logic to become the common-sense basis for aphasic shift taking a new form, welfare depen- making all social choices requires that people dency becomes the center of our discursive terrain become disciplined citizen-subjects who internal- dealing with how, in the contemporary parlance ize market rationality as their social ethic. For of our therapeutic culture, to ‘treat’ recipients for low-income people who lack ability to perform their diseased condition of dependence on welfare. effectively in this manner or who simply resist the Welfare use beyond the shortest periods of time as orientation, there is the emerging danger that they a form of transitional aid, as, say, when a single will be seen as in need of behavioral modification mother relies on welfare while working through a in the form of what is called behavioral health and divorce, is now considered abuse. In other words, related services offering treatment to overcome welfare use beyond a few months is now welfare whatever personal limitations prevent them from abuse, signaling the need to undergo treatment practicing neoliberal governmentality (Kaylor, to overcome one’s dependency on welfare. The 2008). Social welfare policy increasingly is ori- dependency metaphor operates like a metonymy ented toward combining medical and economic in which a contiguous reference point is empha- logics in the service of disciplining clients to act sized rather than the original object of concern. consistently with neoliberal governmentality and The poverty that precedes welfare dependency is thereby reduce the burdens of the state in assisting ignored, and instead we are asked to focus on the people to live otherwise. reliance on welfare. In the process, what emerges is a paternalistic This semiotic shift is, arguably, most convenient economistic-therapeutic-managerial discourse for the rich and powerful in the United States, who for treating subordinate populations in an age of increasingly need to deflect attention from the lack neoliberalization (Schram, 1995). The goal is to of upward mobility afforded to the lower classes re-inscribe the neoliberal cardinal principle that in the ossifying and deeply unequal class structure all people in the social order need to take per- that has emerged with the changing economy asso- 3 sonal responsibility for the choices they make. ciated with , and the proliferation of The goal is to produce disciplined citizen-subjects low-wage jobs as the only recourse to subsistence who are capable of effectively making rational for many. Dependency becomes a displacement choices for improving their life chances, leaving for talking about the underlying structural poverty aside and even rationalizing the fact that low- of that economy, which our liberal, individualistic, income individuals and subordinated populations agentistic political discourse cannot effectively are really given nothing more than an empty ges- address. So ‘welfare use’, ‘welfare receipt’, and ture when asked to choose between the lesser of the especially verboten ‘welfare taking’ are all two evils. These forced, false choices invariably being replaced by ‘welfare dependency’. As a leave the poor just as they are: poor still. This is result, reliance on welfare is articulated as a sign

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that a single mother suffers from ‘welfare depen- of instilling a commitment to taking paid employ- dency’, which, like other dependencies, is some- ment is couched in the terms of liberal political thing from which the client needs to be weaned discourse. Self-esteem classes as well as psycho- with an appropriate therapeutic treatment. Under logical counseling have become common features welfare reform, all applicants for assistance are of welfare-to-work programs as ways of engen- screened, diagnosed, assessed, and referred for dering the self-confidence needed for participants the appropriate treatment to accelerate the process to become the autonomous, self-sufficient actors by which they can overcome their vulnerability to assumed by liberal political discourse (Soss, being dependent on welfare. Fording and Schram, 2011a: Chs 9–10). Medicalization represents modernity’s prefer- These ‘soft-skills’ classes are often provided ence for science over religion, expressed in the by contract agencies who have the background to growing propensity to conceive myriad personal work on getting people to change their behavior. problems in medicalized terms. It envisions the This cadre of organizations include non-profit, poor as sick, as opposed to bad (Conrad, 2007). for-profit and even faith-based organizations. The Yet that revised outlook comes with a price: wel- issues addressed involve the full gamut associ- fare dependency is defined as the product of an ated of ‘barriers’ confronting welfare families, individual’s behavior, more than the inequities in not just getting a job, but also marriage, parent- the social structure or political economy. In this ing and other issues that can lead to single