Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T17:04:25.119Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Power, Agency, Relationality and Welfare Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2015

RACHAEL DOBSON
RACHAEL DOBSON*
Affiliation:
Department of Criminology and Sociology, Kingston University, London, UK email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article argues that constructions of social phenomena in social policy and welfare scholarship think about the subjects and objects of welfare practice in essentialising ways, with negativistic effects for practitioners working in ‘regulatory’ contexts such as housing and homelessness practice. It builds into debates about power, agency, social policy and welfare by bringing psychosocial and feminist theorisations of relationality to practice research. It claims that relational approaches provide a starting point for the analysis of empirical practice data, by working through the relationship between the individual and the social via an ontological unpicking and revisioning of practitioners' social worlds.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , October 2015 , pp. 687 - 705
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barnes, M. and Prior, D. (eds.) (2009), Subversive Citizens: Power, Agency and Resistance in Public Services, Bristol: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Barrett, S. M. (2004), ‘Implementation studies: time for a revival? Personal reflections on 20 years of implementation studies’, Public Administration, 82: 249–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrett, S. and Fudge, C. (1981), Policy and Action: Essays on the Implementation of Public Policy, London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Burney, E. (2005), Making People Behave: Anti-Social Behaviour, Politics and Policy, Devon: Willan Publishing.Google Scholar
Butler, J. (1988), ‘Performative acts and gender constitution: an essay in phenomenology and feminist theory’, Theatre Journal, 40: 4, 519–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlen, P. (1994), ‘The governance of homelessness: legality, lore and lexicon in the agency-maintenance of youth homelessness’, Critical Social Policy, 41: 2, 18–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clapham, D., Franklin, B. and Saugeres, L. (2000), ‘Housing management: the social construction of an occupational role’, Housing Theory and Society, 17: 2, 68–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, D. (1994), ‘Productive, relational and everywhere? Power and resistance within Foucauldian feminism’, Sociology, 28: 435–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cramer, H. (2005), ‘Informal and gendered practices in a homeless persons unit’, Housing Studies, 20: 5, 737–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Damer, S. (2000), ‘“Engineers of the human machine”: the social practice of council housing management in Glasgow, 1895–1939’, Urban Studies, 37: 11, 2007–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dillane, J., Bannister, J. and Scott, S. (2001), Evaluation of the Dundee Families Project, Project Report, Scottish Executive, Edinburgh, UK.Google Scholar
Dobson, R. (2009), ‘“Insiderness”, “involvement” and emotions: impacts for methods, “knowledge” and social research’, People, Policy and Place, 3: 3, 183–95.Google Scholar
Dobson, R. (2011), ‘Conditionality and homelessness services: “practice realities” in a drop-in centre’, Social Policy and Society, 10: 4, 547–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Durose, C. (2007), ‘Beyond “street level bureaucrats”: re-interpreting the role of front line public sector workers’, Critical Policy Studies, 1: 2, 217–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Durose, C. (2011), ‘Revisiting Lipsky: front-line work in UK local governance’, Political Studies, 59: 4, 978–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, K. (2011), ‘“Street-level bureaucracy” revisited: the changing face of frontline discretion in adult social care in England’, Social Policy and Administration, 45: 3, 221–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emirbayer, M. (1997), ‘“Manifesto for relational sociology”’, American Journal of Sociology, 103: 281–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, T. (2011), ‘Professionals, managers and discretion: critiquing street-level bureaucracy’, British Journal of Social Work, 41: 2, 368–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flint, J. (ed.) (2006), Housing, Urban Governance and Anti-Social Behaviour, Bristol: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Flint, J. and Batty, E. (2012), ‘Conceptualising the contexts, mechanisms and outcomes of intensive family intervention projects’, Social Policy and Society, 11: 3, 345–58.Google Scholar
Ford, J. (1975), ‘The role of the building society manager in the urban stratification system: autonomy versus constraint’, Urban Studies, 12: 295–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, M. (1988), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, London: Harvester Press.Google Scholar
Garrett, M. P. (2007a), ‘“Sinbin” solutions: the “pioneer” projects for “problem families” and the forgetfulness of social policy research’, Critical Social Policy, 27: 2, 203–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garrett, M. P. (2007b), ‘“Sinbin” research and the “lives of others”: a rejoinder in an emerging and necessary debate’, Critical Social Policy, 27: 2, 560–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoggett, P. (2001), ‘Agency, rationality and social policy’, Journal of Social Policy, 30: 37–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoggett, P. (2008), ‘Relational thinking and welfare practice’, in Clarke, S., Hoggett, P., and Hahn, H. (eds.), Object Relations and Social Relations, London: Karnac, pp. 65–85.Google Scholar
