Understanding How the Discourses of Welfare Impact the Subjectivities of OW Participants

University of Windsor Scholarship at UWindsor Electronic Theses and Dissertations Theses, Dissertations, and Major Papers 2010 Understanding How the Discourses of Welfare Impact the Subjectivities of OW Participants Bratton Thomas University of Windsor Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd Recommended Citation Thomas, Bratton, "Understanding How the Discourses of Welfare Impact the Subjectivities of OW Participants" (2010). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 501. https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd/501 This online database contains the full-text of PhD dissertations and Masters’ theses of University of Windsor students from 1954 forward. These documents are made available for personal study and research purposes only, in accordance with the Canadian Copyright Act and the Creative Commons license—CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivative Works). Under this license, works must always be attributed to the copyright holder (original author), cannot be used for any commercial purposes, and may not be altered. Any other use would require the permission of the copyright holder. Students may inquire about withdrawing their dissertation and/or thesis from this database. For additional inquiries, please contact the repository administrator via email ([email protected]) or by telephone at 519-253-3000ext. 3208. Understanding How the Discourses of Welfare Impact the Subjectivities of OW Participants By Michael Bratton A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies through Sociology in partial fulfillment the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Windsor Windsor, Ontario, Canada 2010 © 2010 Mike Bratton iii Author’s Declaration of Originality I hereby certify that I am the sole author of this thesis and that no part of this thesis has been published or submitted for publication. I certify that, to the best of my knowledge, my thesis does not infringe upon anyone‟s copyright nor violate any proprietary rights and that any idea, techniques, quotations, or any other material from the work of other people included in my thesis, published or otherwise, are fully acknowledged in accordance with the standard referencing practices. Furthermore, to the extent that I have included copyrighted material that surpasses the bounds of fair dealing within the meaning of the Copyright Act, I certify that I have obtained a written permission from the copyright owner(s) to include such material(s) in my thesis and have included copies of such copyright clearances to my appendix. I declare that this is a true copy of my thesis, including any final revisions, as approved by my thesis committee and the Graduate Studies office, and that this thesis has not been submitted for a higher degree to any other University or Institution. iv Abstract In 1995 the Progressive Conservative (PC) party of Ontario carried out a series of welfare policy changes impacting the operating principles of social assistance. The PC campaign pledged to cut social assistance benefit levels, implement mandatory workfare, and crack down on welfare fraud. Using a qualitative methodology, this dissertation asks, “How does Ontario Works, the accompanying discourse and cultural logic of neoliberal welfare reform, impact the subjectivities of OW participants?” A governmentality framework informs this research by placing “focus on how we are governed and by what practices” (Cruikshank, 1999: 120). The investigation follows a theoretical tradition “direct[ing] us to attend to the practices of government that form the basis on which problematizations are made and what happens when we govern and are governed?” (Dean, 1999: 28). From an analysis of 24 semi-structured interviews with OW participants in Oxford County, I argue that the “regimes of practice” (Foucault, 1991: 73-86) associated with Ontario Works and the public “words of welfare” (Schram, 1995) promoted by the “common sense revolution” operate on a “discursive field” (Foucault, 2006 [1969]: 30) facilitating a form of “prejudice” (Allport, 1954) called classism. By examining the “workings, effects, and the „how?‟ of power” (Foucault, 2003: 274) I show that classism survives in the dominant public discourses of welfare reform by way of the “cultural categories that undergird the social order” (Schram, 2000: 1): namely, that of “the lazy welfare recipient” and “the exploited taxpayer.” Consistent with Mullaly, I suggest that “Culture is not only received by people, it is produced and reproduced by the same people in everyday life” (Mullaly, 2002: 72). Paraphrasing Foucault‟s seminal insights on v power, I will demonstrate that classism, via the mainstream discourses of personal responsibility and excessive taxation, “passes through the individuals it has constituted” (Foucault, 2003: 30). vi Dedication For Mom, who has spent her entire life “deferring gratification” so that my sister and I could have a better life than she ever had. vii Acknowledgements A prominent cultural myth that I have questioned throughout my academic, professional, and personal life is the common belief that people who excel and accomplish a great deal do so solely by virtue of how hard they work and how smart they are. I certainly don‟t want to trivialize the value of hard work or intelligence, for both of these qualities are critical ingredients for promoting progressive social change, but I would like to point out what is too often ignored: people who excel and accomplish a great deal are usually surrounded by supports and resources that play a role – often a very large role -- in facilitating those accomplishments. I have many people to thank because although only one name of authorship goes on a PhD dissertation, the combined efforts of many people are required to make earning a doctorate possible. First and foremost, my Mother, who was deprived of an opportunity for formal education beyond public school, told my sister and myself many times during our formative years that “there is nothing like a good education.” It is unlikely that a formally educated person could have delivered that message to us more powerfully and it would have been impossible for anyone to sell the value of formal schooling more consistently. Secondly, my Father, who left school after grade 6 to enter the working world, never once abandoned my sister or myself after he and my Mother divorced during our childhood. Given the subject matter of this dissertation, that statement needs to be contextualized in that access to full time, manufacturing employment, that paid a living wage made keeping in regular contact with, and providing for us, much easier. Had my Father disappeared from our lives or neglected his paternal duties, I highly doubt that this viii dissertation would ever have had a chance to get started – let alone completed. On several occasions throughout my post-secondary education, when costs for students were going up and funding was going down, my Father and Step-Mother did what they could to lessen the number of hours I had to work (while in school) to fund my educational expenses. Thirdly, my sister has been a constant source of support to me throughout my life in virtually every way imaginable. On countless occasions and in countless ways, my sister has gone way over and above the normal responsibilities of sibling-hood. There is no chance whatsoever that I could have completed this work without her. To my thesis supervisor, Dr. Barry Adam, I owe a number of thanks. First, I was consistently provided with written feedback turn-a-round times that were usually three times faster than what I was asking for. Second, Barry showed tremendous patience waiting for me to recognize, and apply, the merits of one of the theoretical paradigms that would eventually come to guide this research. Had Barry been less patient, this monograph would not exist. Thirdly, imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery and Barry is cited countless times throughout this manuscript. My term “The Survival of Classism” is paraphrasing the title of the book that Barry published from his dissertation. The number of times Barry is referenced in my work is a direct reflection of what I think of his scholarship. To my thesis committee . Dr. Arnold‟s support during a comprehensive exam in social inequality turned me from someone who was a “quantiphobe” (having a fear of statistics) to someone who could have a workable understanding of structural equation modeling and path analysis. In editing the prose of earlier drafts of this work, Dr. Arnold helped the manuscript flow more smoothly, assisted me in sidestepping a number of ix debates that had me drifting away from the central argument, and offered sound advice and support regarding the graphic displays of demographic and caseload data. In addition, Dr. Arnold referred me to The Tyranny of Words (Chase, 1938) and An American Dilemma (Mydral, 1944) and these insightful sources made my analysis stronger. Dr. Arnold also recommended a modifying the title of this manuscript so that it became more concise and more descriptive. Dr. Cradock provided me copies of comprehensive exams he wrote during his PhD studies and this played a role in helping me see what I initially could not see with respect to the relevance of governmentality. In editing this manuscript, Dr. Cradock also referred me to several sources (most notably, Bowker and Star‟s Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences and the Ontario Hansard Debates) that brought the analysis to a higher level, and made the central argument more compelling. My outside reader, Dr. Anne Forrest, was the first to subtly and politely suggest to me at the proposal stage of my research that the focus of the study would have to be narrowed. This was valuable and necessary direction. Dr. Forrest also reminded me to not lose sight of the practical implications grounded in recent theorizing on intersectionality and pointed out that the application in the value added chapters needed to have a stronger fit with the theorizing in the lead in chapters.

Load more