moth- way, medicalization suggests that upward mobility ers, in particular, needing to rely on welfare. The is still possible. The poor are not fated to be poor; overarching goal is the inculcation of personal they can be cured of their ills and thereby acti- responsibility as an alternative to providing cash vated to advance economically. This convenient assistance. No doubt placing adult recipients in displacement story, redirecting focus away from jobs becomes the priority issue under welfare as the structural embeddness of persistent poverty in reformed. the changing economy, serves the political inter- Over time, this issue enacts its own neoliberal ests of powerful groups invested in not having to self-fulfilling prophecy. US welfare policy for the attack those structural roots of contemporary pov- poor, mostly single mothers with children, was erty. By highlighting that the poor can be cured of dramatically reformed in 1996. The 60-year-old their dependency on welfare, medicalizing implies Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) that mobility is still possible, when in fact it is less was replaced with Temporary Assistance for than likely. Needy Families (TANF) program with the pas- One manifestation of how medicalization sage of the Personal Responsibility and Work implies mobility is the proliferation of ‘barriers’ Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. With talk in welfare policy implementation (Houser time limits, work requirements, sanctions for non- et al., 2015). A major preoccupation in welfare compliance with welfare-to-work rules, the wel- reform as a new form of governance is assist- fare rolls plummeted more than 60% in five years ing recipients to overcome ‘barriers to self- (Soss, Fording and Schram, 2011a). The partici- sufficiency’. ‘Barriers’, contrary to the term’s pation rate of eligible poor families has declined ostensible meaning, is most often construed under dramatically as well. Predictably, the percentage welfare reform as personal problems. Racial and of income-eligible families receiving public assis- sexual discrimination in the workplace or the lack tance declined from 84% to 40% between 1995 of decently paying jobs is not usually acknowl- and 2005 (Brown, 2010). Although levels of need edged in state welfare programs as a barrier to expanded greatly during the Great Recession that moving from welfare to work. Instead, barriers are began in late 2007, TANF caseloads largely held most often discussed as personal problems aris- steady at these low levels, leading most policy ing from internal issues specific to the individual analysts to conclude that participation rates among rather than as external conditions in society that income-eligible families have declined even fur- are blocking one’s advancement. As a result, more ther. At the same time, levels and more programming under welfare reform is increased every year since welfare reform was concentrated on what are seen as the related con- enacted (Edin and Shaefer, 2015: xvii; Shaefer ditions that give rise to welfare dependency, be and Edin, 2012). they issues, behavioral problems, or Eventually, welfare became the medical treat- addictions. In the masculinized discourse of wel- ment program it posed as. Its get-tough regime fare reform, even children risk being referred to as chased away most eligible families. Only those barriers to work. The goal is to get single moth- who most desperately needed assistance applied. ers to be comfortable being the breadwinner for As more and more of the welfare population exited their families, even if it means cutting back on under welfare-to-work programs that required their commitments to their children. Yet the idea recipients to make ‘rapid attachment’ to paid

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in the labor force, the remaining mass media using highly misleading racial terms population is increasingly made up of recipients and imagery. As a result, the public tends to exag- who have indeed incurred certain personal prob- gerate grossly the extent to which blacks have lems at high rates. For instance, it is estimated that received public assistance and in turn has become ‘a growing share of [those individuals receiving] increasingly critical of welfare as a program for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families [TANF], poor blacks, who are seen as ‘other’ people, not which offers cash support to low-income single like most white middle-class families, and who caregivers, is composed of individuals with mental do not adhere to work and family values. Racial illness, as new work requirements result in faster resentments and old stereotypes of black laziness exits of those without mental health conditions’ have become more influential in spawning grow- (Danziger, Frank and Maera, 2009: 1). The rate ing hostility toward welfare (Gilens, 2000). of depression among TANF recipients grew in the With the medicalized discourse of welfare post-welfare reform era. This, ironically, reinforces dependency firmly entrenched today in public the medicalized character of welfare dependency deliberations about welfare use, welfare reform as if it were a real phenomenon that was always increasingly has turned into the social policy equiv- already there in the first place, as if most recipients alent of a twelve-step program. Rather than a pro- were always from the illness of welfare gram to redistribute needed income to poor families dependency and its related medicalized conditions. with children, it has become a behavioral modifica- Just like any good discourse, ‘welfare dependency’ tion regime centered on getting the parents of these then became its own self-fulfilling prophecy, mak- children to become self-disciplined so that they in ing itself real by manufacturing the reality that, it turn will become self-sufficient according to ascen- claims, pre-existed it. Reliance on welfare comes dant work and family values. Increasingly, this to be seen less as an economic problem and more behavioral modification regime is implemented via asmental health issue. public-private partnerships in which state and local Yet medicalization has not changed funda- contract with private, often for-profit, mental attitudes about welfare, which remain providers to move single mothers with children off ambivalent at best. Most Americans still do not in welfare and into low-wage jobs, or if not that then principle oppose government assistance for low- marriages. In this way, medicalization facilitated income families, and in fact continue to believe neoliberal marketization of welfare programming that we have a collective obligation to help the in service of producing a newly disciplined subor- poor. For instance, from the 1980s through 2009, dinate population that is being regimented into the 60–70% of Americans indicated they supported low-wage labor markets of the increasingly unequal government assistance for the poor and believed globalizing economy. In the process, the ‘welfare government had a responsibility to guarantee poor’ increasingly became the ‘’, every citizen food to eat and a place to sleep (Pew while extreme poverty increased and the profits of Research Center, 2009). At the same time, most low-wage employers soared. Medicalization helps Americans also continued to believe that those in depoliticize poverty as a problem that the individual need should receive assistance only if they main- must seek treatment for rather than a public issue tain a commitment to personal responsibility and that we as a society need to address. Medicalization a work ethic. is the handmaiden of a profoundly depoliticizing The campaign against welfare dependency was neoliberalization that intensifies the focus on dis- successful not because it changed this mix of atti- ciplining the poor to realize the objective of manu- tudes. Instead, its success was in reframing the facturing a subordinated low-wage workforce for issue to focus on welfare dependency as a problem a changing economy that was being retrofitted to that needed immediate treatment. The problem of compete in the global economy. dependency came to be seen as a major source of society’s economic, as well as social and cultural, ills. It increasingly was framed as creating a signif- icant drain on the economy even as it encouraged Neoliberal governance: out-of-wedlock births, single-parent families, and a decline in the work ethic. The dependency frame organizational reforms saw public assistance not as a hard-won protec- and new policy tools tion for poor workers and their families; instead, it viewed welfare as a policy imposed against work- The marketization of the welfare state involves ers’ values as well as their bank accounts. both neoliberal organization reforms and policy This ‘us versus them’ identity politics refram- tools to enact its medicalized approach to combat- ing of welfare has been facilitated by the fact that ing welfare dependency. Neoliberal organizational welfare has for a long time been depicted in the reforms, such as devolution, privatization, and

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performance management schemes, poor’. Welfare reform in the 1990s, however, have been joined with paternalist policy tools, accentuated the disciplinary dimensions of welfare including sanctions, i.e., financial penalties, for policy in dramatic ways. non-compliant clients, to create a flexible but dis- The shift to a more disciplinary approach to ciplinary approach to managing the populations managing the welfare poor was facilitated by a being served (Soss, Fording and Schram, 2011b). concerted campaign by conservative political lead- What we can call ‘neoliberal paternalism’ repre- ers to replace poverty with welfare dependency sents a significant movement to marketize the as the primary problem to be attacked (Schram operations of social service organizations more and Soss, 2001). With this heightened rhetoric generally so that they inculcate in clients ration- about welfare dependency, the importation of ally responsible behavior that leads them to be behavioral-health models of treatment and asso- market compliant, and thus less dependent on the ciated organizational and staffing patterns came shrinking human services and more willing to to be seen as not only plausible but desirable. As accept the positions slotted for them on the bottom a result, welfare reform has remade the delivery of the socio-economic order (Brown, 2003). of welfare-to-work services along lines that par- Organizations are being disciplined so that they allel addiction recovery programs (see the drug can be held accountable for in turn disciplining treatment example below). Welfare agencies have their clients in this more market-focused environ- instituted services that are the social welfare policy ment. Neoliberal paternalism is transforming the equivalent of a twelve-step program: individuals human services into a disciplinary regime for learn in the new ‘work-first’ regime to be ‘active’ managing poverty populations in the face of state participants in the labor force rather than ‘pas- and market dysfunction. sive’ recipients of welfare (Schram, 2006: Ch. 7). This transformed environment involves: Such a view of welfare dependency has led to the (1) deskilling in staffing patterns associated importation of a ‘recovery model’ into welfare with relying on former clients as caseworkers, reform, one aspect of which is the staffing of wel- (2) marketizing of administrative operations fare-to-work contract agencies with ‘recovered’ stemming from the reliance on for-profit provid- former welfare recipients. While former recipients ers who are held accountable via performance have been relied on in the past, several studies of management schemes, and (3) disciplining of welfare reform have in recent years noted that the clients via paternalist policy tools. These changes agencies studied had undergone change such that in organization and policy were a long time in now about one-third of the case managers are for- coming. From the penultimate moment of the wel- mer recipients (Ridzi, 2009: 137; Watkins-Hayes, fare movement in the early 1970s until the 2009: 14). This proportion indicates numbers that passage of welfare reform legislation in the mid- go beyond mere tokenism (Turco, 2010). One 1990s, the number of welfare recipients stabilized of the virtues of the recovery model is that it is at relatively high levels (even as benefits declined). consistent with long-standing calls for a represen- Recipient families came to have essentially entitle- tative bureaucracy (RB) (Meier, 1975) that can ment rights to assistance, albeit modest and often. practice cultural competence (CC) concerning the Welfare policies nonetheless have long been unique needs of its clients (Brintnall, 2008): a cul- entwined with multiple purposes, among the most turally competent bureaucracy is one ‘having the important of which have been to return to the roots knowledge, skills, and values to work effectively of social service work and instill or restore moral- with diverse populations and to adapt institutional ity in the poor so as to assimilate marginal groups policies and professional practices to meet the into mainstream behaviors and institutions (Katz, unique needs of client populations’ (Satterwhite 1997). Further, as Richard Cloward and Frances and Teng, 2007: 2). A representative bureaucracy Fox Piven contend, welfare policy has historically that draws from the community it is serving is served to ‘regulate the poor’, effectively undermin- seen as furthering the ability of an agency to prac- ing their potential as a political or economic threat tice cultural competency in ways that are sensitive (Cloward and Piven, 1975). Others have noted that to community members’ distinctive concerns and welfare served to regulate gender relations by stig- problems (Carrizales, 2010). In other words, RB matizing single mothers receiving aid (Gordon, = CC. The recovery model holds out hope that 1994). The stigmatization of welfare recipients as a more representative bureaucracy will be more undeserving people who need to be treated suspi- sensitive to the ways in which its welfare clients ciously has not only deterred many welfare recipi- are approaching the unique challenges that have ents from applying for public assistance, but also brought them to the agency’s doorstep. communicated to the ‘working poor’ more gener- Yet there are ironies in this way of moving ally that they should do whatever they can to avoid toward realizing the RB = CC formula. Former falling into the censorious category of the ‘welfare recipients, as indigenous workers from the

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community, under the medicalized version of Government programs are now run more like welfare are seen as former addicts in recovery. If businesses, and the application of the business welfare is seen as a dangerously addictive sub- model to welfare involves getting case managers stance, then the implementation of a disciplinary and their clients to internalize the business ethic treatment regime is a logical next step. The medi- as well. Policy changes emphasize case managers calization of welfare in fact should be seen pri- using disciplinary cost-saving techniques to get marily in metaphorical terms, as just described, clients to move from welfare to paid employment and the main way of providing this medicalized as quickly as possible regardless of whether they treatment has been to increasingly rely on former and their children improve their well-being. clients who have gotten off welfare and can serve In the new neoliberalized welfare system, local as ‘success story’ role models in ways that are devolution and privatization have been joined by consistent with the ‘recovery model’ in addic- performance management. Performance manage- tions treatment (Ridzi, 2009; Watkins-Hayes, ment accountability schemes measure the perfor- 2009). The decentralized service delivery sys- mance of private contract agencies to hold them tems and private providers that so characterize accountable for meeting performance outcome welfare reform are fertile ground for the importa- goals. Performance management more than any- tion of medical models of dependency treatment. thing else has led many working in the system to The use of performance management systems suggest that ‘social work’ has been replaced by is also entirely consistent with the need to track a much more preferred ‘business model’ (Soss, measureable outcomes resulting from the provi- Fording and Schram, 2011a). Agencies inevitably sion of services or the application of treatment feel the pressure to outperform the other agencies to clients. being evaluated in these performance schemes. Under this scheme, case management is a rou- Proponents of neoliberal organizational reform tinized and deskilled position focused largely on predict that local organizations will respond to monitoring client adherence to program rules and the competition among provider agencies by inno- disciplining them when they are out of compliance. vating in ways that advance statewide goals and There is, in fact, evidence that with the shift to a improve client services. Devolution will provide more decentralized, privatized system of provi- the they need to experiment with prom- sion, local contract agencies have gone ahead and ising new approaches. Performance feedback will moved to a more deskilled welfare-to-work case provide the evidence they need to learn from their management by replacing civil servants, social own experiments and the best practices of oth- workers, and other professionals with former ers. Performance-based competition will create welfare recipients (Ridzi, 2009; Watkins-Hayes, ­incentives for local organizations to make use of 2009). In the process, a form of community self- this information and adopt program improvements surveillance is put in place that Cathy Cohen calls that work. ‘advanced marginalization’, where some members Studies have suggested several reasons why of a subordinate group get to achieve a modicum organizations may deviate from this script in of upward social-economic mobility by taking on ‘rationally perverse’ ways. Performance indica- responsibilities for monitoring and disciplining tors provide ambiguous cues that, in practice, get other members of that subordinate community ‘selected, interpreted, and used by actors in differ- (Cohen, 1999). ent ways consistent with their institutional inter- While this staffing pattern may at times be ests’ (Moynihan, 2008: 9). Positive innovations relied on for less controversial reasons as a simple may fail to emerge because managers do not have cost-saving measure consonant with the business the authority to make changes, access learning model, it is also entirely consistent with a recovery forums, or devise effective strategies for reform- model philosophy that puts forth former recipients ing the organizational status quo. Performance as behavioral role models. These former recipi- ‘tunnel vision’ can divert attention from impor- ents are frequently referred to in the literature as tant-but-unmeasured operations and lead manag- ‘success stories’ (Schram and Soss, 2001). Yet the ers to innovate in ways that subvert program goals recovery model suggests they are hired for another (Radin, 2006). To boost their numbers, providers reason. The recovery model is grounded in the phi- may engage in ‘creaming’ practices, focusing their losophy that underpins the twelve-step program services on less-disadvantaged clients who can be of Alcoholics Anonymous and its predecessors, moved above performance thresholds with less which over time has spread to other areas of drug investment (Bell and Orr, 2002). treatment and mental health services, along with In this environment, case managers are under the core conviction that clients must be willing to constant pressure to get their clients to stay in com- support one another in overcoming their addictions pliance with welfare-to-work rules and if the cli- (Alcoholics Anonymous, 1953). ents fail to do so they are penalized with sanctions

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that reduce their benefits. This preoccupation with managers spend most of their time enforcing com- monitoring clients for compliance represents a pliance to individual responsibility plans and very change in the role of the case manager as part of little time counseling clients (Soss, Fording and the administrative transformation of welfare policy Schram, 2011a: 223–6). The change is palpable. implementation. The rise of neoliberal paternalism One former recipient case manager, as reported in in fact is associated with a shift in the nature of this study, stressed in a most poignantly metaphori- casework, marked by the passage of federal wel- cally way that welfare is no longer a social service. fare reform in 1996 (Lurie, 2006). The prime direc- She suggested it was now herding cattle instead of tives for TANF case managers today are to convey tending sheep; while a shepherd takes care of the and enforce work expectations and to advance and sheep, a cattle herder just runs the herd through a enable transitions to employment. Efforts to pro- pen in an insensitive fashion. mote family and child well-being are downplayed The shift from tending sheep to herding cattle in this frame, but they are not entirely abandoned. at one level is not necessarily that significant since Under neoliberal paternalism, they are assimilated both can be interpreted as dehumanizing. Yet the into efforts to promote work based on the idea that desensitization implied by this way of characteriz- ‘work first’ will put clients on the most reliable ing the shift is noteworthy in itself. It also points to path toward achieving a self-sufficient, stable, and another problem with performance measurement. healthy family. The preoccupation with numbers emphasizes Thus, case managers today initiate their rela- meeting benchmarks as the primary goal irrespec- tionships with new clients by screening them for tive of whether the client is actually helped. In the work readiness and delivering an ‘orientation’ to public management literature, this is the prob- describe work expectations and penalties for non- lem of suboptimization (Guilfoyle, 2012). Simon compliance. In parallel with individualized drug Guilfoyle refers to suboptimization as analogous treatment plans, welfare-to-work case managers to synecdoche, in which a part stands in for the then develop ‘individual responsibility plans’ – or whole. Suboptimization occurs when a measure ‘contracts of mutual responsibility’ – to specify of one particular outcome of service provision the steps that each client will take in order to implies that other dimensions, usually less mea- move from welfare to work. These rites of passage sureable, if no less important, have also been met. establish a relationship in which the case man- Suboptimization is rife in human services where ager’s primary tasks are to facilitate, monitor, and the intended outcomes almost always include enforce the completion of required work activities. difficult-to-measure subjective states of being, In celebratory portrayals of the new system, case including improvements in overall well-being. managers are described as being deeply involved Suboptimization results when outcome goals are in their clients’ development, as ‘authority figures achieved in name only and the full spirit of the as well as helpmates’ (Mead, 2004: 158). goal is lost or forgotten in the process. Meeting In some states, this ethos is expressed by the performance benchmark targets can misleadingly neoliberal relabeling of caseworkers as ‘career imply that the overall goal has been met when in counselors’. The label evokes images of a well- fact only an indirect indicator implies that is the trained professional who draws on diverse case. Welfare-to-work targets might be met but all resources to advise and assist entrepreneurial job that has really happened is that we have moved seekers. In practice, however, few aspects of wel- clients from the ‘welfare poor’ to the ‘working fare case management today fit this template. It is poor’ with no real improvements in their overall rare today that welfare-to-work caseworkers have well-being. a social work degree of any kind. Many, however, Yet suboptimization’s deleterious effects go fur- have management degrees from Strayer, DeVry, ther. They can produce an instrumentalization, a Capella, or other vocationally oriented schools that veritable means-ends inversion, where the perfor- line the strip malls across the country. It is common mance measurement benchmark or target becomes in many states that a sizeable number of case man- the end in itself. Under these conditions, human agers are former recipients who qualified for their service professionals are encouraged to forget jobs by virtue of their experience with the system. about the overall goals of their program and focus Under the business model of service provision, the exclusively on meeting the designated bench- relationship between client and case manager is marks. Once this happens, it is likely that all work rooted in an employment metaphor: the client has with clients is converted into activities associated signed a ‘contract’ to do a job and should approach with meeting the target irrespective of whether the the program as if it were a job. broader goal is achieved. Once an agency puts in The case manager’s job is now to enforce that place a performance measurement system it risks contract, often using the threat of sanctions to gain creating an instrumentalization that changes the compliance. As one major study reported, case very work that human service workers do. With all

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the debate about ‘high-stakes testing’ under neo- its hegemonic status, we should begin the process liberal education reform, the threat of performance of working through it in radically incremental measurement to change how work is done is most ways: right now, before neoliberalism imposes popularly discussed in the mainstream media as any more hardship than it already has done. the ‘teach to the test’ effect, where school teach- ers teach students only what they need to know to improve their test scores even if this means their Notes overall learning is not really enhanced (because critical thinking skills and other important forms 1 On how contemporary feminism may be unre- of learning are neglected). flectively realizing the goals of neoliberalism that The ‘business model’ may be replacing ‘social overvalorize individual choice via market partici- work’ as the way to deliver neoliberal, marketized pation, see Fraser (2009). welfare-to-work programming but the results are 2 Now even retirees are being reconstructed in proving to be devastating for the poor, who are the neoliberal imaginary as protoworkers who increasingly blamed for their welfare dependency must produce or find other ways to reduce their as a treatable condition. The result is that more of reliance on state-funded . See Coole the ‘welfare poor’ are being made into the ‘work- (2012). ing poor’, while their poverty persists but employ- 3 In many ways, neoliberal governmentality ends ers increasingly profit (Edin and Shaefer, 2015: up undermining the individualization that comes 157–8; Shaefer and Edin, 2012). when human services work to empower clients to practice self-determination. See Yeatman, Dow- sett and Gursansky (2009).

Getting beyond neoliberal welfare policy: the road to radical incrementalism Acknowledgements

The disciplinary approach to the poor is spreading Thanks are extended to Adam Dahl, Mitchell from the US to other countries (Brodkin and Dean, Tom Grimwood, Patricia Jefferson, John Marston, 2013). The results elsewhere are proving Maher, Melania Papa-Mabe, Matt Sparke, Amanda no better than in the US. As more and more evi- Tillotson, and Vanessa Wells for helpful com- dence mounts about the horrors of neoliberal ments on an earlier draft. welfare policies, interest grows in moving beyond neoliberalism’s insistence that the welfare state buttress markets rather than counter them. Yet, just as neoliberals could not simply wish away the welfare state, the same is true for the opponents of References neoliberalism. The road beyond neoliberalism is most likely one that goes through it, not around it. Alcoholics Anonymous, 1953, Twelve Steps and That means engaging it, not ignoring it, and in the Twelve Traditions (New York: Alcoholics process trying to bend it to better purposes and Anonymous). more humane ends. I call this sort of realistic Bell, S.H. and Orr, L.L., 2002, ‘Screening (and approach ‘radical incrementalism’, where small Creaming?) Applicants to Job Training Programs: incremental steps within the existing regime are The AFDC Homemaker–Home Health Aide strategically taken that lay down a path for eventu- Demonstrations’, , 9(2): ally getting beyond it (Schram, 2015: 173–98). 279–301. For instance, welfare policies that enhance Bonica, A., McCarty, N., Poole, K.T. and Rosenthal, people’s ability to participate in markets effec- H., 2013, ‘Why Hasn’t Slowed Rising tively so as to live decently need to be supported, Inequality?’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, even as we insist that social protections be main- 27(3): 103–24. tained and even improved so that no one has to Bourdieu, P., 1994, ‘Rethinking the State: On the endure poverty whether they are participating Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field’, in labor markets or not. We can do this; we can Sociological Theory, 12(1): 1–19. do two things at once. We can walk and chew Brintnall, M., 2008, ‘Preparing the for gum at the same time. We can work both sides Working in the Multiethnic Democracies: An of the street. We can work through neoliberal- Assessment and Ideas for Action’, Journal of Public ism so as to get past it. Rather than bemoaning Affairs Education, 14(1): 39–50.

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