Hoggett, P., Mayo, M. and Miller, C. (2008), The Dilemmas of Development Work: Ethical Challenges in Fegeneration, Bristol: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Hollway, W. (2008), ‘The importance of relational thinking in the practice of psycho-social research: ontology, epistemology, methodology and ethics’, in Clarke, S., Hoggett, P., and Hahn, H. (eds.), Object Relations and Social Relations, London: Karnac, pp. 137–62.Google Scholar
Hunter, S. (2003), ‘A critical analysis of approaches to the concept of social identity in social policy’, Critical Social Policy, 23: 3, 322–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunter, S. (2015), Impossible Governance? London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jeffers, S. and Hoggett, P. (1995), ‘Like counting deckchairs on the Titanic - a study of institutional racism and housing allocations in Haringey and Lambeth’, Housing Studies, 10: 3, 325–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnsen, S. and Fitzpatrick, S. (2010), ‘Revanchist sanitisation or coercive care? The use of enforcement to combat begging, street drinking and rough sleeping in England’, Urban Studies, 47: 8, 1703–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, B. (2005), Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor Network Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lea, T. (2008), Bureaucrats and Bleeding Hearts: Indigenous Health in Northern Australia, Sydney: UNSW Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, G. (2000), ‘Race’, Gender, Social Welfare: Encounters in a Postcolonial Society, Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Liddiard, M. and Hutson, S. (1991), ‘Homeless young people and runaways - agency definitions and processes’, Journal of Social Policy, 20: 365–88.Google Scholar
Lidstone, P. (1994), ‘Rationing housing to the homeless applicant’, Housing Studies, 9: 4, 459–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipsky, M. (2010), Street-Level Bureaucracy, Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, first published 1980.Google Scholar
Mol, A. (2002), The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice, London: Duke.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nixon, J. (2007), ‘Deconstructing “problem” researchers and “problem” families: a rejoinder to Garrett’, Critical Social Policy, 27: 4, 546–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parr, S. (2009), ‘The role of social housing in the “care” and “control” of tenants with mental health problems’, Social Policy and Society, 9: 1, 111–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parr, S. and Nixon, J. (2009), ‘Family Intervention Projects: sites of subversion and resilience’, in Barnes, M. and Prior, D. (eds.), Subversive Citizens Power, Agency and Resistance in Public Services, Bristol: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Prior, D. (2009), ‘Policy, power and the potential for counter-agency’, in Barnes, M. and Prior, D. (eds.), Subversive Citizens: Power, Agency and Resistance in Public Services, Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 17–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prior, D., Farrow, K. and Paris, A. (2006), ‘Beyond ASBOs? Evaluating the outcomes of anti-social behaviour initiatives - early findings from a case study in one English city’, Local Government Studies, 32: 1, 3–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prior, D. and Barnes, M. (2011), ‘Subverting social policy on the front line: agencies of resistance in the delivery of services’, Social Policy and Administration, 45: 3, 264–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rhodes, R. (1981), Control and Power in Central-Local Government Relationships, London: Dartmouth Publishing.Google Scholar
Rose, N. (2000), ‘Government and control’, The British Journal of Criminology, 40: 2, 321–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roseneil, S. (2006), ‘The ambivalence of Angel's “arrangement”: a psychosocial lens on the contemporary condition of personal life’, The Sociological Review, 54: 847–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roseneil, S. (2013), ‘Beyond “the relationship between the individual and society”: broadening and deepening relational thinking in group analysis’, Group Analysis, 46: 2, 196–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scanlon, C. and Adlam, J. (2008), ‘Refusal, social exclusion and the cycle of rejection: a cynical analysis?’, Critical Social Policy, 28: 4, 529–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinfield, A. (1978), ‘Analyses in the social division of welfare’, Journal of Social Policy, 7: 2, 129–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Squires, P. (ed.) (2008), ASBO Nation: The Criminalisation of Nuisance, Bristol: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, D. (ed.) (1996), Critical Social Policy: A Reader, London: Sage.Google Scholar
Taylor, D. (1998), ‘Social identity and social policy: engagements with postmodern theory’, Journal of Social Policy, 27: 3, 329–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Titmuss, R. (1958), Essays on ‘The Welfare State’, London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Tyler, I. (2013), Revolting Subjects: Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain, London: Zed Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ware, V. (1992), Beyond the Pale, London: Verso.Google Scholar
Whiteford, M. (2013), ‘New Labour, street homelessness and social exclusion: a defaulted promissory note?’, Housing Studies, 28: 1, 10–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whiteford, M. (2010), ‘Hot tea, dry toast and the responsibilisation of homeless people’, Social Policy and Society', 9: 2, 193–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, F. (1989), Critical Social Policy: An Introduction, Bristol: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Williams, F. (2000), Four Methodologies for Researching Moral Agency, Workshop Paper 16, Centre for Research into Care and Values, University of Leeds.Google Scholar
Wright, S. (2012), ‘Welfare-to-work, agency and personal responsibility’, Journal of Social Policy, 41: 2, 309–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar