DISSENTING SOCIAL WORK

This book, from one of international social work’s leading radical educators,
provides a richly compelling argument for the profession to become more criti-
cal and dissenting.
Addressing the troubled times in which we fnd ourselves, Garrett’s book
examines a broad range of theoretical frameworks and draws on diverse writers,
such as Marx, Foucault, Brown, Zuboff, Rancière, Wacquant, Arendt, Levinas,
Fanon and Gramsci. The author’s panoramic vision encompasses Ireland, the
United Kingdom, the United States, Algeria, Israel/Palestine and China.
Timely, lively and accessible, this book speaks directly to some of the main
preoccupations of our era. Readers will be encouraged to relate developments
in social work to key themes circulating around migration, the threat of neo-
fascism, surveillance culture, colonialism, the Black Lives Matter movement and
the COVID-19 pandemic. Imbued with a sense of hope for a brighter future,
this book encourages a new generation of social work students to recognise and
examine the importance of critical theory for understanding the structural forces
shaping their lives and the lives of those with whom they work and provide
services.
This book is vital, indispensable and essential reading for social work students
and other readers, throughout the world, seeking to make the connection
between social work, social theory and sociology.

Paul Michael Garrett works as a professor within the School of Political Science
and Sociology at NUI Galway in the Republic of Ireland. A member of the Irish
Royal Academy, he is the author of several books and his articles have appeared in
journals across a range of disciplines.
DISSENTING
SOCIAL WORK
Critical Theory, Resistance
and Pandemic

Paul Michael Garrett

First published 2021
by Routledge
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© 2021 Paul Michael Garrett
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Names: Garrett, Paul Michael, 1958- author.
Title: Dissenting social work: critical theory, resistance and pandemic /
Paul Michael Garrett.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifers: LCCN 2020041435 (print) | LCCN 2020041436 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367903701 (pbk) | ISBN 9780367903695 (hbk) |
ISBN 9781003024019 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Social service. | Social movements. |
COVID-19 (Disease)–Social aspects.
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CONTENTS

List of tables ix
Preface and acknowledgements x

1 Introduction 1
The postal worker always rings twice 1
What is dissenting social work? 4
Examining the conjuncture 10
‘Crashing through the limits’: Neoliberal capitalism 12
The ‘burning planet’: Global warming 17
Migration: The regulation of ‘fows’ 20
The populist Right: The threat of neo-fascism 24
The evolution of ‘Covidia’ 26
Chapter map 28
Note 32

2 Questioning the world of ‘appearances’: Karl Marx 33

Introduction 33
Marxism: The ‘spectre’ haunting the social work classroom 34
Marxism as a resource for DSW 36
Extending the Marxist analysis: ‘Productive’ work,
‘unproductive’ work, social reproduction, ‘ideological groups’ 40
The contemporary ‘world of work’: Deteriorating conditions
of work, precarious work, no work 45
Conclusion 48
vi Contents

3 Neoliberalism, human capital and biopolitics: Michel

Foucault and Wendy Brown 51
Introduction 51
A new ‘highway code’ for capitalism: German ordoliberals
remaking the state 52
Anarcho-capitalism: American neoliberalism and human capital 56
Expanding the analysis of human capital theory: Wendy Brown 58
Theory into practice? 61
Sifting the population: Neoliberal-infected biopower and
pandemic reasoning 64
Conclusion 68
Note 69

4 Surveillance capitalism: Shoshana Zuboff 70

Introduction 70
Explaining ‘surveillance capitalism’ 74
Social work, welfare and crime 84
Surveillance capitalism and COVID-19 93
Conclusion 97
Notes 99

5 Equality NOW: Jacques Rancière 100

Introduction 100
Breaking with Althusser and the emerging key intellectual
themes 102
Proletarian Nights: Contradicting elite expectations 104
Shoemakers and philosophers: Rejecting hierarchical relations 106
The ‘police order’: A place for everything and everything in
its place 108
Mainstream politics (the art of suppressing the political) and
Rancièrian ‘politics’ 110
Really Jacques?: Criticising Rancière 113
Rancière and dissenting social work 117
Conclusion 120
Note 122

6 Critical scholarship and neoliberal penality: Loïc Wacquant 123

Introduction 123
Critical themes 124
Criticising Wacquant 133
Wacquant and dissenting social work 137
Conclusion 141
 Contents vii

7 Dissenting with the arch-contrarian: Hannah Arendt 143

Introduction 143
Seven dimensions of dissent 145
The ‘private’, the ‘public’ and the ‘social’ 148
A conceptual architecture unaligned with dissenting social work 151
Eliding the cause of capitalist ‘crises’ and racialising a fear of
the ‘mob’ 153
Conclusion 156
Notes 157

8 Remembering that African, Asian and Palestinian lives

matter: Emmanuel Levinas 158
Introduction 158
Levinas and his introduction to a social work audience 159
Signature themes: ‘Other’, ‘face’, ‘third’ 161
Levinas and the state: Politics, charity and welfare 163
Dancing beyond Europe: Eurocentrism 166
The ‘noble adventure’: Ethnic nationalism 169
Conclusion 178
Notes 179

9 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’: Frantz Fanon 180

Introduction 180
‘Walled in’ by reductive and racist categorisation: Black Skin,
White Masks 182
Countering colonialism and creating a revolutionary
culture: Studies in a Dying Colonialism 186
Defending armed struggle and castigating the duplicity of
the post-colonial bourgeoisie: The Wretched of the Earth 189
Dismantling obstacles to democracy in both the hospital and
the wider society: Alienation and Freedom 193
Fanon and dissenting social work 198
Conclusion 203
Notes 204

10 Social work’s Chinese future?: Antonio Gramsci 205

Introduction 205
‘Passive revolution’: the restoration of capitalism in the PRC 209
A new hegemonic project: Assembling the ‘harmonious society’ 214
Eliminating dissent and (re)creating social work in a
‘harmonious society’ 217
viii Contents

Conclusion 222
Note 222

11 Conclusion 223
Why the footballer must be permitted to kick the football 223
This is the ‘age of dissent’ 224
Notes on the future(s) of dissenting social work 226
Ending at the new beginning … 228

References 231
Index 264
TABLES

2.1 Marx’s Tripartite Critique of Capitalism 37

4.1 Keywords and Processes Associated with the
Operationalisation of ‘Surveillance Capitalism’ 72
6.1 Loïc Wacquant’s Model of the State 128
7.1 Hannah Arendt’s Description of the ‘Public’, the ‘Private’
and the ‘Social’ 148
10.1 Situating Social Work in the PRC 206
PREFACE AND
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Over the weekend of 28 February–1 March 2020, the London Review of Books,
along with Birbeck Institute of Humanities, held an event intent on preserving
a ‘space for dissent in intellectual life’. The promotional literature for the event
maintained that

Over the past few years, political events – Brexit, the Trump presidency,
austerity, the rise of neo-fascism and racism across the world, continuing
violence against women, climate change, the ongoing exploitation of the
global South and now the result of the recent British election – have cast
a dark shadow over the world, making it all the more urgent to preserve a
space for dissent in intellectual life.

This forum was titled ‘Dissent in Dark Times: A Festival of Critical Thought’.
Nobody realised, however, just how ‘dark’ the times would become. On
31 December 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) was informed of a
cluster of cases of pneumonia without known cause detected in, the construction
capital of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Wuhan City. On 7 January
2020, the Chinese authorities identifed as a previously unknown type of coro-
navirus, subsequently named SARS-CoV-2 and the linked illness was named
COVID-19.
In the words of W. B. Yeats, then all changed, changed utterly. On 11 March
2020, as infection rates and the death toll continued to rise, the WHO Director-
General declared the outbreak a ‘pandemic’. The following day, the university
where I work closed and, fairly swiftly, Ireland and much of the world began to
go into ‘lockdown’. Importantly, this is not to forget those workers, such as one
of my MA thesis students, Nisarg Nadwadia, who continued to provide indis-
pensable, ‘essential’ services working in a COVID-19 isolation unit for homeless
 Preface and acknowledgements xi

people in Dublin. My own circumstances remained relatively privileged: ‘unes-

sential’ and largely confned to ‘Zoomland’, I did not lose my job and was still
paid my usual salary. Moreover, for a short period, my groceries were delivered
to the front door by valiant workers in vans and brave workers continued to
come and remove my rubbish.
In terms of this book, particular people to thank, for various reasons, include:
Claire Jarvis and Catherine Jones at Routledge; Rennie Alphonsa at Deanta;
Niamh Reilly and others within the School of Political Science and Sociology
at NUI Galway, especially Declan Coogan and Eleanor Kelly from the MA in
Social Work programme. Washington Marovatsanga opened my eyes to certain
things I was unable to properly see. Laurence Marley and other friends in my
trade union, Siptu, were a constant, supportive and dissenting presence. This is
also true of the members of the Critical Social Policy Editorial Collective. Thank
you also to Siniša Malešević, Mary Daly, Dan Carey, Enrico Dal Lago, Catherine
Morris, Temmuz Süreyya Gürbüz, Roger Smith, Griet Roets, Rachel Fyson and
Christine Morley. Not to forget, in Norway, Edgar Marthinsen, Anne Juberg
and Nina Skjefstad. From the Astrakan cafe, the Anouar Barhem Trio furnished
the book’s soundtrack as did, from closer to home, Paddy McDonagh. Anna
Valeria Ballarotti, my ‘lockdown’ cellmate and life-partner provided insights in
relation to the manuscript and helpfully suggested ways to hack into my occa-
sionally wayward prose. However, in what follows, I am entirely responsible for
any wrong moves, foolishness or errors.
I recognise, of course, that we are living during particularly fuid times which
are laden with uncertainties. In responding to swiftly moving events, Dissenting
Social Work may occasionally appear as urgent and restless. However, this perhaps
captures something of the tonality of the moment, and I hope that this may be
one of the book’s positive attributes and not one of its defciencies.
Paul Michael Garrett, Modena, Italy, September 2020
1
INTRODUCTION

The postal worker always rings twice

Shortly before the frst ‘lockdown’ in March 2020, the apartment doorbell rang
for a second time and I lumbered out of bed and hesitantly made my way down
the staircase to the front door. On the mat was a letter from the quango respon-
sible for regulating the health and social care professions and social work in the
Republic of Ireland. My communication from the organisation included a brief
cover letter and a pamphlet titled ‘Social Workers Registration Board Code of
Professional Conduct and Ethics’ (CORU, 2019). What I found striking about
the glossy thirty-six-page document was the fact that there was no mention of
the phrase ‘human rights’ in the revised Code. This appears rather extraordinary
given the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) defnition of social
work situates the aspiration to safeguard and promote human rights as central.
The IFSW (2014) maintains:

Social work is a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that

promotes social change and development, social cohesion, and the empow-
erment and liberation of people. Principles of social justice, human rights,
collective responsibility and respect for diversities are central to social
work. Underpinned by theories of social work, social sciences, humanities
and indigenous knowledges, social work engages people and structures to
address life challenges and enhance wellbeing.
The above defnition may be amplifed at national and/or regional levels.

The British Association of Social Workers (BASW, 2016) ‘Code of Ethics

for Social Work: Statement of Principles’ refers to the phrase ‘human rights’ on
sixteen occasions in a document of sixteen pages).
2 Introduction

Other facets of the Irish Code are similarly troubling. For example, the
document individualises questions relating to the psychological distress and the
potential ‘burnout’ of social workers in that the onus is placed on them to ensure
that they take responsibility for ‘self-care’ so as to ensure that health issues do not
have a deleterious impact on service provision (CORU, 2019, p. 13). The role of
the employer and its ‘duty of care’ to staff are absent.
Specifcally, in terms of the erasure of human rights, it is clearly possible
to undertake a philosophical and political critique of the concept (see Webb,
2009); however, my main interest here is CORU’s motivation in revising the
‘Professional Code’. What is the agenda? Perhaps, ideas related to human rights
risk becoming too ‘political’ given the social misery faced by many users of
services. Prior to the pandemic, according to the mainstream pundits, Ireland’s
economy was ‘booming’ and property prices were skyrocketing. However, the
number of homeless people was at record levels (Hearne, 2020). What is more,
almost four thousand people, seeking or having already been granted refugee
status, remained partitioned off from society and enclaved in stultifying ‘direct
provision’ hostel accommodation (Ombudsman for Children, 2020; see also
Garrett, 2015a). Arguably, the revised Code is a fairly blatant attempt to prevent
social workers relying on – what we might term – a ‘human rights defence’ if
they choose to act in defance of any government and/or employer demands that
run counter to such rights. More fundamentally, what is implied is that registered
social workers must be constituted with ‘appropriate’ ideological views and per-
ceptions. If not, they risk becoming not ‘ft for purpose’.
The new Code can be interpreted as a form of ‘kettling’ instituted by CORU.
This is a practice which is, of course, normally used by police forces to corral
and contain protesters within a small area. In this sense, in redrafting the Code,
CORU can be viewed as looking to ideologically confne or ring fence practi-
tioners and educators within a particular discursive space which does not encom-
pass attentiveness to ‘human rights’. Framed somewhat differently, I had been
sent, not simply a letter; CORU were also providing a consignment of ‘moral
sleeping pills’ intending to dull the mind (Bauman 1989: 26).1
Turning to the wider education context, universities, now often staffed by
a large contingent of precarious workers, have performed a key ideological
role in ensuring that young people emerge with the requisite skills, disposi-
tions and attitudes to slot into their allotted roles (Moten and Harney, 2004;
see also Chapter 5). More pervasively, over the past decades, the aim of ensur-
ing that students are adequate for capitalist labour markets has been apparent in
a shift in focus from critical inquiry to ‘employability’ and ‘entrepreneurship’
(Holborow, 2015). Unsurprisingly in this enveloping context, there are sugges-
tions that, in Scotland, younger social work students struggle to think critically
and to unpack some of the assumptions integral to neoliberal capitalist hegemony
(Fenton, 2018). This is understandable, of course, if one recognises that even
school-age children are marinated in an individualistic and competitive ethos
(Ryan, 2018). Many, however, tenaciously resist this framing as was refected in
 Introduction 3

the protests of school pupils against the attack on Iraq in 2003. More recently,
in spring 2017, resisting the social logics of U.S. neoliberalism and the toxic cul-
ture that it spawns, school pupils in New York and other cities exited the school
gates in demonstrations demanding gun control. During this same period, and
only a year after the Ferguson Uprising ensuing following the police killing of
Michael Brown, the ‘Black Lives Matter at Schools’ network was set up. Both of
these developments provided part of the foundation for the eruption of outraged
activism in the summer of 2020 after the killing of George Floyd. In the United
Kingdom, prior to the demonstrations following the Minneapolis murder, there
occurred a dramatic rise in the number of environmentalist protests – both those
staged by Extinction Rebellion (XR) and those, supporting the same aims, con-
ducted by school children (Bailey, 2020; Murray and Mohdin, 2020).
Attempts to quell diverse forms of, broadly conceived, dissent are manifest
across a range of felds. For example, in January 2020, it was reported that ‘anti-
terror police’, in one U.K. region, were targeting school climate strikers and XR
supporters demanding that they should be reported to the Prevent programme
which aims to identify and re-orientate those who have undergone, or are vul-
nerable to, processes of ‘radicalisation’ (Kundnani, 2012). According to a police
document, obtained by The Guardian, XR was a threat because of – what was
termed – ‘its anti-establishment philosophy’ aspired to create ‘system change’
via activism (Dodd and Grierson, 2020). Days later, it was reported that schools
were increasingly resorting to ‘degrading’ measures in order to manage pupils
deemed too ‘disruptive’ to be accommodated in normal classroom environments
(Weale, 2020: 1). The ‘isolation booths’ used for such purposes were not unlikely
to be converted toilet blocks. Such processes are often deeply racialised and the
permanent exclusion rate for Gypsy, Roma, Irish Traveller and Black Caribbean
children was at least double that for all students in England during the 2018–2019
academic year (Tidman, 2020). In the United States, many schools are ‘common
sites for police surveillance’, arrest and detention with an identifable ‘school-to-
prison pipeline’ functioning as ‘pathway in the expanding carceral state that is
especially perilous’ for Black children (Roberts, 2019: 1704).
Turning to social work again, sustained efforts aim to ensure that educators
and practitioners are ideologically ‘safe’ and cleansed of any dissenting or politi-
cally disruptive tendencies (Cunningham and Cunningham, 2008: 179). In the
United Kingdom, for example, this is illustrated by the setting up of ‘Frontline’
as a ‘fast-track’ route into social work for a potential ‘offcer class’ who might
generate and embed a culture of political compliance within a feld which, at
times, might seem rather rebellious (MacAlister, 2012; see also Murphy, 2016).
In England and Wales, Jane Tunstill (2019: 58) highlights how the knowledge
base of social work with children and families is subject to ‘pruning, policing
and privatising’. With regard to social work in Sweden, Masoud Kamali and
Jessica H Jönsson (2019: 296) report that ‘social workers who adjust themselves
to neoliberal routines are rewarded and those protesting are punished’. Perhaps
it might be naïve to assume otherwise when the constituent elements of a feld,
4 Introduction

such as social work – along with its culture, preoccupations, principles and insti-
tutions – become incrementally re-programmed with top-down, market-driven
imperatives and ways of perceiving the world. However, the pace of and true
intent of ‘transformation’ has often been slow and insidious, rather than swift and
readily observable (Garrett, 2009). To refer to Wendy Brown’s (2015: 36) meta-
phor, change is often more ‘termitelike than lionlike … its mode of reasoning
boring in capillary fashion into the trunks and branches of workplaces, schools,
public agencies, social and political discourse, and above all, the subject’ (p. 36).
Nonetheless, in terms of the response to such developments, it will be argued in
this book that it is vital to maintain ethics and practices of dissent within, and
indeed beyond, social work.

What is dissenting social work?

Around the time that neoliberal capitalism was beginning to gain a foothold in
the United States, Shirley Cooper (1977) maintained that social work is a ‘dis-
senting profession’. Writing in Australasia, almost half-a-century later, Patricia
Fronek and Polly Chester (2016: 165) contend that social work is a ‘dissenting
profession because in order to uphold its mission, social workers are agents of
change obligated to address social injustice and breaches of human rights where
they occur’. In this book, dissenting social work (DSW) is viewed as an approach
intent on developing critical habits of self-questioning (Medina, 2013). Relatedly,
DSW interrogates dominant ways of understanding the social world within the
discipline. It might, therefore, be interpreted as a form of neo-social work adding
to those efforts bent on pushing back against moves to limit the feld of possibili-
ties for educators and practitioners. In starker terms, DSW contests the idea that
educators and practitioners ought to serve as mere handmaidens or functional
auxiliaries of capitalism and the institutional orders that it requires.
DSW, cannot be articulated along the lines of ‘blueprints’ or ‘action plans’, but
it might be provisionally perceived as operating within a space patterned by, at
least, a dozen themes, even commitments. DSW is:

•• attuned to and seeks to eradicate the harms caused to humans, other species
and the planet by capitalism
•• enriched by feminist perspectives and the theorisation of heteropatriarchy
•• combats white supremacy and racism and
•• is alert to the dangers of fascism
•• tries to decolonise social work knowledge and to learn from perspectives
derived from Africa, Asia and Latin America
•• recognises that social work has frequently been complicit in oppressive pro-
cesses and nurtures a willingness to evolve forms of social work education
and practice which challenge them
•• encourages analyses vibrating with an historical pulse and is keen to exam-
ine the evolution of economic, state and cultural processes marginalising,
stigmatising or exploiting different groups
 Introduction 5

•• future-orientated and dismissive of ideas implying there was a ‘golden age’

of benign social work existing before the arrival of neoliberal capitalism
•• appreciates the tremendous gains which technology brings, but is alert to the
threats posed by techno-authoritarianism
•• rooted in critical social theory, committed to reading beyond the ‘set list’
and keen to emphasise the need for open debate on the future(s) of social
work education and practice
•• intent on critically interrogating ‘false trails’ and voguish theorists and theo-
ries often failing to adequately address core concerns impacting on social work
•• convinced that dissent has to be a collective endeavour as opposed to an
individual activity
•• aligned with, energised, replenished and sustained by the oppositional activ-
ity generated ‘on the ground’ within trade unions, activist social move-
ments, community organisations, progressive coalitions, ‘user’ networks,
marches and campaigns

Clearly, these themes are far from exhaustive and these thematic points should
be viewed as a foundation for discussion rather than a bombastic ‘manifesto’.
Operating as interlinked coordinates, the themes merely aspire to provide a
‘thinking space’. Moreover, all of these points can, of course, be debated, refned,
supplemented and even supplanted.
The fnal theme requires additional comment because the bedrock under-
standing in this book is that ideas alone cannot remake social work or the wider
world in which it is situated. In short, the notion of DSW is not rooted in phil-
osophical idealism because it is recognised that changes in material practices,
prompted and prodded by collective action, are vital. The argument pursued
in Dissenting Social Work is that ideas – modes of thought and how we conceive
and ‘think about stuff ’ – is of the utmost importance for progressive educa-
tors and practitioners because the ‘dissolution of a given form of consciousness’
can aid in the transition from one ‘epoch’ to another (Marx (1981 [1857–58]:
540–41)). For example, it might be argued that our current ‘form of conscious-
ness’ and its associated lexicon and vocabulary is, perhaps unknowingly after four
decades, ideologically marinated in neoliberalism. As Brown (2015: 31) avows,
‘neoliberal rationality disseminates the model of the market to all domains and
activities – even where money is not at issue – and confgures human beings as
merely market actors’ (see also Chapter 3). Elsewhere, I have identifed how, for
instance, this ‘rationality’ impinges on and infects the discourse on child adop-
tion (Garrett, 2018a: Ch. 9). More broadly, critique within social work might
include challenging aspects of the dominant vocabulary which bolster and reify –
treat as things – certain ‘types’ of people or groups in society. This would involve
contesting the use and validity of terms such as ‘welfare dependency’ which can
be critically interpreted as a discursive product of specifc economic and social
relationships evolving during the neoliberal period (Garrett, 2018a).
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), one defnition of dissent
refers to a disagreement with a ‘proposal or resolution: the opposite of consent’.
6 Introduction

The word and the actions or attitudes it hints at also signal a constellation of
other words, such as resistance, subversive, dissidence and disruption (Yu and
Mandell, 2015; Kamali and Jönsson, 2019; see also Carey and Foster, 2011).
Dissent, maintains the OED, is likely to imply an alternative ‘proposal’ or ‘reso-
lution’ that is at odds with the dominant or hegemonic way of responding to an
‘issue’, ‘social problem’ or set of circumstances. Perhaps a reference to dissent also
connotes an affective disposition, a mood or a vibe that is suggestive of an indi-
vidual or a group seeking to ‘rock-the-boat’. Maybe dissent, as a number of Black
feminist writers argue, can also fnd expression in anger intent on ‘setting things
right’ and ensuring that there is social justice (Lorde, 1984; Lugones, 2003: Ch.
5). Indeed, anger was to the fore in the summer of 2020 in the countless demon-
strations opposing White supremacy. In a similar vein, Stephane Hessel, a former
French Resistance fghter during the Second World War and subsequently one
of the drafters of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, wrote of the need for
‘outrage’ in a world in which the Earth was being despoiled, human rights oblit-
erated and the gap between the super-rich and the rest of us was magnifying at
an extraordinary pace (see also Refection and Talk Box 1). The ‘challenge’ then
becomes one of trying to fgure out how ‘to transcend from personal outrage to
social infuence and the rejection of the unacceptable through moral and ethical
actions’ (Fronek and Chester, 2016: 165). Moreover, collective political action is
vital.
Perhaps somewhat controversially, I perceive DSW as counterposed to profes-
sionalism or rather what I prefer to refer to as a particular shaping of ‘profession-
alism’ within social work (Webb, 2017). Kathy Weeks (2011: 74) persuasively
argues that today, ‘the term “professional” refers more to a prescribed attitude
toward work than the status of some work’. According to Foucault, ‘profession-
alism is in itself “a disciplinary mechanism”; associating specifc practices with
particular worker identities, knowledge and rules of conduct thus legitimising
professional authority and activity’ (Powell and Khan, 2012: 137). In the United
Kingdom, for example, the discourse circulating around ‘quality’ can partly be
interpreted as a re-coding of the government’s preoccupation with the ‘atti-
tude’ of social workers (Hanley, 2019). Conceptually, I take my analytical cue
from some of the work of Bourdieu and Wacqaunt (see also Garrett, 2018b: Ch.
7). According to these French sociologists, a number of previously autonomous
or quasi-autonomous ‘felds’, such as social work, are becoming contaminated
and corroded by neoliberal imperatives. Thus, the transformation from ‘feld’ to
‘apparatus’ occurs when ‘under certain historical conditions’ all movement and
decision-making ‘go exclusively from the top down’ (Bourdieu in Bourdieu and
Wacquant, 2004: 102). In other words, increasingly denuded of the space for
democratic debate and a commitment to the more benign facets of their original
mission, apparatuses are ‘the pathological state of felds’ (Bourdieu in Bourdieu and
Wacquant, 2004: 102, emphasis added). Given this situation, Wacquant (2009a:
285) argues that it is vital for ‘agents of the state’ to continue to ‘defend the dig-
nity and integrity of their occupations and refuse to let themselves be roped into
 Introduction 7

assuming degraded versions of social and health functions that do not properly
fall to them’ (see also Chapter 6). Within this conceptual framing, therefore,
‘professionalism’ can be viewed as the managerial ideology of the social work
‘apparatus’ which amplifes ‘degraded’ versions of practitioner roles (see also
Wilding, 1981). Thus, the Irish ‘Social Workers Registration Board Code of
Professional Conduct and Ethics’ can be perceived as a product of the ‘apparatus’
as opposed to the ‘feld’. Expressed in a rather crude and banal way, the ‘profes-
sionalism’ of the social work ‘apparatus’ is one that is likely to become more
concerned about a social worker allegedly violating the offce ‘dress code’ than it
will be about, say, a homeless young man compelled to spend his nights sleeping
in a tent adjacent to the offce car park.
Dissent is, of course, fraught with conceptual diffculties and half-a-dozen
issues can be briefy mentioned. First, the purpose of dissent and its desired out-
come is of the utmost signifcance. That is to say, dissent, as theory, disposition
and oppositional practice, should not be fetishised or unequivocally supported
and valorised. For example, largely against the political and corporate main-
stream that at least rhetorically espouses the value of racial equality, White
supremacists are dissenters because they are unequivocally opposed to it. Indeed,
alert to developments in the United Kingdom, particularly in the years following
the ‘crash’ of 2007/2008, Bailey (2020) challenges the notion that protest should
simply be seen as the ‘preserve of progressive causes’. This book aims, therefore,
to champion forms of dissent adhering to the values featured in the IFSW defni-
tion; important here is the reference to social work being a part of the struggles
aspiring to bring about the ‘liberation of people’ whilst adhering to the principles
of social justice and human rights. Historically, such struggles have often been
housed within encompassing projects intent on creating communist or socialist
societies. Indeed, writing this chapter, at the outset of the COVID-19 global
pandemic, such projects are more vital than at any time in the past hundred years.
Second, and this has already been alluded to, occasionally what might appear
to be dissent might paradoxically be understood as an expression of a ‘higher’
and more substantial form of consent-giving and compliance. For example, if we
return to the dismal Irish Code (CORU, 2019), it might be argued that some
social workers’ opposition to the extinguishing of the phrase ‘human rights’
represents less a form of dissent and more a form of allegiance to the IFSW def-
nition of social work. This fdelity to the international defnition might also be
founded on the belief that the Irish Code, not voted on and agreed by practition-
ers in Ireland, is entirely bereft of even a scintilla of democratic legitimacy.
Third, dissent and social critique are always vulnerable to becoming diluted
and incorporated into the mainstream: words and concepts can be slyly abducted
and taken to places they are not supposed to be taken! In their research on
management literature from the 1960s and early 1990s, Luc Boltanski and Eve
Chiapello (2005) reveal that managerial ideology is heavily indebted to the
anti-capitalist discourse of the 1960s. Writing prior to the economic crash of
2007/2008, they identify a ‘new spirit’ of capitalism better able to attract support
8 Introduction

and more inclined to encompass the themes of justice and social well-being.
Unable to discover ‘a moral basis in the logic of the insatiable accumulation
process (which, in itself, is amoral), capitalism must borrow the legitimating
principles’ that are ‘external to it’ (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005: 487). Within
U.K. social work, this process can be seen at play in terms of how neoliberal plans
to trigger changes in social work with children and families annexed keywords,
such as ‘radical’ and ‘revolution’, to craft the case for ‘reform’ (MacAlister et al.,
2019). Occasionally, such banditry is starkly opportunistic and cynical with one
of the prime examples being Trowler and Goodman’s (2012) U.K. Conservative
Party-supported ‘reform’ programme using the banner ‘Social Work Reclaimed’
despite their aims being radically at odds with Ferguson’s (2008), anti-neoliberal
and social justice driven, Reclaiming Social Work. However, such tactics refect
Stuart Hall’s (2017 [1958]) sixty-year-old insight that in the ‘subtlest and more
complicated ways’, capitalism and its allies recognise and try to address, at least
in some form, the ‘human problems’ that in ‘substance socialism frst named’.
Ecological movements and a new green sensibility also impact on the evolu-
tion of this ‘new spirit’ in that nature is now accorded value as ‘the locus of the
authentic’ (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005: 447). At the forefront, in creating
new ‘greenwashing’ narratives, tend to be multinational corporations still mired
in the fossil fuel economy. For example, ‘BP is not the frst oil company to give
itself a lick of green paint to appear more acceptable in this era of increasing
climate concern’ (Bell, 2020). As we can see, therefore, dissent and critique are
often reformulated to try and revitalise the processes of capital accumulation and
the social order conducive to its maintenance. Demonstrations of ‘resistance’ are
prone to becoming ‘captured – with ever-growing intellectual violence – by
grids of interpretation that cancel or recode them in the categories of domi-
nant thought’ (Rancière, 2014 [2009]: xi). Relatedly, Nancy Fraser (2013: 220)
asserts that dissenting ‘second-wave feminism has unwittingly provided a key
ingredient of the new spirit of neoliberalism’.
Fourth, there is a need to think about the differential positionality and, after
Bourdieu, the ‘habitus’ and ‘feld’ location of the agent of dissent, the dissenter.
For example, within the feld of social work, not every worker will, of course,
exhibit dissent in the same way. For example, a middle-aged, White male aca-
demic in unionised, seemingly secure and pensionable employment, has, per-
haps, greater leeway to shape dissenting practice than, say, a newly qualifed
– most likely female – social worker employed by an agency on a temporary and
precarious contract. Signifcantly, Black and ethnic minority social workers are
over-represented in ‘ftness to practice’ cases adjudicated on by the Social Work
England regulatory authority (Samuel, 2020). There is also, of course, a mate-
rial base governing one’s consideration of whether or not to express and act on
dissent. In short, in some instances, there may be fear of losing one’s job or of
becoming ostracised or bullied in a particular offce or work environment. Many
students now enter their frst social work job weighed down by debts incurred
because of college tuition fees and the exorbitant rents demanded by rapacious
 Introduction 9

landlords. Whilst teaching at public universities, as far apart as Galway and New
York, I have spoken with students who are literally homeless. Clearly, debt and
related problems might tip the potential dissenter to act, but it might also materi-
ally coerce them into grudging compliance.
Fifth, as the Portuguese legal scholar Boaventura de Sousa maintains, some-
times the language of dissent may be culturally variable and those of us in the
Global North need to recognise that the dissenting vocabulary of activists in
the Global South may be different. What he dubs the ‘Eurocentric critical tra-
dition’ needs to become better attuned to the fact that oppositional practices
may circulate around historically and culturally embedded ideas relating to, for
example, defending ‘good living, and mother earth’ (de Sousa Santos, 2014: 33;
41). Relatedly, the Indian historian Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000: xiii), in endeav-
ouring to ‘provincialise’ Europe, notes that European ideas often purporting to
be universal are, in truth, drawn from very particular intellectual and historical
traditions’ that may lack ‘universal validity’. Such perceptions have resonance in
terms of how we think about dissent and about quotidian facets of social work
practice.
Sixth, it is vital that dissent becomes organised and collectivised as opposed
to it being a singular endeavour. Foucault claims that ‘we are all members of the
community of the governed’ and so are ‘obliged to show mutual solidarity’ with
those subjected to maltreatment by the state. Hence, there has to be a prepared-
ness to ‘stand up and speak to those who hold power’ (Foucault, 2002: 475). His
perceptions are underpinned by an intellectual interest in parrhesia (Foucault,
2015): derived from Greek antiquity, this is founded on the idea of ‘fearless
speech’ and the need to speak the truth to power (Christie and Sidhu, 2006).
However, the perceptions of Marston and McDonald (2012), related to assessing
the scope for dissent, remain important. For them, there is a problem with the
tendency to issue ‘heroic’ claims about ‘what social workers can achieve in the
name of empowerment and social justice’. Thus, ‘emerging practitioners should
be supported to develop greater clarity about what they can and cannot do in
the context of twenty-frst-century spaces of social work practice’ (Marston, and
McDonald, 2012: 1024). ‘Grand’ or ‘heroic’ thinking is inclined to emphasise
the ‘triumph of agency over structure’ and it can achieve little other than, per-
haps, burnout or the creation of a few ‘heroic’ martyrs (Marston and McDonald,
2012: 1025–6). Workplaces can be places of great and tenacious solidarity, but
they can also be tough locations in which questioning, but isolated, individuals
can be subjected to intimidation and legal sanction. Arguably, recent develop-
ments, such as mandatory professional registration, may also engender a cer-
tain nervousness about inhibiting dissenting and critical thought and practice
(McLaughlin, 2010; 2017). That is why endeavours to promote social change
have to be wedded to collective projects democratically charted by organisations
and the ‘resistant experiences’ and ‘resistant imaginations’ of trade union networks
and other progressive social movements (Medina, 2013: 7). Expressed slightly
differently, dissenters must aspire to ‘win’ and not merely to ‘virtue signal’. Thus,
10 Introduction

key questions become: what are the opportunities for dissent in a specifc domain
(nationally, regionally, locally and in terms of practice specialism) at a particular
conjuncture? What are the obstacles? How can these obstacles be challenged by
the creation of oppositional, dissenting alliances? (see also Cuskelly et al., 2014).
Workers need to collectivise their discontent and aspirations by, to use Marx’s
(1990 [1867]: 416) phrase, putting their ‘heads together’. Indeed, the ‘collective
labourer’ or ‘combined working personnel’ is a force which has the potential to
challenge and eradicate oppressive practices (Marx, 1990 [1867]: 590). In this
context, in Australia, John Tomlinson (2015) provides a fascinating account of
DSW as it relates to attempts to challenge the aggression of the state towards
children and families from indigenous communities.

Examining the conjuncture

What about the wider world and the more encompassing conjuncture in which
social work is located? Furthermore, what are we to understand by the whole
idea of a ‘conjuncture’? Underpinned by Marxist analyses and especially the
contributions of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, this refers to histori-
cal moments when a plethora of, seemingly, unrelated issues, tensions and cir-
cumstances come together or cluster (Garrett, 2020a). At these moments the
economy, along with various political and social preoccupations, accumulate and
become congealed and intertwined. What is of great importance at such times
– which may be short-lived or span across decades – is how the conjuncture is
politically articulated, described and infected by the contending class forces in a
given society. Those forces achieving success provide ‘common sense’ accounts
or narratives and are better able to maintain or achieve hegemony over – and to
help constitute – a particular social formation (Koivisto and Lahtinen, 2012).
Following Gramsci, this often entails a ‘war of position’ being waged in order
to secure an advantage. For example, the aim is to always use crises to tilt the
balance to the advantage of a particular class. Hence, the global ruling class
endeavoured, with some success, to embed the false idea that the fnancial crisis
of 2007/2008 was prompted, not by reckless speculative lending practices, but by
bloated welfare states. Consequently, the associated remedy proposed was one of
welfare retrenchment or – in the language of its enforcers – ‘austerity’. In reality,
it was an attempt to drive the working class, many clutching smartphones, back
into a 1930s economic and social landscape.
Importantly, however, hegemony is not only a consequence of the powers of
persuasion; rather, hegemonic power is sustained by blending consent generat-
ing politics with, where it is deemed necessary, coercive measures. The latter are
inevitably directed at those not ‘won over’ by the attempts to generate consent
or – alternatively – they are targeted at marginalised individuals or groups whose
consent is regarded, by the governing powers, as superfuous and not required.
Most of the time, most of us would not directly be targeted by such coercive
power. However, some sections of society are routinely confronted by the state’s
 Introduction 11

coercive edge in the shape of interventions by uniformed and militarised police.

Moving beyond the level of theoretical abstraction, we can see how a deeply
racialised facet of hegemonic power is challenged by the protests of the Black
Lives Matter (BLM) campaign.
The Brexit ‘crisis’ in Britain furnishes a good example of the fuid dynam-
ics associated with a particular conjuncture. Here, the leading Boris Johnson
faction within the Conservative Party successfully argued that the ‘crisis’
could be addressed by ‘getting Brexit done’ and expeditiously leaving the
European Union (EU) (Clarke, 2020). This narrative was implicitly and
explicitly founded on the post-imperial notion that this would enable Britain
to achieve ‘greatness’ once again. Importantly, often intertwined with this
type of hegemonic project, is the construction of scapegoats who serve the
purpose of distracting attention away from questions pertaining to the gross
economic inequalities generated by the neoliberal model of capital accumula-
tion. Oftentimes, the ‘welfare cheat’ and others supposedly stuck in ‘welfare
dependency’ fulfl this role (Garrett, 2018a). Not infrequently, however, such
scapegoats are racialised and gendered and here we can note Johnson’s racist
antipathy and ridicule of women wearing burkas. Similarly, Trump is fx-
ated with Mexicans and other intruders from south of the Rio Grande. In
announcing his bid for the presidency in 2016, for example, he proclaimed,
‘When Mexico sends its people [they are] sending people that have lots of
problems … They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists’
(Trump, 2015).
In a major speech, Paul Gilroy (2019) maintains that ‘race and nation’ are
now ‘primary sources of groupness and absolute ethnicity. They are supposedly
endowed with a special power to restore certainty and fnd stability amidst the
fux of precarious life in increasingly dangerous conditions’. Nevertheless, even
if one accepts this analysis, there are layers of complexity. ‘Race’ has a new cen-
trality as a shaping mechanism within neoliberal globalism, yet if one looks at
Johnson’s U.K. government, prominent roles are occupied by Rishi Sunak, Pritti
Patel and Alok Sharma. That is to say, notions of ‘inclusivity’, ‘diversity’ and
‘multiculturalism’, can be strategically harnessed to deeply retrogressive nation-
alist, political agendas and programmes. Indeed, the assembling of Johnson’s
administration following the election of December 2019 took on something of
the character of what Nancy Fraser (2016: 113) terms ‘progressive’ neoliberal-
ism, which rhetorically celebrates ‘diversity’ and meritocracy whilst dismantling
social protections.
In terms of our focus on the conjuncture, it remains vital to refer to the ‘big
picture’ and to recognise that everything is shifting, relational and connected
whilst also forming parts of an unstable totality. Seeking to decipher what is
signifcant, albeit in very general terms, is crucial in enabling us to calibrate the
prospects of DSW. In what follows, therefore, it is maintained that the neoliberal
model of capital accumulation is central. However, capitalism cannot be tidily
separated out from interwoven issues connected to migration, global warming
12 Introduction

and the rise of the populist Right. We will explore each of these dimensions and
then turn to comment on the evolution of what I term ‘Covidia’.

‘Crashing through the limits’: Neoliberal capitalism

Capitalism continues to provide the material base and it conditions perceptions
of, and responses to, an array of other issues and preoccupations (see also Chapter
2). As Marx notes, the capital accumulation process is an ‘endless process’ with
capital constantly crashing through what have previously been seen as its limits
or, what we can dub, ‘no-go-areas’. The

only utility whatsoever which an object can have for capital can be to
preserve or increase it … . It is therefore inherent in its nature constantly
to drive beyond its own barrier … . Thus, growing wealthy is an end in
itself. The goal-determining activity of capital can only be that of growing
wealthier, i.e. of magnifcation, of increasing itself.
(Marx, 1981 [1857–58]: 270)

This dynamic has, of course, been pronounced and more emphatic during the
period of neoliberalism with capital, facilitated by compliant governments and
supine regulating authorities, ‘green lighting’ capitalists’ desire to ‘violate’ and
go ‘beyond’ what was formerly viewed as publicly and ethically unacceptable
(Marx, (1981 [1857–58]: 335)). Consequently, many goods and resources which
were in common ownership – which lie within what leftish literature often refer
to as the ‘commons’ – increasingly became commodifed. A prime example of
this, in the United Kingdom, is how water, formally a public utility, became
effectively privately owned and sold to ‘customers’.
Social work furnishes an example of a sector in which there have been consist-
ent attempts to privatise services so to as to prise them open for proft and share-
holder enrichment. Indeed, in the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic,
‘venture capitalists and vulture funds’ began to view the care sector as ‘sexy’ and
ripe for exploitation (Keena, 2015: 5). In the United Kingdom, for example,
approximately three out of four children’s homes and almost a third of foster-
ing placements are now provided by private organisations (Local Government
Association (LGA), 2020). In November 2018, The Guardian newspaper reported
that vulnerable children were being ‘treated like cattle’ since many councils,
responsible for their care, were inviting private companies to compete for con-
tracts to look after them through an online bidding system (Greenfeld and
Marsh, 2018: 5). This online tendering process resulted in one council pub-
lishing adverts, including the personal details of children such as their dates of
birth, family histories and even accounts of sexual abuse they had suffered. More
pervasively, local councils, having to deal with the crisis generated by a lack of
adequate funding from central government, were having to reinvent themselves
as shoppers ‘seeking a bargain’ (The Guardian, November 13, 2018). Within this
 Introduction 13

framework, children become mere tradable commodities. In 2019, for exam-

ple, the six largest independent providers of children’s social care services netted
£215 million proft (LGA, 2020).
Importantly also, the ‘quality’ of care provided by the for-proft sector is fre-
quently poor. For example, the children’s home at the centre of the Rochdale
grooming ring was owned by private equity (BBC News, 2012a). This prompted
a review of privately run children’s homes which revealed that one in three
homes operated by the two largest private providers were classed by Ofsted as
‘inadequate or requiring improvement’ (Sodha, 2019: 52). Again in line with
competitive, cutthroat dynamics, there is a drift to ‘consolidation’, merger and
near monopolisation with fewer and fewer large corporate providers dominat-
ing the market. As was illustrated, in the adult sector, by the fnancial collapse
of the care home chain Southern Cross in 2011, this process is reckless and ren-
ders proft, not residents, as paramount (Coward, 2011; Scourfeld, 2007; 2012).
Such imperatives are also, of course, likely to have left residents and workers in
the sector, in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, highly vulnerable when the
COVID-19 pandemic erupted.
Fears have also been expressed that the growth of the children’s residential
care sector has been fuelled by credit with the leading corporate providers having
expanded because of enormous loans which ‘at some point’ will have to be paid
back. However, LGA research reveals that ‘many of them do not have the assets
to do that’ (LGA, 2020). As Sonia Sodha (2019: 52) succinctly concludes, this
is ‘system works in the interest of proft, not children’. As the earlier discussion
makes plain, this is not an aberration since these developments adversely impact-
ing on children in care simply highlight how capitalism functions.
In much of Europe, North America and beyond, neoliberalism has been the
dominant model since the late 1970s. With the fall of the USSR and its satel-
lites, this model became more globally entrenched, even emboldened. In short,
neoliberalism has been deemed the most adequate way to organise capitalism by
the global ruling class in order to extract and maximise the volume of surplus
value garnered from those compelled to sell their labour power to those own-
ing – or acting in line with the imperatives of those owning – the means of
production and distribution. With the ‘crash’ of 2007/2008, we witnessed how
this ruling class also possesses its own ideological and material ‘fexibility’. In
the United States alone, the Federal Reserve pumped between $19 trillion and
$29 trillion into the fnancial system to rescue the banks. Such massive ‘bailouts’
by states, often referred to as ‘quantitative easing’, fy in the face of neoliberal
tenets rhetorically founded on the need to ‘roll back the state’. A not dissimilar
scale of intervention to shore up the capitalist system is apparent in the response
to the COVID-19 crisis (Brenner, 2020). Hence, it should be highlighted that
the loyalty of the ruling class is not to neoliberalism per se; rather, its loyalty is
vested in capital. So, for example, the neoliberal model may morph into some-
thing else which is better able to serve the needs of capital. Indeed, in many parts
of the world, there is now a tendency for the ruling class to lend its support to
14 Introduction

right-wing populist governments envisaging a more expansive ‘social’ role for

the state.
Throughout, what can be broadly categorised as, the ‘neoliberal years’, the
patterning of class exploitation resulted in remarkable economic polarisation.
Supporters and advocates of neoliberal capitalism, often implicitly intent on
refuting Marx, are prone to argue that his analysis has been proven incorrect
because – across the globe – the number of those living in extreme poverty (i.e.
on less than $1.90 a day) halved during the twenty years spanning 1990–2010.
Whilst this contention would seem to be empirically true, the data conceals a
great deal. For example, setting the threshold of extreme poverty to less than
$1.90 a day means that

those who have been lifted out of extreme poverty often remain very poor,
in debt and struggling to feed their families. Many may be only one step
away from slipping back. More than half of the world’s population lives on
between $2 and $10 a day.
(Oxfam, 2018: 12)

Furthermore, restructuring, reorganising and centralising capital to the disad-

vantage of the majority of the world’s inhabitants, neoliberalism has produced an
enormous cleavage between the super-rich and the rest. This is precisely the state
of affairs which Marx predicted when he wrote Capital.
There are ‘now 2,043 dollar billionaires worldwide … 82% of all of the
growth in global wealth in the last year went to the top 1%, whereas the bot-
tom 50% saw no increase at all’ (Oxfam, 2018: 8). In the United States, the
six-member Walton family, heirs to the Walmart fortune, has ‘as much wealth as
the bottom 41.5% of American families’ (Myers, 2017: 304). Income inequality
in recent years, as ‘measured by the share of income held by the top 1% and bot-
tom 90% of Americans, rivals that of 1928’ (Myers, 2017: 304). For many at the
economic apex, the COVID-19 pandemic has massively infated their wealth.
The U.S.-based Institute for Policy Studies (2020:1), for example, reports that
between January 1, 2020, and April 10, 2020, 34 of the nation’s wealthiest 170
billionaires saw their wealth increase by tens of millions of dollars. The ‘wealth
surge’ of Jeff Bezos, of Amazon, is ‘unprecedented in modern fnancial history’
in that his ‘fortune had increased by an estimated $25 billion since January 1,
2020’. At Facebook, Zuckerberg’s personal wealth has increased about $22 bil-
lion this year (BBC News, 2020f ). These developments highlight the socially
dysfunctional disposition of the world that we inhabit.
Neoliberalism – like other regimes of accumulation in the past – gives rise
to particular social orders and relationships that help to sustain the exploitative
economics of the workplace (Marthinsen et al., 2019). The family remains the
chief ‘private’ arena charged with ensuring the smooth social reproduction of
the workforce (Federici, 2014). Signifcantly, families (irrespective of the forms
they may now assume) are also units where there is now an expectation that all
 Introduction 15

adult members will enter the labour force as workers because one ‘breadwinner’
is usually unable to sustain the fnancial upkeep of the family. This is refected in
the pejorative and degrading ‘stay-at-home mum’ label which is often attached
to women not entering the commodifed labour market. During the previous
Fordist period, the mother remaining at home would have been the norm for
many families, even though a substantial number of women were in the labour
market because the so-called ‘family wage’ obtained by the male worker was
inadequate. The cultural order, predicated on gendered separate spheres, has
now been largely swept away. As Marx observes, this change in cultural atti-
tudes is rooted in the fact that capital is apt to drive out ‘prejudices’ as well as ‘all
traditional, confned, complacent … reproductions of old ways of life’ (Marx,
1981 [1857–58]: 410). Expressed slightly differently, when a form or conscious-
ness is anachronistic and impedes the expansion of capital, then it is likely to be
incrementally extinguished and replaced with a new sensibility and discourses of
‘common sense’ more ‘ft for purpose’.
However, as Ashley J Bohrer (2019) suggests, there are complexities at work
here because neoliberal capitalism might also be perceived as materially eroding
the domination of some women by male husbands, partners and fathers. That
is to say, many women, because of labour market participation, become more
fnancially independent and are able to free themselves from fnancial reliance
on men. Bohrer (2019: 210) argues that one of the ‘real contradictions of gender
relations under neoliberal capitalism is that it both empowers women in many
spheres of life (social, political, economic) and systematically relies on sexist
norms, heterosexist understandings of femininity and gendered (and racialized)
social reproductive labour’ (Cooper, 2017). Relatedly, women who are corporate
‘high-fyers’ are empowered to ‘outsource’ social reproduction and care work to
‘other women deemed disposable since they are neither considered strivers nor
properly responsiblised’ (Rottenberg, 2016: 332).
More generally, it is hard to overemphasise the role that women workers play
both in terms of waged labour and unpaid domestic labour. As the COVID-19
pandemic erupted across the globe, the UN Under-Secretary-General and UN
Women Executive Director observed it was likely to be a ‘profound shock’ to
many that societies were able to continue to function on account of the ‘mul-
tiple and underpaid roles’ undertaken by women (Mlambo-Ngcuka, 2020).
Internationally, women comprise 70 percent of workers in the global health sec-
tor (World Health Organization (WHO), 2019: 1). In the United Kingdom,
77 percent of healthcare workers are women, as is 83 percent of the social care
workforce.
Importantly, however, such statistics need to be looked at alongside analy-
ses tabulating unpaid care work. The International Labour Organisation (ILO,
2018: xxx) concludes:

Women’s paid work does not on its own automatically transform the gen-
dered division of unpaid labour. Across regions and income groups, when
16 Introduction

both work for pay or proft and unpaid care work are accounted together,
the working day is on average longer for women (7 hours and 28 minutes)
than it is for men (6 hours and 44 minutes), despite signifcant country dif-
ferences. This makes women consistently time poorer than men, even after
adjusting for hours of employment.

People are propelled into labour market not simply because of personal choice
or as a consequence of complex normative or cultural expectations; rather, the
fall in the real value of wages across the decades of neoliberalism coerces as
many members as possible of the family unit into the workforce (Harvey, 2017).
This is the only way to ‘make-ends-meet’; otherwise, there are likely to be dif-
fculties in meeting the fnancial costs of social reproduction (childcare costs,
health costs, etc.). So-called ‘activation’ policies and an associated dismantling
of social protections also contribute to this strategy of ‘active proletarianisation’
which aims to convert dormant labour power into wage labour and proft for
those owning the means of production and distribution (Offe, 198). As Marx
(1981 [1857–58]: 286) observes, capital aspires to bring about a situation in which
workers ‘maintain themselves as far as possible as labouring machines’ that pay
for the costs of their ‘own wear and tear’. However, being in employment does
not ‘magically’ overcome stresses and fnancial hardships, given that in-work
poverty is so common.
Some of these themes will be returned to in the next chapter. Suffce to add
that in making these points about contemporary forms of capitalism, the aim is
not to imply that the Fordist period, stretching approximately from the end of
the Second World War until the late-1970s, was an unequivocally ‘golden era’ in
the West (Bohrer, 2019). However, it is to recognise that this era of assembly-
line, factory-based production may have accrued, for some, relatively high wages
(that is to say, a decrease in the rate of exploitation) and more benign welfare sys-
tems. It was a period also characterised by the continued exploitation of workers’
labour power and by racist and patriarchal forms of domination. Furthermore,
Fordist regimes fnanced social entitlements in the West by continually exploit-
ing the mass of people in the Global South.
The signature product of the actual Ford company was, of course, the motor
car; devised for mass use, it contributed immeasurably to the growth of the fossil
fuel economy and to the problem of global warming (Malm, 2016). In the world
today, as Malm (2016: 7) maintains, the ‘choice to travel’ in cars

rather than in trams or buses or on bicycles is conditioned by a vast infra-

structure of oil terminals, petroleum refneries, asphalt plants, road net-
works, gasoline stations – not to speak of the flm industry, the lobbying
groups, the billboards – which did not fall from the sky in this moment but
was built up over time, eventually amassing such weight and inertia that
other modes of transportation are now excluded, or at least prevented from
rising to predominance.
 Introduction 17

Signifcantly, the ‘emissions produced by the cars running to and fro … will
have their greatest impact on generations not yet born: they are so many invisible
missiles aimed at the future’ (Malm, 2016: 7). What is striking, of course, is how
the outbreak of the deadly COVID-19 virus functioned to ‘pause’ the irreparable
harm being done to the Earth’s climate. Indeed, this became apparent as early as
March 2020 when capitalism, in effect, went into ‘slow motion’ with industrial
manufacturing and the use of the car being considerably reduced (Watts and
Kommenda, 2020).
However, the idea of ‘infnite growth and the unstoppable development of
productive forces’ has been pushed to new extremes given that ‘global capital-
ism has never been so avid for natural resources as today, to the extent that it is
legitimate to speak of a new extractivist imperialism’ (de Sousa Santos, 2014:
23). As de Sousa Santos (2014: 23) remarks, it often seems that land, water and
minerals have never been so ‘coveted, and the struggle for them has never had
such disastrous social and environmental consequences’.

The ‘burning planet’: Global warming

A related second feature of the current conjuncture, therefore, is that capital’s
relentless expansion now threatens the planet (Dominelli, 2012; Harris and
Boddy, 2017). From wildfres in Australia and the Amazon, to extremes of heat
in India, to drought in East Africa, to foods in the United Kingdom, climate-
induced extreme weather is already shaping human lives in adverse, even disas-
trous ways. By 2070, a billion people are likely to be confronted by intolerable
heat (Watts, 2020).
This process is inseparable from the dynamics of capital expansion given that
the

vertiginous rise in energy use and emissions since the Second World War,
and especially over the last three decades, is fundamentally explained by
the inherent drive towards the accumulation of proft and capital, which in
turn drives output, incomes and consumption across the globe.
(Gough, 2017: 83)

Here, although actual violence is, certainly in relation to most of us, rarely
observable, this omnipresent dynamic can be perceived as a form of ‘slow vio-
lence’ undermining the environment of those most vulnerable and – more
broadly – generations yet to be conceived (Nixon, 2011). This development is
mostly apparent in the Global South, but in the richer parts of the globe pollutants
and toxins have differential impacts structured by class and ‘race’. For example,
even in California, scientists maintain that Latinos, African-Americans, Asian-
Americans and low-income communities are exposed to substantially more air
pollution from cars, trucks and buses than other demographic groups (Union of
Concerned Scientists, 2019). More broadly, de Sousa Santos (2014: 95) counsels
18 Introduction

that the ‘deep seabed, Antarctica, the moon and other celestial bodies, outer
space, the global sphere, and biodiversity’ must be ‘governed by trustees of the
international community on behalf of present and future generations’. If this
does not occur ‘life on earth will become intolerable, even inside the deluxe
ghettos that make up the global apartheid’. For example, ecosystems in which
‘“wild” viruses were in part controlled by the complexities of the tropical for-
est are being drastically streamlined by capital-led deforestation’ (Wallace et al.,
2020). As the COVID-19 pandemic illustrates, such viruses are ‘now propagat-
ing across susceptible human populations whose vulnerability to infection is
often exacerbated’ by neoliberal austerity programmes (Wallace et al., 2020).
It is vital that we do not romanticise ‘nature’ and the ‘natural’ and do not
overly valorise an idealised past. Nature has a tremendous destructive power
and the human species endeavours to harness and control its potency. However,
the current economic system, dictated by the imperatives of capital, regards the
natural resources of the planet as ‘free’ gifts to be exploited by systematic extrac-
tion for proft (Marx, 1981 [1894]: 879). Nature has also tended to be errone-
ously perceived as a vast ‘sink’ that can continue to absorb ‘waste’ into infnity
(Fraser in Fraser and Jaeggi, 2018: 3). Malm (2016) provides an intellectually
riveting account focussing on how the problems we are confronted with today
are rooted in developments associated with the growth of capitalism, in much
of the West, from the period of the industrial revolution stretching from the late
eighteenth century into the middle of the twentieth century. Largely focussing
on Britain, he persuasively argues that the growing reliance on fossil fuels was
never an inevitable and inescapable outcome of technological ‘progress’. Rather,
the development of a fossil fuel economy was attached to the specifc choices
and strategies of capitalists intent on maximising output and undermining the
collective strength and alternative social and political imperatives of organised
labour.
As Malm (2016: 5) observes, ‘the smallest puff of smoke in Manchester in
1842’ helped to establish and expand the fossil economy whilst also releasing ‘a
quantity of CO2 which then lingered in the atmosphere, playing a microscopic
part in the creation of the current climate’. Today, this economy is the main
driver of global warming and the ‘emergency’ prompting the igniting of, as we
have seen, often youthful social movements such as XR. Important here are also
the calls, generated by, and beyond, organised labour, for a ‘Green New Deal’.
However, into our present century, the

descendants of the Lancashire manufacturers, whose dominion now span

the globe, are taking decisions on a daily basis to invest in new oil wells,
new coal-fred power plants, new airports, new highways, new liquefed
natural gas facilities, new machines to replace human workers, so that
emissions are not only continuing to grow but doing so at a higher speed.
(Malm, 2016: 5)
 Introduction 19

Despite their brands being associated with, what McGuigan (2009) terms, ‘cool
capitalism’, most ‘large tech companies continue to rely heavily on fossil fuels,
and when they do commit to effciency goals, these are not open to public scru-
tiny and validation’ (Dobbe and Whittaker, 2019). In 2018, it was suggested
that the tech sector would ‘contribute 3.0–3.6% of global greenhouse emis-
sions by 2020, more than double what the sector produced in 2007’ (Dobbe and
Whittaker, 2019). This estimated ‘global footprint is comparable to that of the
aviation industry, and larger than that of Japan, which is the ffth biggest polluter
in the world’ (Dobbe and Whittaker, 2019). Adding to the deleterious impact on
the world’s climate, companies – such as Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet (the
parent company of Google) – all ‘aggressively’ market their services to fossil fuel
companies intent on optimising and accelerating the plunder and extraction of
gas and oil (Dobbe and Whittaker, 2019).
Today, the idea that we have entered a new geological epoch – dubbed the
Anthropocene – has entered into intellectual discourses and popular culture.
It suggests that the Earth has left, its natural geological epoch, the Holocene.
Today, human activities have become so ‘profound that they rival the great forces
of nature’ (Steffen et al., 2007 in Malm, 2016: 27). The claim is not that humans
previously left no imprint on their environments during the period of the
Holocene, beginning 12,000 to 11,500 years ago at the close of the Palaeolithic
Ice Age, but what has occurred since the advent of the Anthropocene has been,
expressed colloquially, a ‘game changer’ in that a qualitative scale-up has resulted.
Those convinced by this reasoning are mostly certain that the epochal shift hap-
pened in the latter part of the eighteenth century when ‘analyses of air trapped
in polar ice showed the beginning of growing global concentrations of carbon
dioxide and methane’ (Crutzen, 2002 in Malm, 2016: 28). Furthermore, some
scientists and commentators are confdent that we can be even more specifc as
to when the Anthropocene commenced: 1784 when James Watt patented the
steam engine which presented the human species with the ability to dominate
the planet in an entirely, and ultimately destructive, way.
Along with a number of other authors, Malm (2016) is wary of this explana-
tion. For example, it appears that the ‘small rise in the concentration of CO2
that can be detected in polar ice from the late eighteenth century remained well
within the natural variability of the Holocene’ (Malm, 2016: 29). More funda-
mentally, those promoting the Anthropocene concept imply that the human spe-
cies, as a whole, is responsible – both today and in the past – for the harm caused
to the planet. In contrast, Malm (2016) draws our attention to the fact that we
need to ascertain the specifc class forces intent on adopting and deploying the
steam engine. He identifes the manufacturers as the powerful group intent on
introducing this form of power often in the teeth of opposition from the work-
ing class. In short, the manufacturers were seeking to displace skilled and often
well-organised craft labourers and to signifcantly ‘speed-up’ the productivity of
relatively unskilled labour within factories. Steam power and the steam engine
20 Introduction

could be deployed in ways that less reliable forms of power, such as wind power,
could not. As Malm (2016: 36) observes, if

some humans introduced steam power against the explicit resistance of other
humans, then it would be hard to maintain a notion of it as the expres-
sion of a species-wide project. … A point of departure might then be the
hypothesis – if supported by the data – that steam arose as a form of power
exercised by some people against others.

Returning to the contemporary world, in terms of the global consumption pat-

terns, high-income individuals have a higher ‘energy footprint’ than the rest of
us. The consumption share of the bottom half of the population is less than 20
percent of fnal energy footprints, which in turn is less than what the top 5 per-
cent consume (Oswald et al., 2020). In the United Kingdom, for example, the
ultra-rich fy by far the furthest, whilst 57 percent of the U.K. population, even
prior to the pandemic, did not fy abroad at all (BBC News, 2020a).
Albeit in obscured ways, all of these issues relate directly to social work
because, as Celeste Harris and Jennifer Boddy (2017: 337) observe, it is the ‘most
vulnerable individuals and communities’, with whom practitioners primarily
work, who are ‘disproportionately impacted by the destruction and degradation
of the natural environment’. They note the strides that social work has made in
recent years to begin to incorporate an awareness of environmental concerns; for
example, the development of policy by the profession’s international organisa-
tions. Alongside this, there has occurred an ‘exponential increase in academic
literature, particularly literature of a conceptual nature, that considers the rela-
tionship between social work and the natural environment’ (Harris and Boddy,
2017: 338). However, in their survey of Australian universities providing social
work education, the same authors identify a notable lacuna with the ‘vast major-
ity’ of social work programmes failing to ‘consider the natural environment to
any great extent’ (Harris and Boddy, 2017: 344). Indeed, it is likely that their
fndings will be replicated elsewhere.

Migration: The regulation of ‘fows’

Issues related to migration and displacement form a third part of our current con-
juncture (Field et al., 2020). Figures released by the United Nations Department
of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) (2019) reveal that the number of
migrants reached 272 million in 2019. This amounts to an increase of 59 million
since 2010. In the ‘more developed regions’ of the Global North (Europe and
Northern America, plus Australia, New Zealand and Japan), ‘almost 12 of every
100 inhabitants are international migrants’ (UNDESA, 2019: 1). In more recent
years, it is also apparent that ‘forced migration’ (involving refugees and asylum
seekers) has grown much faster than voluntary migration (UNDESA, 2019: 1).
In 2017, North Africa and Western Asia hosted 46 percent of refugee and asylum
 Introduction 21

seekers globally, most of which (close to 90 percent) resided in the West Asia sub-
region. Sub-Saharan Africa hosted almost 21 percent (5.9 million) and Central
and South Asia, along with Europe each hosted close to 13 percent of the global
total (3.9 million each). North America hosted 3.8 percent (1.1 million). More
generally, in terms of international migrants (not specifcally refugees and asy-
lum seekers), most appear to move to other countries within the region of their
birth. Indeed, according to UNDESA, more international migrants from the
South reside in the South than in the North. About two-ffths of all international
migrants have moved from one developing country to another.
These statistics run starkly counter to, frequently politically charged, per-
ceptions in the Global North where the notion is often promulgated that the
vast majority of refugees and asylum seekers are intent on reaching the most
economically prosperous parts of the Earth. This discourse is frequently imbued
with ‘fearful images of the alien invasion of Europe’ and is ‘merged with ideas
of civilizational clash, White cultural vulnerability and demographic decline’
(Gilroy, 2019).
At the time of writing, borders are becoming more emphatically sealed on
account of fears of the spread of the COVID-19 virus. In March 2020, a num-
ber of European governments (including Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, France,
Germany, Hungary, Italy, Slovenia and Spain) shut their borders with neigh-
bouring EU countries, cancelled international fights or imposed border checks
in an emergency attempt to stop the spread of the virus. Such measures were
supplemented by the temporary closure of the EU’s external borders to most
non-residents. This crisis has, therefore, prompted radical changes in how the
fows of migrant labour is regulated. Trump expanded the militarisation of the
United States-Mexico border under the pretext of curbing the spread of the
virus. Modi, in India, closed factories and curtailed public transport having only
given migrants a few hours’ notice. Atul Yadav’s photograph of the exhausted
and tormented face of Rampukar Pandit, as he paused on his 750-mile walk
home to reach his family, became a defning image of India’s exploited and dis-
posable migrant labourers. Constituting less than 3 percent of the population,
the progressive left-wing administration in the state of Kerala responded in a
remarkable way to the pandemic, setting up almost 70 percent of the nation’s
relief camps and shelters for migrant workers (Agarwal, 2020).
It can appear, therefore, that ‘hard’ borders are being reinforced and the fows
of workers frozen. However, the discourses circulating around seemingly imper-
meable border practices need to be examined in a little more detail. Prior to
the pandemic, Mezzadra and Neilson (2012) argued that there is a tendency to
misread activities taking place on national borders. Thus, phrases and concepts,
such as ‘Fortress Europe’ are misleading because they fail to adequately acknowl-
edge the prodigious and increasing presence of migrants in the ‘European space’
(Mezzadra and Neilson, 2012: 67). Capital has an enormous thirst for labour
power and racist discourses about migrants can, in fact, impede employers’
access to an adequate supply of this market commodity. The United States can
22 Introduction

only function because of the labour of an undocumented ‘subterranean stream

of super-exploited’ migrant workers (Higgins, 2020). Specifc sectors, such as
those dominated by agri-business, are reliant on such workers (Palumbo and
Corrado, 2020). For example, British and German companies, despite the lack
of labour mobility prompted by the pandemic, arranged special fights to bring
in Romanian seasonal farm workers. More pervasively, the lower echelons of
the labour market have become, in recent years, flled by foating populations of
poorly paid migrant workers who have undertaken a large proportion of DDD
(Dirty, Dangerous and Demanding) and CCC (Caring, Cooking and Cleaning)
jobs. Thus, borders – and the practices shaping and associated with them – might
be better understood as mechanisms and processes, regulating global labour
fows. Conceptually, therefore, certainly prior to the pandemic, we cannot con-
vincingly speak of uncomplicated dynamics of ‘exclusion’. Rather, it is better to
analyse complex and differential forms of ‘inclusion’ giving rise to identifable
strategies of evaluating, fltering and selecting individuals.
On the international scene, migratory and refugee movements are ‘channelled
through holding zones and funnels, where the procedures of selection can be
exercised’ (Mezzadra and Neilson, 2012: 69). This logic distinguishes between
‘desired’ and ‘undesired’ migrants with a new emphasis placed on ‘migrants’ pre-
sumed “utility” [or otherwise]’ (Keskinen et al., 2016: 324). Hence, those seek-
ing access to the richer nations of the Global North are assessed on the basis of
a series of questions. Here, ambiguous notions of ‘threat’ cannot be discounted.
However, such inquiries, primarily, if maybe on occasions implicitly, hinge on
this: following Marx, ‘what is the capacity and likely duration of the labour
power you can deliver might that can enhance processes of capital accumula-
tion?’ Expressed in Foucauldian terms, and situated within a more encompassing
biopolitical strategy, ‘what information can you furnish to enable us to calibrate
your “human capital” or lack thereof?’ (See also Chapter 3). Unsurprisingly,
such processes result in the proliferation of, often algorithmically driven, ‘points-
based-systems’ of migration control. In this context, transactions frequently
involve ‘talent-for-citizenship exchanges’ (Shachar in Mezzadra and Neilson,
2012: 70).
Aside from issues pertaining to the fltering of mobility, another factor which
should be emphasised is that border control is spatially expansive and reaches
deep into national interiors. In the United States, for example, immigration
law enforcement, including deportations, is devolved to two branches of the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS): the Customs and Border Patrol
(CBP) which is empowered to work up to 100 air miles from the border and the
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) which is authorised to act across
the national territory (Golash-Boza, 2016). Relatedly, we can speak of processes
of externalisation in that border control is displaced or outsourced to another ter-
ritory. This is evident in ‘the management of the ‘external frontiers of Europe’ as
well as in Australia’s ‘Pacifc Solution’ (Mezzadra and Neilson, 2012: 68). Thus,
in each case, third countries are involved in the border regime, whether this
 Introduction 23

implies the offshore outsourcing of detention facilities, cooperation in deporta-

tion procedures, visa policing or the surveillance of routes and so-called carriers
of migration. What tends to emerge are

different degrees of internality and externality, which substitute and blur

the clear-cut distinction between inside and outside that was produced by
the traditional border of the nation-state. These techniques and measures
of externalization facilitate the processes of fltering and differential inclu-
sion by creating waiting zones through which the timing and tempo of
migration can be more precisely regulated.
(Mezzadra and Neilson, 2012: 68)

Such developments can be connected to wider patterning of quasi-incarceration

and internment. In an academic context, this is illustrated in the emergence of
‘detention studies’ and analyses encompassing the use of incarceration by states
to contain people who are not necessarily charged with crimes (Mountz et al.,
2013). These groups include a wide variety of individuals: ‘migrants, asylum
seekers, refugees, terrorism suspects, political dissidents, and “enemy combat-
ants”’ (Martin and Michelson, 2009: 465). Indeed, in some jurisdictions, impris-
onment practices are now targeted at non-criminals, such as administrative
detainees and persons suspected of connections with terrorist networks (Martin
and Michelson, 2009).
In many countries – such as the Republic of Ireland – practitioners are, in fact,
often migrants making major contributions to the lives and well-being of com-
munities in which they are now living. However, questions pertaining to migra-
tion and asylum are, of course, also signifcant in terms of some of the focal issues
pertaining to the provision of services. Along with other state actors, practition-
ers are engaged in assisting migrants and, oftentimes, this is in fraught situations:
for example, many migrants fnd themselves impoverished and/or confned – if
they are seeking ‘refugee’ status – to hostel-type accommodation which drasti-
cally curtails their ability to participate in communal activities (Garrett, 2015a).
Williams and Graham (2014: 14) refer to forms of ‘neo-assimilationism’ which
adversely impact on social workers’ engagement. This, they perceive, as policy
and practices pivoting on a ‘conditional integration proscribed by the ability
of the migrant to adapt to dominant values and ways of life’. The wider policy
environment and the affective register in which it is located can also contaminate
practitioner ethics and scramble priorities. At the century’s commencement, the
death of Victoria Climbie, in the United Kingdom, was entangled in factors
related to her status as a migrant. Indeed, although this has been insuffciently
investigated and commented on, her death may have been partly attributable
to state agencies seeking to repatriate her, and her aunt, to France. In short, the
understanding that the ‘welfare of the child is paramount’ was rendered second-
ary to the politics of welfare retrenchment and immigration control (Garrett,
2006).
24 Introduction

Located in Canada, Ransford Danso (2016: 1744) highlights social work’s

long association with questions of migration and he argues that issues relating to
immigration ‘enabled the profession to forge an international identity during its
nascent stages’ in the 1920s. The involvement with immigration became more
pronounced following the Second World War. During this period many social
workers with knowledge of migration-related diffculties worked with those dis-
placed. However, he maintains that quest for professional status resulted in social
work losing its ties to migration and issues faced by migrant groups. Today,
therefore, this knowledge has become relatively dissipated. Hence, following
his scoping work, Danso (2016: 1745) reports on the ‘near absence of migration
content from social work curricula’. The profession’s awareness of the dynamics
associated with migration is also notably ‘under-theorised in social work today’
(Danso, 2016: 1745). Consequently, he calls for a new, core and ‘domain-specifc
feld of specialisation’ within social work education which is able to address the
‘unique features and manifestations of migrants and refugees at all geographi-
cal scales’ (Danso, 2016: 1751). This would entail the evolution of a framework
that focuses on the ‘characteristics, impact and interconnections among fve con-
texts: pre-migration context (source region), intervening or in-transit context
(interstice), post-arrival context (destination area), post-return context (home
country) and “shuttling context” (the context created by migrants commuting
between destination areas and home countries)’ (Danso, 2016: 1753).

The populist Right: The threat of neo-fascism

Not unrelated to the ways in which questions concerning migration have been
politicised, a fourth dimension of our present conjuncture is the rise of extreme
forms of nationalism and Neo-Nazism (Neilson, 2020). At the time of writ-
ing, the world’s richest country is led by a vulgar, erratic and narcissistic fgure
whose campaign for the presidency hinged on nationalistic slogans such as ‘Make
America Great Again’ and who was frequently greeted by baying supporters
chanting ‘Build the Wall’ (see also Jones, 2012). Perhaps rather unsurprisingly,
the COVID-19 outbreak prompted the U.S. President to utilise the pandemic
to ‘ramp up’ his xenophobic politics of exclusion when he tweeted ‘We need the
Wall more than ever!’ (Singh, 2020). He also provocatively labelled COVID-19
as the ‘Chinese virus’ (Rogers et al., 2020; see also Chapter 10).
At the time of writing [early June 2020], the erratic U.S. President, seem-
ingly temperamentally and politically predisposed to fascism, is pondering if
declaring an ‘insurrection’ and deploying federal troops against the citizenry
will end countrywide demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd in
Minneapolis. Twenty-three states have used National Guard Reservists to back-
up the presence of police occupying the street. In outlining the Trump admin-
istration’s ‘counter-insurgency’ strategy, his Defence Secretary casually referred
to U.S. cities as the ‘battlespace’ (Borger, 2020). Meanwhile, armoured cars are
positioned at Washington’s subway stations following the dispersal, by means of
 Introduction 25

chemical spray, rubber bullets and baton charges, of protesters outside the White
House. A battalion of the elite eighty-second airborne division has been fown
to the capital in readiness to combat demonstrators.
Part of the appeal of the right-wing demagogues is that they position them-
selves as the defenders of ‘hardworking’ ‘native’ people under threat from ‘unreg-
ulated’ migration and the implicit danger of terrorism. White nationalists have
also ‘ridden the digital wave with great success’ (Benjamin, 2019: 23). Using
social media, they try, often with a measure of success, to narrow people’s politi-
cal imagination by proclaiming that the ‘nation’ can retrieve a former ‘greatness’
which has been contaminated by a miscellaneous collection of ‘enemies’. Indeed,
the ‘frst appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal’ against
alleged ‘intruders’ (Eco, 1995). Freighted with ‘notions of victimage and vulner-
ability’ (Gilroy, 2019), the ascendancy of the so-called ‘alt-right’ in the United
States can be associated with more globally pervasive attempts to craft a new
socially toxic hegemony seeking to target groups to harass, intimidate and, even
on occasions, eliminate (Black people, Roma, Jews, anti-racists, LGBTI people
etc.). This is a social context in which, for much of the Global North, ‘Muslim
has become fxed as a racial trope rather like Jew in the interwar years of the
twentieth century’ (Gilroy, 2019).
Turning to Europe, during the summer of 2016, a Labour MP was hacked to
death by a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi in an ordinarily peaceful Yorkshire village.
Somewhat coyly given the harm caused to people on account of the vicious ‘aus-
terity’ measures put in place by the European Central Bank following the ‘crash’
of 2007/2008, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe concedes
that extreme forms of nationalism and neo-Nazism are an ‘expression of popular
disappointment and protest against harsh, albeit necessary, austerity measures and
increasing unemployment’ (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe,
2014: 7, emphasis added; see also Stavrakakis, 2013). The EU body impresses
upon member states the importance of social workers and related community-
based groups counteracting ‘manifestations of “neo-Nazism”’.
Neo-Nazism has taken on many different shapes and forms and this can
prompt us to have regard to toxic variants and seedbeds such as Afrophobia,
Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and – certainly in an Irish context – anti-Travel-
ler and anti-Roma racism. Moreover, the strategies of neo-Nazi activists in the
‘public arena are becoming increasingly sophisticated’ (Parliamentary Assembly
of the Council of Europe, 2014: 7). Opponents also need to be attentive to
how fascists seek to ‘inject their ideology into apparently harmless contexts, thus
working on socially or politically relevant issues without revealing their politi-
cal background, such as: campaigns against child abuse, practical solidarity to
elderly persons or victims of fooding, environmental issues etc.’ (Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe, 2014: 7). Indeed, in terms of the child
exploitation and abuse in Rochdale, mentioned earlier, certainly neo-Nazis tried
to exploit this situation to defect legitimate public concerns in a racialised way
(Rucki, 2016).
26 Introduction

Fascism can, of course, often appear beneath the ‘most innocent of disguises’
and – as Umberto Eco (1995) counsels – our ‘duty is to uncover it and to point
our fnger at any of its new instances – every day, in every part of the world’.
Signifcantly, to differing degrees, such ideological currents and toxic analytics
are now situated within the political mainstream and they cannot solely be dis-
cussed in terms of neo-Nazis and similar ‘fringe’ groups on the political Right.
Indeed, Eco’s remarks, in his short discussion on what he termed ‘Ur-Fascism’ in
the mid-1990s, appear prescient:

Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so

much easier, for us, if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying,
‘I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Black Shirts to parade again in the
Italian squares’. Life is not that simple.
(Eco, 1995)

His perspective can help us to better understand, not only Trump but also the
rise of Marine Le Pen and the Front National (in France) and the plethora of
other right-wing leaders contaminating the European polity: Jaroslaw Kaczy ński
(in Poland), Sebastian Kurz (in Austria) and – keen to use the COVID-19 crisis
to advance his own authoritarian cause – Victor Orbán (in Hungary) (Bauman,
2016). These developments can also be linked to the growth of the Alternative
für Deutschland (Af D) – and it’s even more dangerous Der Flügel faction – in
Germany and similar tendencies found in the Nordic countries within politi-
cal formations such as the (True) Finn Party, the Danish People’s Party and the
Sweden Democrats (Fekete, 2018).
Beyond Europe, a far from exhaustive and gruesome tableau includes
Netanyahu (in Israel), Bolsonaro (in Brazil), Duterte (in the Philippines) and
Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (in India). Their deeply retrogres-
sive projects are rooted in religious and ethnicised brutalism. In line with this
analysis, the ‘overall tone’ of the mainstream Indian media, for example, sug-
gests that ‘Muslims invented’ the COVID-19 virus and have ‘deliberately spread
it as a form of jihad’ (Roy, 2020; see also Colbourne, 2020). Relatedly, in a
global context, embedded ‘patterns of civility, like those which have marked the
boundaries of acceptable political speech’, are drastically altered for the worse
(Gilroy, 2019).

The evolution of ‘Covidia’

This is not a book about the global pandemic, but its impact has, of course, been
seismic. By mid-August 2020, the WHO announced that over 20 million people
had been infected by COVID-19. According to the pandemic dashboard provided
by Johns Hopkins University, in the United States, the virus infection rate is on
a seemingly relentless upward trajectory and a vaccine is yet to be discovered.
Initially occurring in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the contagion
travelled from Wuhan to other Chinese cities and then proceeded to rapidly
 Introduction 27

move along major capital ‘supply chains, trade and air travel routes to the indus-
trial and entrepôt enclaves of East Asia, the war-torn, oil-producing Middle East,
and industrial Europe, North America, and Brazil’ (Moody, 2020). Over ffty
companies across the globe had at least one supplier in Wuhan, and the virus has’
moved through the circuits of capital and the humans that labour in them, and
not solely by random “community” transmission’ (Moody, 2020).
Scholars, such as Rob Wallace (2016), highlight how viruses evolve as prod-
ucts of production processes and social practices structured by capitalism (see also
Vidal, 2020). Inherent here, as we saw earlier, is the tendency of capital to crash
through the limits and to risk blowing its very ‘foundation sky-high’ (Marx,
1981 [1857–58]: 706). Importantly, our ability to respond has been hampered
because, after decades of neoliberal capitalism, social and state institutions in
most parts of the world have been hollowed out and are ill-equipped to deal
with a global pandemic, despite such a possible event being signalled for decades.
David Harvey (2020) notes

Forty years of neoliberalism across North and South America and Europe
had left the public totally exposed and ill-prepared to face a public health
crisis of this sort, even though previous scares of SARS and Ebola provided
abundant warnings as well as cogent lessons as to what would be needed
to be done. In many parts of the supposed ‘civilized’ world, local govern-
ments and regional/state authorities, which invariably form the front line
of defense in public health and safety emergencies of this kind, had been
starved of funding thanks to a policy of austerity designed to fund tax cuts
and subsidies to the corporations and the rich … . The business model
applied to public health provision eliminated the surplus coping capacities
that would be required in an emergency.

In the state of New York, over the last two decades, there was a drive to elimi-
nate 20,000 hospital beds. This was pursued in order to inject a heightened
‘business’ rationality and to eliminate so-called ‘ineffciencies’. Unsurprisingly,
it especially undermined the coping capacity of the most economically disad-
vantaged areas ‘disproportionately struck by the pandemic’ (Tenner, 2020). The
United States has never had a properly funded public health system and the cur-
rent administration has persistently cut funding for the centres for disease control
and prevention. Meanwhile, across the globe, the ruling class has collectively
placed a protective ring around themselves (Neate, 2020).
Signifcantly, millions of people remain mired in debt. In the United States,
total household debt shortly before the current crisis was $14.15 trillion, which is
$1.5 trillion higher than it was in 2008 (in nominal terms) (Mazzucato, 2020). In
the United Kingdom, according to the Offce of National Statistics, total house-
hold debt was £1.28 trillion for the period from April 2016 to March 2018.
Households now owe a record average of £15,385 to credit card companies,
banks and other lenders (Pistor, 2020). Clearly, the impact of the crisis and the
topography of the ‘Covidia’ landscape are presently diffcult to see, but statistical
28 Introduction

evidence suggests that millions of households will face tremendous hardships if

we encounter unemployment levels that are likely to reach 1930s proportions.
Importantly, these ‘big picture’ ruptures ripple through families and present a
range of ‘social problems’ which social work practitioners will have to contend
with. As we will see in Chapter 4, considerable shifts are also likely to take place
in terms of the erosion of in-person encounters with a slide into ‘online’ working.
Accompanying this development, there will be more work and more surveillance
of that work.
Concerns also exist about the range of ‘emergency’ measures that states have
introduced to deal with the pandemic. By May 2020, in over eighty countries, a
‘state of emergency’ had been declared. As Quraishi (2020) remarks, a declara-
tion of emergency is:

not problematic, per se – the prevailing situation demands such extreme

measures. The worrisome aspect is the unchecked power it bestows …
to push forward a repressive agenda against dissenting voices and erode
democratic processes that aim to hold them accountable. The biggest casu-
alty of this concentration of power is human rights: citizens overnight are
converted into ‘subjects’ and compelled to surrender their rights in the
name of larger public good.

More generally, the pandemic is less a social leveller, as some assert, and more
a force that magnifes or exposes rampant social and economic inequalities. In
existential terms, ‘Covidia’, is a ‘place’ imbued with great uncertainty. Like the
inhabitants of Camus’ Oran, in The Plague, our ignorance of what the future
holds in store has ‘taken us unawares’ (Camus, 1979 [1947]). Still, some of the
issues which are likely to remain to the fore are hazily decipherable. What the
BLM demonstrations indicate, moreover, is that we possess the collective capac-
ity to come together, in solidarity, to campaign for socially progressive transfor-
mation. The concerns of the BLM are also tremendously signifcant because, as
Ruha Benjamin (2019: 32) counsels

in many ways, Black ‘people already live in the future. The plight of Black
people has consistently been a harbinger of wider processes – bank owners
using fnancial technologies to prey on Black homeowners, law enforce-
ment using surveillance technologies to control Black neighbourhoods.

Invariably, such measures eventually get ‘rolled out’ on a wider scale and are
targeted at other oppressed or dissenting communities.

Chapter map
By referring to a particular author as a springboard for the ensuing discussion,
each chapter aims to expand the understanding of dissent. Few of the authors
 Introduction 29

mentioned have a direct interest in social work, but we can make useful connec-
tions with the theoretical frameworks they provide in order to get a clearer sense
of the current conjuncture and the potential role of dissent within it. More gen-
erally, the book encourages readers to engage with themes and writers who are
often omitted within the social work curriculum. Indeed, this modest attempt
to stretch the social work imagination might, in itself, be perceived as a gesture
of dissent.
Some of the content of the book is derived from teaching that I provide
on the MA in Social Work programme at NUI Galway. These sessions ordi-
narily include a good deal of open discussion and debate and this is likely to
be refected in the style and tonality of Dissenting Social Work. These classroom
conversations tend to be considerably enhanced by the experiences of students
both within workplaces and in terms of their personal lives. Indeed, in recent
years, remarkable insights into the experience of ‘direct provision’ has been pro-
vided by students who initially arrived in Ireland as asylum seekers (see also Irish
Refugee Council, 2020). Refecting my approach to teaching, I include a series
of ‘Refection and Talk Boxes’ at the end of each chapter. The aim of this device
(which can be ignored if it is not to the liking of particular readers) is to assist
students in critically refecting (individually and in class/seminar and feldwork/
workplace discussions) on key elements of the preceding chapter. This format
might also be used as a foundation, should the will be there, to establish less
formal DSW reading groups. The ‘Refection and Talk Boxes’ are not deployed,
of course, to limit or confne discussion on issues emerging in the proceeding
chapter.
A critic of much of the Marxist tradition, de Sousa Santos (2014: 24) still con-
cludes that the ‘historical strength of Marxism has resided in its unique capacity
to articulate the idea of an alternative future with an oppositional way of living
in the present’. Paying close attention to Marx’s own words, Chapter 2 explores
how his work and the wider Marxist corpus furnishes a resource for DSW.
Chapter 3 turns to discuss Foucault’s work on the evolution of neoliberalism
and, more specifcally, his 1979 lectures on ‘The Birth of Biopolitics’. Despite
problems with his analysis and the fact that neoliberalism appears to have had
some appeal for him, Foucault’s prescient contributions remain fascinating. The
second part of the chapter shifts attention to Wendy Brown, who has extended
his analysis, especially as this relates to neoliberal rationality and human capital.
We conclude by locating Foucault’s conceptualisation of biopolitics alongside
state responses to COVID-19.
In 2013, a U.K. newspaper referred to the ‘profound’ implications associ-
ated with transitioning into a ‘new age of human existence where every digital
action – be it by phone, text, search, chat or email – can be collected, searched
and stored’ (The Guardian, June 22, 2013). The same year, Dave Eggers’ (2013)
dystopian novel The Circle evoked a nightmarish world in which people are
hemmed in by ubiquitous surveillance technologies. Here we also fnd an
expectation that everyone will be scored, ranked and rated within a plethora
30 Introduction

of professional and private domains. Strikingly, some joyfully embrace this fc-
tional world in which the onus is placed on individuals, particularly public
fgures, to become ‘transparent’ and constantly available, via various devices,
for 24/7 public scrutiny (see also Harcourt, 2015). Chapter 4 focusses on the
concept of ‘surveillance capitalism’ and it dwells on the insights of the scholar
and columnist Shoshana Zuboff (2019). Her work appears particularly germane
during the current pandemic when many of us are frequently ‘glued’ to screens
to continue to carry out work functions. Within universities, this is refected in
the abrupt shift to online teaching, examining and video-conferencing. Online
activities are also, of course, being resorted to beyond work so as to maintain
social contact with family and friends. However, all our interactions are medi-
ated by corporate platforms which perpetually extract data and whose focal
endeavour is to generate more fnancial profts. Although we might choose to
dissent from some of her observations, Zuboff provides a helpful compass which
might enable us to better comprehend these developments during the time of
COVID-19.
Jacques Rancière’s main philosophical and thematic preoccupations stem
from an understanding that human beings are equal in all respects. Furthermore,
his philosophical perspective on ‘police’ and ‘politics’ is grounded in a subversive
project to dis-order dominant ways of perceiving the world and the roles which
groups and individuals are expected to fulfl. Chapter 5 argues, therefore, that
DSW might have much to gain by engaging with this French philosopher.
Chapter 6 explores some of the contributions of Loïc Wacquant whose theo-
risation emphasises the signifcance of critical sociology for social work. Drawing
on Wacquant’s (2009a) Punishing the Poor, we will examine the conjoined unfold-
ing of policy and practices relating to prisons and ‘welfare’. After sketching in the
main elements of his argument and identifying some of its potential weaknesses,
the chapter concludes by still maintaining the relevance of Wacquant’s contribu-
tion in constructing new forms of DSW.
The following two chapters focus on two philosophers who, despite the
appeal of elements of their work, fail to gel with the aims and aspirations of
DSW. In Chapter 7 we focus on Hannah Arendt and begin by noting that this
intellectual’s prolifc and often controversial contributions contain seven sig-
nifcant dimensions which may enrich DSW. However, it is maintained that at
present there are a series of problems in the presentation of Arendt to a social
work readership. For example, despite it being vital to situate her perceptions
and conceptualisations inside the period when she was writing, the marked fail-
ure to adequately historicise her work has been a serious omission. Other sub-
stantial criticisms can be levelled at Arendt and these will also be identifed and
explored.
A number of writers have attempted to explain and promote the com-
plex philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas to a social work readership. Chapter
8 takes a different stance and remains very wary about his uncritical absorp-
tion into the profession’s literature. It begins by outlining the case made for
 Introduction 31

Levinasian social work and illuminates some of his main themes. We then go
on to identify the stark and major problems with Levinas, including his self-pro-
claimed Eurocentrism and racist condescension towards those beyond Europe.
Relatedly, the philosopher’s ethnic nationalism is very apparent in terms of how
his contributions misrecognise, disrespect and discursively delete Palestinians.
Interrogating such issues is important for DSW because there is a need to scru-
tinise the ‘colonial mind-set’ which has historically informed the evolution of
the profession (Canadian Association of Social Workers (CASW), 2019: 6).
What is more, in many parts of the globe, the ‘development of social work
was invariably seen as a “soft” approach to perpetuating colonial rule through
social control and reconfguration of socio-cultural institutions’ (Ioakimidis
and Trimikliniotis, 2020: 5).
Chapter 9 expands on the colonialisation theme by exploring the contribution
of Frantz Fanon. Born in the French colony of Martinique, his work continues to
be infuential in the felds of post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism.
Here it is maintained, especially in the context of a resurgent BLM and efforts
to decolonise the curricula in social work education, that critical awareness of
Fanon’s work may help us in constructing DSW.
In 2010, the government of the PRC gave a commitment to generate ‘three
million “talents” in social work by 2020’ (Gao and Yan, 2015: 95). In Chapter
10, we use some of Antonio Gramsci’s conceptualisations to provide critical
insights into this rapid expansion of Chinese social work. It is argued that we
need to contextualise this development by taking into account the restoration of
capitalism and wider structures of governance. Indeed, social work’s new cen-
trality in the PRC can be best understood if it is situated within the project of the
Communist Party of China (CPC) to construct, what is referred to as, a ‘harmo-
nious society’. What are the emerging contours of social work with distinctive
Chinese traits? How might this relate to DSW? These questions are important
not only within the PRC but for social work’s global future.
32 Introduction

REFLECTION AND TALK BOX 1

In his influential manifesto, translated as A Time for Outrage, Stephane Hessel
(2011: 16–17) declares:

The motivation that underlay the Resistance was outrage. We, the veterans
of the Resistance movements and fighting forces of Free France, call on
the younger generations to revive and carry forward the tradition of the
Resistance and its ideas. We say to you: take over, keep going, get angry!
… I want you, each and every one of you, to have a reason to be outraged.
This is precious … . The worst possible outlook is indifference that says, ‘I
can’t do anything about it; I’ll just get by’. Behaving like that deprives you
of one of the essentials of being human: the capacity and the freedom to
feel outraged. That freedom is indispensable, as is the political involvement
that goes with it.

(Hessel, 2011: 16–17)

How might the theme of ‘outrage’ relate to social work?

In your present role (as a student, practitioner, educator or user of social work
services), what do you think are the key factors shaping the conjuncture? How
do these factors create or limit the opportunities for DSW?

How do the DSW themes relate to, or fail to relate to, your work?

How does neoliberal capitalism shape your work and what can be done to
resist it?

How can we relate global warming to the activity of social workers?

How does migration impact on your life experiences and/or your role within
social work?

Why must social work activity be anti-fascist activity?

What type of social work is emerging during the COVID-19 global pandemic?
What are the new, defining elements?

Note
1 Here, I am not making an argument against the registration and regulation of prac-
titioners. Those in social work and kindred professions should be democratically and
publicly accountable. I am grateful to Joanne Tolan for reminding me of Bauman’s
comments and for making this connection.
2
QUESTIONING THE WORLD OF
‘APPEARANCES’: KARL MARX

Introduction
Karl Marx is aligned with dissenting social work (DSW) because of his com-
mitment to articulating a penetrating critique of capitalist society. Although his
scholarly studies and political activity took place in the nineteenth century, his
enormous contributions continue to have resonance today. In April 2020, the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic
and associated global ‘lockdowns’ would inaugurate ‘the worst recession since
the Great Depression, and far worse than the Global Financial Crisis’ (Gopinath,
2020). In these circumstances, on the cusp of another capitalist crisis, Marx takes
on a fresh resonance. More fundamentally, as Hobsbawm (2011: 11) observes,
what has ‘never lost contemporary relevance’ is Marx’s analysis of capitalism’s
‘ever-expanding and concentrating, crisis-generating and self-transforming
modus operandi’. Reading Marx today, though, we need to examine how par-
ticular aspects of his writings apply to our own specifc and current situation: for
example, what can we learn from Marx about the time and place in which we
fnd ourselves?
At the core of the approach of his was a commitment to continually inter-
rogate and critique the world around him. For Marx, this intellectual practice is
vital because the ‘advance of capitalist production develops a working class which
by education, tradition and habit looks upon the requirements of that mode of
production as self-evident natural laws’ (Marx, 1990 [1867]: 899, emphasis added).
Consequently, critical consciousness pivots on incessantly challenging the ‘self-
evident’. In 1843, in a famous letter to Arnold Ruge, Marx asserts that commu-
nist intellectuals should strive towards a ‘new world’ through a ‘ruthless criticism of
everything existing … ruthless in two senses: the criticism must not be afraid of its
own conclusions, nor of confict with the powers that be’ (Marx in Tucker, 1972:
34 Questioning the world of ‘appearances’

13, original emphasis). This critical ethic can be associated with his distrust of
the world as it seems. Intent on going beneath the surface of things, Marx often
refers to ‘appearances’, ‘concealment’ and to what is ‘hidden’ or ‘veiled’.
Such an approach gels with the notion, taught for decades on social work
education programmes, that there is a need to scrutinise beneath the ‘presenting
problem’ to discern what the more substantial, yet not immediately discernible,
‘issue’ or concern may be. Thorough social work assessments are grounded in a
willingness to excavate meanings which are not readily apparent. Similarly, in
tune with Marx’s method, good social work practice is dialectical and embraces
multiple and conficting perspectives and recognises that phenomena are in con-
stant motion, never static.
Importantly, the analysis of Marx does not operate entirely at a level of abstrac-
tion. Rather, his theoretical framework provides insights into how social workers
might comprehend how the larger, more encompassing economic ‘big picture’
impinges on, structures and channels the lives of individuals and families. At
micro-level, this form of analysis aids our ability to get a sense of the economic
and social processes that brought a social work ‘case’ into being at a particular
moment in time in a particular place. Indeed, in terms of the actual day-to-day
activity of social work, one does not have to dig far beneath the ‘surface’ to
ascertain how capital structures live in a multiplicity of ways; it advantages some
but, to varying degrees, disadvantages most of us. (See also Refection and Talk
Box 2.)
The chapter is divided into four parts. First, we comment on the role of
Marxism in the social work classroom. This is followed by a section in which
we argue that Marxism can imbue DSW with a critical foundation. In the third
section of the chapter, the focus is on some of the problems with Marx’s theorisa-
tion; for example, his nineteenth-century perceptions of what ‘productive’ and
‘unproductive’ labour entail certainly need to be re-examined. Here also we turn
our attention to Marx’s failure to provide a satisfactory account as to how work-
ers themselves are actually ‘produced’. In this same section, we also comment on
how Marx’s identifcation of ‘ideological groups’ and ideology, more generally,
might relate to social work today. The fnal part of the chapter focuses on the
contemporary ‘world of work’ and how Marx furnished prescient insights.

Marxism: The ‘spectre’ haunting the social work classroom

Marxism has, in certain circles, become Marxology, a kind of fetishistic
obsession with what Marx said as if he were an oracle rather than a man, as
if Marxism were gospel rather than critical tools to be used and deployed
in strategic and situated ways.
(Bohrer, 2019: 168, original emphasis)

‘Marxology’ may, indeed, continue to lurk, as Bohrer suggests, in the more sterile
corners of leftist politics, but Marx still continues to furnish analytical reminders
 Questioning the world of ‘appearances’ 35

and ‘critical tools’ to help us to better understand the times in which we live.
Moreover, Marxism as a practice and as a body of theory ‘represents both a form of
revolutionary politics and one of the richest and most complex theoretical and phil-
osophical movements in human history’ (Young, 2001: 6). Consequently, a focal
question might be: how can Marx’s examination of capitalism help us to illuminate
our present historical situation? That is to say, how might he aid our understanding
of what is occurring globally, nationally, regionally and within particular ‘felds’
such as social work? Importantly, if we seek to answer these questions, there is a
need to actually read Marx. This may seem to be a fairly banal remark, yet there
may be a tendency within social work and elsewhere to rely on secondary accounts
of his work. His writings are fascinating, enlightening, amusing, but can also be
hard work and, occasionally, entirely impenetrable. To help readers navigate their
way through Marx’s texts, the Marxist geographer, David Harvey provides a num-
ber of popular – and excellent – free online lectures (@ http://davidharvey.org/).
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is still offcially ‘Marxist’, albeit with
‘Chinese characteristics’ (see Chapter 10). All Chinese college students, includ-
ing those studying social work, are required to take a course based on a textbook
called Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism. Beyond the PRC, however,
Marxism is rarely considered an appropriate topic for analysis and discussion in
the social work classroom. Susan Preston (2013: 4–5), for example, conjures an
evocative picture of how Marxist ideas tend to be regarded with scornful ‘dis-
dain’ and dismissed as ‘old thinking’. In contrast, the forty-ffth U.S. president
feared that ‘Marxists’, along with a ragbag assortment of ‘anarchists, agitators
and looters’ collectively possessed the capacity not only to ‘tear down’ statues,
they also had the political potency to ‘erase’ history, ‘indoctrinate’ children and
‘trample’ on hard won American ‘freedoms’ (Luscombe, 2020).
Returning to the terrain of mainstream social work education, Marx is often
perceived as an intellectual anachronism, whilst other iconic fgures, such as
Foucault, are lauded and have cache (see Chapter 3). This manoeuvre can, per-
haps, also be interpreted as just one of the ways in which new entrants into the
‘feld’ of social work attain a ‘sense of the game’ and are induced to quickly
learn which ideas and citations are approved of and which are frowned upon
(Bourdieu, 2000: 11). A particular type of hegemony is, therefore, maintained
with social work students arriving at a sense of their place within the ‘profession’
and the wider social world.
In the United Kingdom, Marxism had an impact on theory and practice from
the dissenting New Leftism of the late-1960s into our current times. Strikingly,
the political project to analyse social work activity as part of the matrix of social
and economic relations structured by capitalism was apparent across a number
of ‘radical social work’ textbooks published during the period of Labourism’s
demise and the rise of Thatcherism in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Notable
here were Bailey and Brake’s (1975) Radical Social Work and a series of books
commissioned by the mainstream publisher Macmillan: Corrigan and Leonard
(1978), Jones (1983), Simpkin (1983).
36 Questioning the world of ‘appearances’

Many social workers, members of labour parties and also much smaller and
explicitly Marxist parties continue to organise themselves industrially within
trade unions and they also try to shape a social work praxis underpinned by
Marxism. For example, a core group of social work educators apply Marxist rea-
soning to contemporary social work (Ferguson et al., 2018). Organisationally, a
Marxist perspective is refected, to some extent, in the politics of the Social Work
Action Network (SWAN) which developed out of a ‘Social Work Manifesto’
initially circulated in 2004. SWAN has also made a series of important interven-
tions, including those politically analysing the Grenfell Tower tragedy in 2017
(SWAN, 2017). In Ireland, SWAN’s bi-monthly bulletin Frontline has disrupted
neoliberal-compliant dispositions amongst social work educators, students and
practitioners.
In recent years, a critique of neoliberalism has become more central to the
discourse of more progressive social work educators and programmes, but we
are only able to make sense of neoliberalism if it is viewed historically and per-
ceived as a particular regime of capitalist accumulation (see Chapter 1). Framing
neoliberalism in this way enables us to situate it better within a more encompass-
ing context. Importantly, capitalism is characterised by different confgurations
across history and across the world, but it is still possible to chart how, in general
terms, it has evolved. In much of the West, therefore, we identify four broadly
conceived phrases. First, the two phrases which preoccupied Marx – mercantile
capitalism and, dominant at the conjuncture when he was writing, competitive
liberal capitalism. Subsequently, these phrases were superseded in the 1940s, by
the state-managed capitalism of the Fordist period and then, from the late-1970s,
by the globalised neoliberal capitalism of today which has been accompanied by
a ‘historic leap in the size of the world proletariat’ (Federici, 2014: 94).
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is presently in fux: new ways of
managing the current crisis may result in an entirely different regime of accu-
mulation and a new global hegemonic order may emerge. The danger is that this
may fnd expression in a more interventionist, authoritarian and surveillance-
minded states. Alternatively, capitalism may be more benignly transformed or
even replaced by a system that is more economically, socially and ecologically
sustainable.

Marxism as a resource for DSW

Critics and dissenters infuenced by Marxist analytics formulate three interre-
lated critiques of capitalism (see also Table 2.1).
Many writers locating their work within the broad parameters of Marxism
tend to lay emphasis on one or another of these three critiques. In contrast, Marx
weaves together the triple, arguably inseparable, strands. Although this is often
not dwelt on in secondary accounts of his work, he recognises the socially advan-
tageous changes which capitalism prompts and takes into account its ‘accom-
plished wonders’ (Marx and Engels, 2017 [1848]: 9). He also, with a sense of
 Questioning the world of ‘appearances’ 37

TABLE 2.1 Marx’s Tripartite Critique of Capitalism

Functionalist critique Founded on the observation that capitalism, as an economic

system, simply does not work because it is intrinsically
dysfunctional and crisis prone. This is refected in the inherent
‘boom’ and ‘bust’ cycle.
Moral or social justice Rooted in the belief that capitalism is morally wrong, unjust
orientated critique and based on exploitation. This form of critique may be viewed
as implicit in the declaration articulated by the International
Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) that ‘social justice’ is
‘fundamental’ to social work. Relatedly, there is a commitment
to bringing about the ‘liberation of people’ and enhancing
‘wellbeing’ (International Federation of Social Workers, 2014).
Ethical critique Grounded in the idea that lives shaped by the economic and
social imperatives of capital are likely to become impoverished,
meaningless and alienated. Marx argues that within capitalist
society, humans undergo a hollowing, a ‘complete emptying
out’. Within bourgeois society, the ‘modern gives no satisfaction;
or, where it appears satisfed with itself, it is vulgar’ (Marx, 1981
[1857–58]: 488, original emphasis).

admiration and not irony, comments on the ‘great civilizing infuence of capital’
(Marx, 1981 [1857–58]: 409). Such remarks highlight the dialectical approach
at the core of Marx’s intellectual and political project. Capitalism constitutes an
advance compared to previous forms of economic organisation, whilst also being
a ‘more refned’ means of ‘exploitation’ (Marx 1990 [1867]: 486). The problem
is that the ‘gains’ are not distributed in an equitable way.
Marx is also constantly alert to the sheer dynamism, turbulence and volatility
inherent in capitalist economies (Inman, 2018). The bourgeoisie cannot ‘exist
without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby
the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society’ (Marx
and Engels, 2017 [1848]: 9–10). Initially published in 1848, the Communist
Manifesto famously refers to the incessant revolutionising of

production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting

uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier
ones. All fxed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and vener-
able prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become
antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air.
(Marx and Engels, 2017 [1848]: 10)

Along with Engels, Marx perceives capitalism as an expansive and global form
of economic and social organisation. Hence, the need for a ‘constantly expand-
ing market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the
38 Questioning the world of ‘appearances’

globe’ (Marx and Engels, 2017 [1848]: 10). Capital must ‘nestle everywhere,
settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere’ (Marx and Engels, 2017
[1848]: 10).
At the core of Marx’s critique of capitalism is – in simple terms – the realisa-
tion that the worker is systematically and relentlessly exploited. This is because
s/he is compelled to surrender their labour power to the employer who fails to
pay her/him in a way that is commensurate with the actual value of the work
undertaken to produce a commodity. As the employer accrues ‘surplus value’ the
worker is invariably robbed with the wages system merely serving to obscure
this fact. In the 1880s, Engels (1881) criticises the whole notion that’ within a
system rigged to serve the interests of capital, a worker could ever be rewarded
with ‘a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work’. According to his reading and that
of Marx, wages or salaries, and in some instances workers’ enhanced ability to
buy consumer items and to ‘extend the circle of their enjoyments’, cannot elimi-
nate the exploitation inherent in how capital operates (Marx, 1990 [1867]: 769).
However, foreshadowing today’s corporate advertising industry, Marx notes
how the capitalist constantly seek out ways to ‘spur’ workers on to ‘consumption,
to give his wares new charms, to inspire them with new needs by constant chat-
ter’ (Marx, 1981 [1857–58]: 287).
The history of capitalism is also a history of slavery and of colonialism and new
‘enjoyments’ were frequently derived from the labour of slaves subjected to pro-
cesses of ‘brutal extractivism’ (Fraser in Fraser and Jaeggi, 2018: 93). Indeed, this
is what provided workers in the Western world with the opportunity to consume
products such as tea and sugar (McClintock, 1995; Barbagallo, 2019). Returning
to our present world, we can maintain that information and communication
technologies (ICTs) provide a good example of contemporary commodities that
are marketed as having a particular symbolic allure for consumers. However,
the world’s largest deposits of cobalt, an essential element in the production of
rechargeable batteries, are located in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
where children, compelled to work in ‘stone age’ working conditions, are paid
a dollar or two a day to obtain this chemical element (International Rights
Advocates, 2019). This exploitation of the child labourer is entirely obscured or
‘veiled’ – to use a favourite word of Marx – when a battery-powered iPhone is
used in, for example, the United Kingdom. It is not diffcult to imagine, there-
fore, a social worker in, say Liverpool, using an iPhone to provide an account of
a child protection visit to their manager, whilst being entirely oblivious to the
abuse of children which is integral to the manufacture of this device in Kinshasa.
Writing in the nineteenth century, Marx presciently observes that access to
new, even pleasurable patterns of consumption, is always precarious in that the
availability of novel ‘enjoyments’ will be withdrawn during periods when capi-
talism invariably loops from ‘boom’ to ‘bust’. As Marx comments, the

worker’s participation in the higher, even cultural satisfactions, the agi-

tation for his own interests, newspaper subscriptions, attending lectures,
 Questioning the world of ‘appearances’ 39

educating his children, developing his taste etc., his only share of civilisa-
tion which distinguishes him from the slave, is economically only possible
by widening the sphere of his pleasures at the times when business is good,
where saving is to a certain degree possible.
(Marx, 1981 [1857–58]: 287)

After the years of class warfare from above (usually discursively packaged as ‘aus-
terity’), this analysis has signifcant contemporary resonances.
Marx views capital as inherently exploitative of workers: we only have our
labour power to sell on the market as a commodity and the owners of capital
extract and appropriate surplus value. As Marx (1990 [1867]: 451) observes, the
‘socially productive power of labour develops as a free gift to capital whenever
the workers are placed under certain conditions, and it is capital which places
them under these conditions’. Crucially, the ‘production of surplus-value, or the
making of profts, is the absolute law’ of the capitalist mode of production (Marx,
1990 [1867]: 769). This ‘law’ holds as much sway today as it did in the nineteenth
century.
Labour power is, therefore, squeezed for every scintilla of proft and Marx
(1990 [1867]: 411) points to capital’s ‘drive towards a boundless and ruthless
extension of the working day’ (Marx, 1990 [1867]: 411). More generally, explains
Marx (1990 [1867]: 376), capital asks ‘no questions about the length of life of
labour power. What interests it is purely and simply the maximum of labour-
power that can be set in motion in a working day’. By extending the working
day, capitalist production ‘not only produces a deterioration of human labour-
power by robbing it of its normal moral and physical conditions of development
and activity’, it also produces the ‘premature exhaustion and death of this labour
power itself ’ (Marx, 1990: 376).
Signifcantly, this disregard for workers’ health and wellbeing is not confned
to the evolution of capitalism in the nineteenth century (Chan, 2013). Capitalist
brutalism continues to be motivated by employers’ recognition that within a
capitalist system, ‘moments are elements of proft’ (Marx, 1990 [1867]: 352).
Capitalist production ‘drives, by its inherent nature, towards the appropriation
of labour throughout the whole of the 24 hours in the day’ (Marx, 1990 [1867]:
367). Technological innovation produces labour-saving devices, and this could
result in the creation of a ‘large quantity of disposable time’ for workers (Marx
1981 [1857–58]; 708). However, these opportunities for greater human eman-
cipation are foreclosed by capital given the tendency always to ‘convert’ new
‘disposable time’ ‘into surplus labour’ (Marx 1981 [1857–58]; 708). In a manner
illuminating the current situation of a worker constantly pinned in front of a
computer screen dealing with an avalanche of emails, Marx observes that the
most ‘developed machinery thus forces the worker to work longer’ than she may
have done with only the ‘simplest, crudest tools’ (Marx 1981 [1857–58]; 708–9).
Present-day technological communication – such as emails and Microsoft
Teams, Zoom and other forms of video-conferencing – disperse and intensify
40 Questioning the world of ‘appearances’

work with home lives becoming fooded with work-related tasks (Ryan and
Garrett, 2018). For many white-collar workers, during the ‘lockdowns’ prompted
by the COVID-19 pandemic, work and offce blend into a barely separable total-
ity. More fundamentally, virtual meetings – convened using video-conferencing
platforms – challenge the very idea that homes are ‘enclosed, private spaces’
(Manji, 2020). Perhaps this can be related to Marx’s assessment that the ‘machin-
ery’, at the service of capital, ‘confscates the whole of the worker’s life-time
by its immoderate extension of the working day’ (Marx, 1990 [1867]: 544).
However, he also understands, of course, that it is not simply the machines which
are to blame for workers’ discontent and oppression (see Chapter 4).

Extending the Marxist analysis: ‘Productive’

work, ‘unproductive’ work, social
reproduction, ‘ideological groups’
‘Productive’ and ‘unproductive’ work
According to classical or orthodox Marxism, social workers and similar groups
are likely to be categorised as ‘unproductive’ workers. This is because, certainly
until we entered a neoliberal period, most practitioners – in locations such as the
United Kingdom – were unlikely to produce surplus value or profts for capital-
ist employers. The vast majority of practitioners were situated within the public
sector and were not employed by proft-seeking private employers. Perhaps, to
the contemporary ear, Marx’s ‘unproductive’ conveys has derogatory connota-
tions, but this was largely absent in his thinking and simply derived from his
understanding of how capitalism came into existence and continues to function.
So for him, according to the logic of capital, a range of workers could be char-
acterised as ‘unproductive’. In ‘bourgeois society’, this includes those labouring
for ‘personal consumption, cooking, sewing etc., garden work etc.’ (Marx, 1981
[1857–58]: 468). What is more, ‘civil servants, physicians, lawyers, scholars etc’
also fall ‘under this rubric’ and so are part of the ‘unproductive classes’ (Marx,
1981 [1857–58]: 468). Indeed, Marx sardonically comments that to be a ‘produc-
tive worker’ is ‘not a piece of luck, but a misfortune’ (Marx, (1990 [1867]: 644).
Relatedly, the ‘productive worker’ is an alienated worker whose day-to-activity
is rendered arid. Hence, he cares as ‘much about the crappy shit he has to make
as does the capitalist who employs him, and who couldn’t give a damn about the
junk’ (Marx, 1981 [1857–58]: 273).
Marx refers, for example, to a teacher working for a privately owned school.
The teacher in this situation is a ‘productive worker’ because, despite being
structurally located outside the ‘sphere of material production’, they work them-
selves into the ground to ‘enrich the owner of the school’ who had chosen to lay
out his ‘capital in a teaching factory’. The fact that the owner has opted to seek
profts in education, rather than a ‘sausage factory’, makes no difference. In this
instance, it is simply the case that the teacher, rather than the factory worker, is
 Questioning the world of ‘appearances’ 41

the individual from whom a portion of their labour power is, effectively, stolen
in the form of the ‘surplus value’ reaped by the employer.
Social work is a form of labour which, even if deployed in settings with no
direct private-sector employer, is situated in a ‘world of commodities’ governed
by capital (Marx, 1990 [1867]: 129) Moreover, even public sector organisations,
often starved of adequate funding by neoliberal central state administrations,
have increasingly been modelled on private sector approaches to work and ‘per-
formance’ monitoring. Even if formally apart from the ‘private’ and proft-seek-
ing sector, such organisations must often frame and measure their activity in
‘economic terms’ (Brown, 2015: 10). However, as observed in Chapter 1, social
work services are also now much more likely to be privatised than in the Fordist
period and so many practitioners fnd themselves in a position somewhat akin to
Marx’s beleaguered and exploited schoolteacher in the 1860s.
Nevertheless, there are complexities, even problems, with Marx’s
‘productive’/’unproductive’ binary. In what follows, we will briefy concentrate
on two aspects. First is the fact that this construction is gendered and occludes a
detailed exploration of how workers themselves are, effectively, produced. A good
deal of unpaid work, undertaken within the family pivots on care and emo-
tional maintenance and it is diffcult to see how workers and capitalist economies
could survive without this form of hidden subsidy. Second, Marx arguably fails
to emphasise the important ideological work that the so-called ‘unproductive’
workers – such as social workers in the public sector – perform within the social
totality of capitalist society.

Social reproduction
Capitalism is more than a specifc form of economic production. That is to say,
the sphere of production and the extraction of ‘surplus value’ are inseparable
from the specifc institutional orders and social practices that lie beyond the point
of production and formal contractual relations (Fraser and Jaeggi, 2018). Vital
here is the role that social reproduction fulfls and, in both a historical and con-
temporary sense, the role of women. Tithi Bhattacharya succinctly defnes social
reproduction as the ‘activities and institutions that are required for making life,
maintaining life, and generationally replacing life’ (in Jaffe, 2020). However, we
do not fnd a robust theory of such ‘life-making’ activities in Marx’s work given
that he is ‘mostly silent about the circuits producing the most extraordinary com-
modity of all under capitalism; namely the worker’ (Mezzadri, 2019: 36). Marx’s
‘take’ on this question is, at best, incomplete and suggestive rather than truly
illuminating in that his analysis of the dynamics of social reproduction merely
dwells on the necessity of workers’ consuming in order to maintain the quality
and robustness of their labour power.
Nonetheless, for the capitalist system to survive, labour needs replenishing
and renewing to retain value as a marketable commodity. Indeed, during the
lockdowns prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.K. and many other
42 Questioning the world of ‘appearances’

governments provided salary replacement (up to 80 percent) for so-called ‘fur-

loughed’ workers to maintain their ability to consume and to safeguard the
quality of their labour power. Such forms of state intervention entirely cohere
with Marx’s focus on how the reproduction of labour can be associated with
the necessity of providing workers with a basic standard of living. However,
his sole focus tends to rather obscure how workers within the global factory are
produced, cared for, nurtured and shaped within the family. This form of social
reproduction is, in fact, an indispensable background condition for the possibility
of economic production in a capitalist society. Thus, socialist feminist theorists
‘stretch’ Marx’s work to address this shortcoming and a fascinating body of Left-
orientated ‘social reproduction’ theory extends his contributions (see also Vogel,
2013 [1983]; Murphy, 2015; Bhattacharya, 2017; Gimenez, 2019). Nancy Fraser
(2016: 101:2) maintains:

The work of birthing and socialising the young is central … as is caring

for the old, maintaining households, building communities and sustain-
ing the shared meanings, affective dispositions and horizons of value that
underpin social cooperation. In capitalist societies much, though not all,
of this activity goes on outside the market – in homes, neighbourhoods,
civil-society associations, informal networks and public institutions, such
as schools; and relatively little of it takes the form of wage labour. Non-
waged social-reproductive activity is necessary to the existence of waged
work, the accumulation of surplus value and the functioning of capitalism.

Ambreena Manji (2020), wryly commenting on responses to the pandemic,

observes that the ‘instruction by our employers to “work from home” was strik-
ing: what do we imagine has been going on in homes other than work?’ Certainly,
the crisis makes visible and simultaneously puts under further strain social repro-
duction. In 2018, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) reported that
across the world, ‘without exception, women perform three-quarters of unpaid
care work’ (ILO, 2018: xxiv). Without this work, which entails ‘producing the
work-force’, it is inconceivable that capitalism would be maintained (Federici,
2019: 55). This dimension was illuminated, if only partially, by the series of
demands issued by the ‘wages for housework’ campaign emerging from the post-
1968 Italian Left (Federici, 2018; see also Garrett, 2018b: Ch. 11).
Refecting some of the contradictions inherent in capitalism, the work of
social reproduction is – perhaps especially since the period of neoliberalism –
constantly eroded because women who previously worked as unpaid carers are
more frequently sucked into the labour market. As a consequence, child-care
not undertaken within the school is often undertaken by poorly paid work-
ers in the commodifed private sector (Fraser, 2016). However, this does not
entirely extinguish the problem which capital is generating because the ‘logic
of economic production overrides that of social reproduction, destabilising the
very processes on which capital depends – compromising the social capacities,
 Questioning the world of ‘appearances’ 43

both domestic and public, that are needed to sustain accumulation over the long
term’ (Fraser, 2016: 103). Indeed, this ‘logic’ is one that Marx (1981 [1857–
58]: 334) so brilliantly identifes: the ‘endless and limitless drive’ to go beyond
limits, even if this involves actually eroding the social and reproductive infra-
structure that forms a condition of its continuing evolution. Another example
is provided by the erosion of an international public health infrastructure as is
refected by Trump’s antipathy – even during the pandemic – for the World
Health Organization (WHO).
Practitioners fulfl a crucial role in regulating and policing the spheres of
social reproduction and themes at the heart of Marxist social reproduction theory
can enhance our understanding (Ferguson and McNally, 2013; McNally and
Ferguson, 2015). For example, in relation to the material and moral rearing of
children, social workers assess and intervene to ensure that ‘parenting’ is ‘good
enough’ (Adcock and White, 1985). Indeed, this monitoring of the calibre of
‘parenting’ – in reality more frequently of mothering capacity – within mostly
impoverished communities can be situated within the analytics of social repro-
duction theory (Bryson, 2016). As a social worker, I recall the child protec-
tion-related visits to female ‘single-parents’ who had allegedly left their teenage
children ‘home alone’ whilst doing precarious jobs in shops, bars and social care
settings (Garrett, 2001). They were merely trying to juggle the demands gener-
ated by needing to sell their labour power in order to live whilst also trying to
maintain satisfactory or ‘good enough’ standards of social reproduction. In short,
capital – and patriarchy – had presented these women with, what we might call,
a ‘lose-lose’ situation.
Here, the suggestion is not that the entirety of social work with children and
families can be reductively – and erroneously – perceived as solely concerned
with the governance of social reproduction. It would also be foolish to dismiss
the benign facets of the discourse circulating around the ‘welfare’ of the child
being ‘paramount’. Nevertheless, the role of social work practitioners and kindred
workers within the political economy of social reproduction certainly warrants
more exploration on, for example, social work education courses. Moreover,
certain mainstream tropes – notably that of child attachment – might be looked
at much more critically if viewed through the lens of a Marxist-infected social
reproduction theory. What, for example, does child attachment theorisation pre-
sume about a given social totality and the ‘appropriate’ gender and work roles
within it? How is a normal, functioning adult constituted and what social dispo-
sitions should they display?

Ideological groups
Capitalism is more than a system rooted in a particular form of economic
exploitation; it is a system giving rise to a whole social world which functions
to ideologically consolidate (or, occasionally to destabilise) it. In this context,
social workers can be perceived as akin to the ‘ideological’ groups’, such as
44 Questioning the world of ‘appearances’

‘members of the government, priests and lawyers’, who Marx (1990 [1867]:
574) comments on in the late nineteenth century. In The German Ideology, he
observes that the

ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e. the class
which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling
intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at
its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental produc-
tion, so thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means
of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more
than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the domi-
nant material relationships grasped as ideas.
(Marx in Tucker, 1972: 272–3)

Consequently, the ruling class ‘rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and
regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age’ (Marx in
Tucker, 1972: 272–3). Does it require, ask Marx and Engels (2017 [1848]: 44),
‘deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views and conceptions, in one
word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his
material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?’ (Marx and Engels,
2017 [1848]: 44). However, and despite the increasing monopolisation of the
media by capitalist elites, it is unduly reductive to assume that dominant ideas,
and other elements of the ‘superstructure’ overlaying the material base of capital-
ist society, simply refect the imperatives of the ruling class. Indeed, Marx and
Engels themselves were often far less reductive than some commentators assume.
For example, commenting on misrepresentations of their materialist conceptu-
alisation of history, Engels (1890) remarks that the

ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduc-

tion of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted.
Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the
only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless,
abstract, senseless phrase.

As Marxist social reproduction theorists implicitly perceive, social work has an

‘ideological’ role in helping to reproduce the proletariat in ensuring that young
people are instilled with the ‘right’ attitude to what is often blandly termed,
the ‘world of work’ (Gilligan, 1999: 87). Historically, and into our contempo-
rary period, social workers also police and are tasked with re-moralising those
who exist on the periphery of this same ‘world’. Thus, along with teachers,
youth workers and so on, practitioners contribute to the social reproduction of
a workforce ‘good enough’ for capital. In some countries, this role is manifestly
workfare-orientated because of the role that social workers fulfl in assessing
and steering ‘job-seekers’ into the labour market (Peck, 2001). Infamously, the
 Questioning the world of ‘appearances’ 45

infuential Looking after Children (LAC) system, so prevalent in the United

Kingdom and elsewhere a few years ago, conveyed a worldview entirely in tune
with the imperatives of capital (Ward, 1995). This was especially the case in the
LAC assessment schedules relating to how a young person, poised to take their
labour power to market, should appropriately conduct themselves in workplace
relationships with employers and managers (for a fuller discussion, see Garrett,
2003).
Despite the ‘unproductive’ worker label, social workers can, therefore, be
interpreted as helping to constitute – or destabilise – part of the wider capital-
ist ‘productive’ infrastructure. Perhaps also, along with Louis Althusser (1971),
we can grasp how social work forms part of the ‘ideological state apparatus’.
However, recognising the role that social work fulfls is not, of course, simply a
negative exercise because identifying its complicity serves also to illuminate the
possibilities of dissent (Ioakimidis and Trimikliniotis, 2020).
Antonio Gramsci, for example, introduces new complexities into overly
mechanistic forms of Marxist reasoning (see also Chapter 10). During a period
when Marxist theory was dominated by economic determinism, his recognition
of the importance of ‘superstructural’ factors, such as politics, culture and ideol-
ogy, shifts the emphasis away from an overly narrow focus on the economic basis
of society. As Landy (1986: 53) maintains, Gramsci’s

dialectical analysis proceeds from the assumption that everything in life

is in constant motion, that everything is interrelated rather than rigidly
schematic and systematic. In Gramsci’s analysis of institutions, the church,
schools, corporations, trade unions, and forms of ‘entertainment’ … are
conceived of as a source of lived social relations and as sources of constant
confict.

These are also institutions and arenas where the struggle to re-orient ‘com-
mon sense’ and to strive for a different type of society (Crehan, 2016).
Subsequently, a number of leftist intellectuals evolved forms of Marxist cul-
tural theory to try and understand the potency of capitalist ideas and how
these contribute to the maintenance of class hegemony (Williams, 1983; Hall;
2011; Fraser, 2013).

The contemporary ‘world of work’: Deteriorating

conditions of work, precarious work, no work
As we have observed, Marx’s analysis of work in a capitalist economy continues
to provide enormous insights into social work in the twenty-frst century. Here
and in related felds, the deployment of ICTs is contributing to the evolution of
a new ‘techno-habitat’ and a new temporal discipline (Dyer-Witheford, 1999;
Garrett, 2005). This is a domain in which the working day appears to be con-
stantly expanding with technology deployed more to deepen the exploitation of
46 Questioning the world of ‘appearances’

workers than to create possibilities for personal growth and fulflment (Baines,
2004; see also Chapter 4).
According to a survey of over a thousand social workers, by the U.K. trade
union UNISON (2019), many are no longer able to do their jobs effectively
because of the years of cuts that have produced a deep crisis in the sector. The
survey reveals that an overwhelming proportion (95 percent) feel they could not
adequately perform their jobs due to the combined effects of reduced services and
the social conditions created by ‘austerity’. More than nine in ten social workers
(92 percent) state that budget cuts had resulted in plummeting staff morale. Eight
out of ten report that they are compelled to undertake unpaid overtime simply
to keep their services going with fewer than one in fve (17 percent) saying their
workload is manageable. More than half (56 percent) are considering leaving for
jobs that may be less stressful.
However, Marxists would not perceive social work – or any other form of
labour – as inherently onerous, unpleasant and exploitative. Rather, it is work
subject to the imperatives of capital and the ‘boundless drive’ for proft which
promotes unsatisfactory and exploitative working conditions (Marx, 1990 [1867]:
254). Marx sees that work retains the ‘potential to become a life-enhancing activ-
ity in a future communist society’ (Spencer, 2014: 25). He markedly differs from
the bourgeois political economist, Adam Smith. According to Smith, labour is a
‘curse’, whereas a state of ‘tranquility’ is ‘identical’ to ‘freedom’ and ‘happiness’
(Marx, 1981 [1857–58]: 611). As Marx (1981: 611) suggests, it seems ‘quite far’
from Smith’s ‘mind that the individual … needs a normal portion of work, and of
the suspension of tranquility’. Smith has ‘no inkling whatever’ that fulflling work
and the ‘overcoming of obstacles is in itself a liberating activity’. In labour, the
individual can also fnd ‘self-realisation’ and ‘real freedom’ (Marx, 1981 [1857–
58]: 611). In short, as every worker – including social workers and educators –
know, work can be a ‘positive undertaking’ (Spencer, 2014: 27). The problem is
that under capitalist conditions, work practices become alienating, cheapened, de-
skilled and subjected to ever-encroaching modes of surveillance (see also Chapter
4). What is more, as the ‘repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases’
or wages fail to rise to keep up with the rise in prices for essential commodi-
ties such as food (Marx and Engels, 2017 [1848]: 18). In the United States, for
example, median wages have been ‘stagnant for half a century’ (Case and Deaton,
2020: 7). This tendency is inherent to capitalism and its deleterious impact can be
witnessed, beyond traditional blue-collar labour, across a range of professions. In
the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels (2017 [1848]: 9) observe:

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured
and looked up to with reverent awe. It has also converted the physician, the
lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

In current times, it is possible to observe how the ‘halo’ – or what Bourdieu

(2001) might term the ‘symbolic capital’ – formerly attached to particular felds
 Questioning the world of ‘appearances’ 47

has mostly been extinguished or dimmed. So, for example, the jobs of doctors,
teachers and lecturers have become increasingly proletarianised and subjected to
labour processes which are more pressurised, routinised, surveilled and vulner-
able to incessant demands for ‘output’ data. Never endowed with much symbolic
lustre, social work has followed a similar trajectory ( Jones, 2001).
As Marx outlines, one of the obvious contradictions within capitalism is that
the large mass of workers are exhausted because of expanding workloads and a
‘working day’ increasingly encroaching into family and home lives, whilst others
are left without paid employment.

The over-work of the employed part of the working class swells the ranks
of its reserve, while, conversely, the greater pressure that the reserve by
its competition exerts on the employed workers forces them to submit to
over-work and subjects them to the dictates of capital. The condemnation
of one part of the working class to enforced idleness by the over-work of
the other part, and vice versa, becomes a means of enriching individual
capitalists.
(Marx, 1990 [1867]: 789)

The expansion of the ‘gig economy’ and ‘extremely irregular’ patterns of

employment furnishes capital with ‘an inexhaustible reservoir of disposable
labour-power’ (Marx, 1990 [1867]: 796). Today, those subjected to such forms of
work are often discussed in terms of ‘precarious’ labour and this is prevalent in
service, retail and care sectors (Good Gingrich, 2010). Precarious workers also
inhabit specifc niches within the felds of social work and university education.
Indeed, Marx’s (1990 [1867]: 796) description of this section of the working class
is as accurate today as it was when the frst volume of Capital was published in
1867: its

conditions of life sink below the average normal level of the working
class, and it is precisely this which makes it a broad foundation for special
branches of capitalist exploitation. It is characterized by a maximum of
working time and a minimum of wages.
(Marx, 1990 [1867]: 796)

Entirely in line with Marx’s analysis, the period of neoliberal capitalism wit-
nessed the imposition of ‘overtime’ on workers whilst others are – to use the
gently cruel phrase – ‘let go’. Temporary and precarious employment patterns,
the ‘employer’s dream’ (Bourdieu, 2001: 34), became insidiously normalised
during the period of neoliberal capitalism with ‘disposable’ workers emerging as
‘prototypical upon the world stage’ (Harvey, 2005: 169). Such workers include,
of course, lowly paid public health staff, social care workers, grocery check-out
staff and ‘bin-men’ who have – almost overnight on account of the COVID-19
crisis – morphed into ‘key’ or ‘frontline’ workers (Harvey, 2020).
48 Questioning the world of ‘appearances’

Blighting the lives of many users of social work services, unemployment is

no accident, nor is it a mere unfortunate by-product fowing from an essentially
well-functioning economic system. This is because of the ‘tendency of capital
to increase the labouring population, as well as constantly to posit a part of it
as surplus population … which is useless until such time as capital can utilize
it’ (Marx, 1981 [1857–58]: 399). Importantly, unemployment also functions to
‘rediscipline labour to accept a lower wage rate’ and inferior terms and conditions
of employment (Harvey, 2010: 60). In short, capital requires a disposable or ‘sur-
plus’ population of workers which becomes the ‘lever of capitalist accumulation’
(Marx, 1990 [1867]: 784). Constituting a ‘disposable industrial reserve army’ and
a ‘mass of human material always ready for exploitation, this surplus’ is, in fact,
a ‘condition of the existence of the capitalist mode of production’ (Marx, 1990
[1867]: 784).
In our world, the startling accuracy of Marx’s analysis is substantiated by the
scale of youth unemployment in Europe. In late-2017, it was reported that 3.698
million young persons (under 25) were unemployed in the EU28, of whom 2.624
million were in the euro area. In percentage terms, the youth unemployment
rate was 16.2 percent in the EU28 and 18.2 percent in the euro area. Moreover,
in some European countries the youth unemployment rates were considerably
higher than the wider European rates: Greece (39.5 percent), Spain (37.9 per-
cent) and Italy (32.7 percent) (Eurostat, 2018). Across a larger canvas, almost 43
percent of the global youth labour force is ‘either unemployed, or working but
living in poverty’ and in ‘developing countries, it has been estimated that 260
million young people are not in employment, education or training’ (Oxfam,
2018: 13). Since the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, it also appears to
be young workers who are most likely to lose their jobs (BBC News, 2020b;
Mascherini and Sandor, 2020).

Conclusion
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The
point, however, is to change it.
(Marx in Tucker, 1972: 145, original emphases)

These comments, featured in Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach in 1845, are carved into
his gravestone in London’s Highgate Cemetery. They signal that Marxists aspire
to shape and nurture forms of praxis intent on wholesale economic and social
transformation. That is to say, there should be specifc and identifable forms of
political activity and action which set Marxists apart from, say, Foucauldians (see
also Chapter 3).
As we noted in the previous chapter, social workers are rhetorically com-
mitted to the ‘liberation of people’, to enhancing ‘wellbeing’ and ensuring that
principles of ‘human rights and social justice are fundamental’ (International
Federation of Social Workers, 2014). For these ethnical commitments to be
 Questioning the world of ‘appearances’ 49

rendered meaningful, they need to become more than merely part of the discur-
sive furniture. Perhaps, in this context, ‘militant’ – a keyword in socialist and
communist politics – merits a little further exploration. Within more orthodox
tendencies of Marxism, it evokes images of the clenched fst and the Internationale.
However, the etymology of the word links it to the old Latin ‘miles’ or ‘mile-
goers’ and this excavation of the roots and associations of militant implies a less
heroic image. Militants not only ‘talk the talk’ but also ‘walk the walk’ and are
tenaciously intent on ‘going the full-mile’. Again, colloquially expressed, mili-
tants ‘hang in there’ and try to hold true to socialist principles. Indeed, perhaps
it is this latter evocation which might serve as a guiding light as we, in troubled
times, chart our pathway through this book.
Next, we will turn our attention to Foucault and the related contributions
of Wendy Brown. Mostly out of step with Marx, Foucault still has interesting
things to say, which might help us think more deeply about DSW. His erudite
and problematic contributions are vast, of course, but in what follows we will
most hone in on Foucault’s perceptions of the roots of neoliberalism, human
capital and biopolitics.
50 Questioning the world of ‘appearances’

REFLECTION AND TALK BOX 2

Based in the United States, but illuminating more universal and general les-
sons, Ashley J Bohrer (2019: 162) observes that Marx and Engels highlight the
fact that:

meeting material needs – food, shelter, clothing, emotional needs neces-

sary for survival and satisfaction – will significantly frame the choices people
make. That is to say that where people live and more importantly, how
they live, is significantly embedded in these conditions. Where one lives,
whether healthy food is available in those places, whether those places are
heavily policed or not, whether or not one is subjected to segregation or
redlining, with whom one comes into contact, the extent to which con-
tact with bureaucracies and government administrations exert disciplinary
power over individuals, what kinds of health risks or environmental pollut-
ants exist near one’s home, what kinds of consumer goods one has access
to, what kinds of schools one attends, whether one can attend school at
all, whether one decides to get married or have children, whether one
can access necessary health care – all of these and more are significantly
rooted, under capitalism, in one’s ability to pay for services, and hence in
one’s class position. This does not mean that material needs are the only
factors that affect one’s life trajectory, opportunities, and circumstances,
but it does mean that material needs are relevant and often revealing in
understanding the choices – often impossible and unfree choices – that
human beings make under capitalism.

How can we relate this understanding to social work?

Why are ideas related to ‘social reproduction’ significant for social work?

Echoing Marx, Nancy Fraser (2016: 103) maintains that crashing through ‘lim-
its’ is inherent to capitalism. Furthermore,

when capital’s drive to expanded accumulation becomes unmoored from

its social bases and turns against them … the logic of economic production
overrides that of social reproduction, destabilizing the very processes on
which capital depends – compromising the social capacities, both domes-
tic and public, that are needed to sustain accumulation over the long term.
Destroying its own conditions of possibility, capital’s accumulation dynamic
effectively eats its own tail.

Given your role within social work, can you identify any instances where this
process Fraser outlines is occurring?
3
NEOLIBERALISM, HUMAN CAPITAL
AND BIOPOLITICS: MICHEL
FOUCAULT AND WENDY BROWN

Introduction
In the years between the economic ‘crash’ of 2007/2008 and the outbreak of the
COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, neoliberalism became a contested term across a
range of academic domains (Harman, 2008; Venugopal, 2015; Rodgers, 2018).
As a concept, it is claimed, it fails ‘analytically’ and is ‘hopelessly confused’ (Mair
in Venkatesan et al., 2015: 917). Furthermore, the proposition that neoliberalism
is the ‘bottom of the various ills besetting the poor and marginalised’ around the
world does ‘violence to the particular histories and structural and life conditions
of particular places and peoples’ (Venkatesan in Venkatesan et al., 2015: 911).
Some argue that the term constitutes an obstacle and should simply be dropped
(Laidlaw in Venkatesan et al., 2015). Dunn (2017: 443) charges that whilst it is
a term of the political Left, neoliberalism is mostly associated with ‘left elites’
and discourses dominating ‘academic texts and relatively highbrow media’. In
contrast – and arguably – dissenting and progressive social movements do not
have much recourse to it. Consequently, the ‘conceptual proliferation’ of neolib-
eralism continues to ‘refect and encourage the dissociation with broader social
movements’ and even legitimises a retreat into a ‘self-referential world’ (Dunn,
2017: 444).
In contrast, a number of writers stress the analytical usefulness of the concept
(see also Chapter 1 and Chapter 2). Bourdieu (2001: 35) claims that neoliber-
alism is best perceived as a ‘conservative revolution’ signalling the ‘return of
the kind of radical capitalism, with no other law than the return of maximum
proft’. According to David Harvey (2005: 168) – perhaps the leading popu-
lariser of the term – neoliberalism succeeds the ‘embedded liberalism’ mostly
dominant in the industrial West from the end of the Second World War into
the 1970s. More recently, when examining developments in various parts of the
52 Neoliberalism, human capital & biopolitics

world, various contributions continue to stress the signifcance of neoliberalism

in examining the imposition of, and opposition to, a range of social policy pro-
grammes (Schram and Pavlovskaya, 2017; Dukelow and Kennett, 2018; Grugel
and Riggirozzi, 2018; Papadopoulos and Roumpakis, 2018).
As observed in Chapter 1, one of the characteristics of DSW is that it encour-
ages forms of analysis which vibrate with a ‘historical pulse’ and so it is vital to
examine the history of economic, state and cultural processes. In this context,
therefore, it is timely to re-visit Michel Foucault’s lecture series titled ‘The Birth
of Biopolitics’ delivered at the Collège de France between 10 January and 4 April
1979. Internationally, this was a period marked by revolutionary change and
associated forms of political reaction. The Iranian Revolution would take place
just days after their commencement. In the U.K., refecting the exhaustion of
Labourism, the government of James Callaghan was limping through its fnal
weeks in offce and Margaret Thatcher would come to power on 4 May precisely
a month after Foucault concluded his lectures (Hall et al., 1978). Referring to
his contributions as ‘undermining tunnels’ [galleries de mines], Foucault compares
himself to an artisan or ‘geologist’ examining the ‘layers of terrain, the folds,
the faults’ (Foucault in Elden, 2017: 187). Undoubtedly, he performs valuable
intellectual work in excavating the origins of neoliberalism and in pinpointing
the roles played by the project’s prime ‘organic intellectuals’ in Europe and the
United States (Hoare and Nowell Smith, 2005). Foucault’s prescient – and prob-
lematic – contributions also continue to furnish insights which might conceptu-
ally contribute to the evolution of DSW.
Relying on the translation of Foucault’s words, the chapter’s frst two sections
outline his examination of the emergence of neoliberalism. In the lectures he
articulates two specifc forms of neoliberalism, German and American, sharing
the same ‘objects of repulsion, namely, the state-controlled economy, planning,
and state interventionism’ (Foucault, 2008: 79).1 The third part of the chap-
ter draws on the more recent work of the political theorist, Wendy Brown, to
explore in more detail the notion of human capital which is important for many
U.S. neoliberal intellectuals. The fourth component of the chapter briefy looks
at how human capital theory has, in some instances, been translated into prac-
tice. The fnal section returns to Foucault and, more specifcally, his theorisation
of biopolitics provided in an earlier series of lectures between January and March
1976. Here, it is suggested that his thoughts may have new signifcance since the
outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic, given that states have ostensibly
have doubled down on their efforts to know, manage, regulate and categorise
populations.

A new ‘highway code’ for capitalism: German

ordoliberals remaking the state
Correcting a pervasive and biased focus on American neoliberalism (Bourdieu
and Wacquant, 1999; 2001), Foucault’s attentiveness to the ‘German’ roots of
 Neoliberalism, human capital & biopolitics 53

much contemporary neoliberal thinking is enlightening. However, in a sense,

reference to a ‘German’ neoliberalism is also somewhat misleading. More accu-
rately, this is a West German neoliberalism evolving in the Federal Republic
of Germany (FRG) in the years following the inception of the state in 1949.
Importantly, some of its main theoreticians were actually Austrian. Ludwig von
Mises was born in what was then Austria-Hungary as was Friedrich Hayek.
Indeed, Foucault acknowledges the signifcance of the ‘Austrian school’.
Foucault emphasises the signifcance of the academic journal ORDO estab-
lished in the 1930s by the German economists, both associated with the Freiburg
School of economic thought, Walter Eucken and Franz Böhm. ORDO provided
the intellectual impetus for what became known as ordoliberalism. Alexander
Rüstow, Wilhelm Röpke and Friedrich Hayek were some of the most infuen-
tial fgures associated with this, often internally fractious, current of thought.
Not only was Hayek important within Germany, he was ‘very clearly one of
the inspirations of contemporary American liberalism, or of American anarcho-
capitalism’ (p. 104).
All of these neoliberal thinkers drastically opposed Keynesian economics and
welfare capitalism with Röpke equating the Beveridge reforms in Britain to the
horrors of Nazism (p. 110). Within this framing, Nazism was essentially and
‘above all … the unlimited growth of state power’, but it was detectable in all
other forms of state interventionism departing from the liberal model they val-
orised (p. 111). Indeed, Foucault recognises that the audacious move of the ordo-
liberals was to sweep up ‘concentration camps and social security records, in the
same critique’ presenting them both as a consequence, albeit in different ways,
of the gross infation of the state (p. 116). Within this paradigm, nothing ‘proves
that the market economy is intrinsically defective since everything attributed to
it as a defect and as the effect of its defectiveness should be attributed to the state’
(p. 116). Thus, Foucault summarises, the

ordoliberals say we should … adopt the free market as organizing and

regulating principle of the state, from the start of its existence up to the last
form of its interventions. In other words: a state under the supervision of the
market rather than a market supervised by the state.
(p. 116, emphasis added)

However, it is entirely erroneous to perceive this body of ideas as simply ‘Adam

Smith revived’ or the type of ‘market society’ which Marx unpicked and
denounced in Capital (p. 130; see also Chapter 2). Central to this new ‘art of gov-
ernment’ is a rejection of nineteenth-century laissez-faire capitalism in favour of a
more regulated approach. The evocative metaphor Foucault uses to describe this
shift is that of the ‘Highway code’ which dictates that ‘vehicles’ will no longer be
‘allowed to circulate in any direction, according to whim, with avoidable end-
less congestion and accidents’ (p. 162). To prevent such mishaps, traffc will be
strictly monitored with ‘fxed hours’, ‘routes’ and speeds imposed. Importantly,
54 Neoliberalism, human capital & biopolitics

at a time of ‘faster means of transport this code will not necessarily be the same
as in the time of stagecoaches’ (p. 162).
This form of neoliberalism was not – as some were subsequently to argue
– a project aiming to ‘roll back the state’ leaving people entirely to the whims
of an unregulated market. Neoliberal ‘governmental intervention is no less
dense, frequent, active, and continuous than in any other system’ (p. 145). What
occurs, however, is a reconstitution or remaking of the state which becomes more
vigilant and active in promoting the market economy. Neoliberalism not only
departs from the classical liberalism of the nineteenth century, it is also at odds
with what Foucault terms ‘contemporary American anarcho-capitalism’ (p. 133).
As advocated by its West German and Austrian proponents, neoliberalism is a
‘positive’ and ‘intervening liberalism’ (p. 133): an evolving form in which ‘eco-
nomic processes and institutional framework call on each other, modify and
shape each other in ceaseless reciprocity’ (p. 164).
The transformations willed by these neoliberals are associated with a novel
‘governmental style’ (p. 133) entailing different kinds of regulatory and ‘organiz-
ing’ actions (p. 138). Setting themselves frmly against Keynesianism, the prom-
ulgators of this new form of liberalism argue that there are instances where the
state should emphatically not intervene: namely, there should be no substantial
state intervention to respond to and alleviate hardships prompted by unemploy-
ment. Within this perspective, an unemployed person should never be perceived
as a ‘social victim’ (p. 139). Foreshadowing the later discourse focussed on the
so-called ‘jobseekers’, the unemployed person was better understood as merely a
‘worker in transit … in transit between an unproftable activity and more proft-
able activity’ (p. 139).
Relatedly, social policy should not ‘function like a compensatory mechanism
for absorbing or nullifying the possible destructive effects of the market’ (p. 160).
Rather, the role of social policy should be one of facilitating market processes.
As Foucault remarks

there must be those who work and those who don’t, there must be big sala-
ries and small salaries, and also prices must rise and fall. Consequently, a
social policy with the objective of even relative equalisation, even a relative
evening out, can only be anti-economic. Social policy cannot have equal-
ity as its objective. On the contrary, it must let inequality function.
(p. 143, emphasis added)

Social transfers – social security benefts – should be available, but only to pro-
vide a very basic ‘minimum’ for those who are not ‘able to ensure their own
existence’ (p. 143). Central here is the ‘idea that the economy is a game’ with
the state merely aspiring to safeguard ‘players from being excluded from the
game’ (p. 202). Above this threshold, ‘everyone will have to be an enterprise
for himself and his family’ (p. 206). More pervasively, this will be a society
‘formalized on the model’ of ‘competitive enterprise’ (p. 206). Foucault had a
 Neoliberalism, human capital & biopolitics 55

‘profound antagonism towards Marxism at this point in his life’ (Brown, 2015:
76). However, he still echoes Marx’s analysis in Capital when he asserts that
there will continue to exist a ‘liminal foating population’ which ‘for an econ-
omy that has abandoned the objective of full employment, will be a constant
reserve of manpower which can be drawn on if need be’ (p. 206). This ‘foating
population’ will be enabled ‘to live, after a fashion, and to live in such a way’
that it can ‘always be available for possible work, if market conditions require
it’ (p. 207).
Governments must not, therefore, ‘form a counterpoint or a screen …
between society and economic processes’ (p. 145). Neither must they seek to
‘correct the destructive effects of the market on society’ (p. 145). The core func-
tion of governments, according to this radical neoliberal analysis, is ‘to intervene
on society so that competitive mechanisms can play a regulatory role at every
moment and every point in society’ thus ensuring ‘a general regulation of society
by the market’ (p. 145).
In this quintessential anti-welfare state blueprint, neoliberal society is unen-
cumbered from the responsibility of ‘guarantee[ing] individuals against risks,
whether these are individual risks, like illness or accidents, or collective risks,
like damage, for example’ (p. 144). The only task for the ‘society, or rather the
economy’, will be to maintain the rule of law and to ensure that every

individual has suffcient income to be able, either directly or as an indi-

vidual, or through the collective means of mutual beneft organizations, to
insure himself against existing risks, or the risks of life, the inevitability of
old age and death, on the basis of his private reserves.
(p. 144, emphasis added)

According to Foucault, this type of ‘individual social policy’ is entirely counter-

posed to ‘socialist social policy’ (p. 144). Founded, in fact, on a socially atomising
dynamic, it involves ‘an individualization of social policy and individualization
through social policy, instead of collectivization and socialization by and in
social policy’ (p. 144). For these European neoliberals, the ‘only one true and
fundamental social policy’ is that aspiring to create ‘economic growth’ (p. 144).
Nevertheless, Foucault concedes that there are various constraints hindering this
project, including attachments people had to more benign and progressive forms
of organising social life. Although he fails to mention it, the existence of the
Eastern German Democratic Republic (GDR) also acted as a brake on the evo-
lution of ‘privatised social policy’ because it represented an alternative model
of collective welfare provision. In France, the ‘German model’ was implanted
‘slowly, insidiously, and creakingly’ (p. 192). More pervasively, ‘social policy
increasingly tends to follow’ the neoliberal programme (p. 144). Subsequently,
the ideas of the ORDO circle were to help shape the evolution of the monetary
and fnancial policies of the European Union (see Garrett, 2019a for a more
detailed exploration of this dimension).
56 Neoliberalism, human capital & biopolitics

Anarcho-capitalism: American
neoliberalism and human capital
In the second part of the ‘Birth of Biopolitics’ lecture series, Foucault turns his
attention to U.S. neoliberalism. Whilst sharing some of the characteristics of
the ‘German model’, this form of ‘anarcho’ or ‘utopian’ neoliberalism originates
from a markedly different national and cultural milieu. U.S. neoliberalism is
more encompassing than in the FRG and saturates the ‘whole way of being and
thinking’ (p. 219). Two years into the faltering one-term presidency of Jimmy
Carter, Foucault identifes U.S. neoliberalism as a ‘widespread movement of
political opposition within American society’ (p. 193). For him, however, the
1930s were a crucial period and Foucault highlights the contributions of, for
example, Henry Calvert Simons, an economist at the University of Chicago.
The emerging corpus of U.S. neoliberal ideas further shaped in opposition to
President Roosevelt’s New Deal measures, Keynesian economic policy and a
perceived infation in the size of the federal government administration.
The idea of human beings as ‘capital’ was frst introduced by Adam Smith in
the eighteenth century (Tittenbrun, 2013). However, within the U.S. neoliberal
paradigm, its theorisation emphasises how the assets (or lack thereof ) of indi-
vidual agents within a competitive society are crucial. Human capital

represents two processes, one that we could call the extension of economic
analysis into a previously unexplored domain, and second, on the basis of
this, the possibility of giving a strictly economic interpretation of a whole
domain previously thought to be non-economic.
(p. 219)

In short, everything ‘which human beings attempt to realize … from mar-

riage, to crime, to expenditures on children, can be understood “economically”
according to a particular calculation of cost for beneft’ (Read, 2009: 28).
Primary defners – with rather different approaches – include the University
of Chicago economists Theodore Schultz (1961) and Gary Becker (see Becker et
al., 2012). According to these theorists, states Foucault, human capital is com-
prised of two elements: one ‘innate’ or ‘hereditary’ and the other ‘acquired’ (p.
227). In terms of the frst type, he maintains that we ‘do not have to pay to have
the body we have’ or for our ‘genetic make-up’ (p. 227). However, he invites
us to engage in a bit of ‘science fction’ and imagine how genetic risk profling,
and the related genetic matching of parents might boost or enhance the ‘innate’
capital of their offspring (p. 228). In later years, pre-birth screening has, in fact,
become associated with greater calculation in this respect and more advanced
forms of genetic engineering have multiplied these possibilities (Cooper, 2008).
On another level, the increase in recourse to cosmetic surgery to alter or enhance
the physically ‘innate’ has also occurred.
Turning to acquired human capital, Foucault suggests that this is the form
which most interests U.S. neoliberals and this is refected in their preoccupation
 Neoliberalism, human capital & biopolitics 57

with ‘the more or less voluntary formation of human capital in the course of
individual lives’ (p. 229). How do individuals evolve into ‘abilities-machines’
to enhance their human capital? (p. 229). What in the ‘child’s family life will
produce human capital? What type of stimuli, form of life, and relationship with
parents, adults and others can be crystallized into human capital?’ (p. 230). This
is a grid of intelligibility in which ‘all the problems of health care and public
hygiene must, or at any rate, can be rethought as elements which may or may
not improve human capital’ (p. 230). Important here, therefore, are ‘educational
investments’ which are ‘much broader than simple schooling or professional
training’ (p. 229). This might include, for example, the ‘time parents devote to
their children outside of simple educational activities’ (p. 229). The entire set
of cultural stimuli received by the child will all contribute to acquired human
capital. In this context, ‘more educated parents will form a higher human capital
than parents with less education’ (p. 229). However, with a ‘whole environmen-
tal analysis’ of the child’s life, it will be ‘possible to calculate, and to a certain
extent to quantify, or at any rate measure’ the ‘possibilities of investment in
human capital’ (pp. 229–30).
Foucault, whilst decidedly uninterested in the gendered dimension (Thornton,
2014), takes child attachment discourse, so central to social work, and situates
it within his articulation of neoliberal ideas on human capital (pp. 243–44).
According to his interpretation, U.S. neoliberals are increasingly fascinated in

how the mother-child relationship, concretely characterized by the time

spent by the mother with the child, the quality of care she gives, the affec-
tion she shows, the vigilance with which she follows its development … all
constitute … an investment which can be measured in time.
(p. 244)

What lies at the root of this project, he suggests, is how these neoliberals seek
to ‘use the market economy and the typical analyses of the market economy to
decipher non-market relationships’ and wider ‘social phenomena’ (p. 241). Thus,
the vision of the U.S. neoliberal advocates involves generalising the ‘economic
form of the market … throughout the social body and including the whole of the social
system’ (p. 243, emphasis added). Across the entire society, this ‘economic analy-
sis of the non-economic’ becomes the dominant ‘analytical schema or grid of
intelligibility’ (p. 243).
Another key facet of this project is ‘to object to activities of the public authori-
ties on the grounds of their abuses, excesses, futility and wasteful expenditure’
(p. 246). This entails ‘anchoring and justifying a permanent political criticism
of political and governmental action … scrutinizing every action of the public
authorities in terms of the game of supply and demand, in terms of effciency
… and in terms of the cost of intervention by the public authorities in the feld
of the market’ (p. 246). Referring to the ‘cynicism of a market criticism’ which
functions in the United States as a ‘permanent exercise’ (p. 246), Foucault draws
58 Neoliberalism, human capital & biopolitics

attention to right-wing think-tanks, such as the American Enterprise Institute,

aiming to measure ‘all public activities in cost-beneft terms’ (p. 247). This inces-
sant criticism of government policy amounts, in fact, to a ‘sort of permanent
economic tribunal confronting government’ (p. 247).

Expanding the analysis of human

capital theory: Wendy Brown
Foucault’s ‘take’ on the neoliberal agenda is highly ambiguous and there are
indications that, for him, part of this agenda had a certain allure (for a fuller dis-
cussion, see Garrett, 2019b). Furthermore, in the ‘biopolitics’ lecture series we
get no real sense that there are dissenters and that people resisted the imposition
of neoliberalism in Europe and the United States. Aside from Foucault’s brief
reference to the general strike in the FRG opposing the neoliberal economic
reconfguration after the Second World War, there is hardly any mention of
how people collectively organise or devise strategies to counter neoliberalism. In
Foucault’s account there are ‘few social forces from below’ or ‘shared struggles
for freedom’. Such absences, in fact, are a ‘perennial limitation’ characterising
much of his work (Brown, 2015: 73–4). In contrast, a good deal of contem-
porary analysis identifes global forces of resistance (Schram and Pavlovskaya,
2017; Dukelow and Kennett, 2018; Gruegel and Riggirozzi, 2018; Ishkanian and
Glasius, 2018; Papadopoulous and Roumpakis, 2018).
When Foucault delivered his Paris lectures, he was unable to predict the rise
and subsequent dominance of neoliberalism. Neither was he able to foresee the
subsequent scale of the assaults on the welfare state associated with the neoliberal
project. However, his comments on human capital certainly take on a resonant
aptness in the frst quarter of the twenty-frst century. Since the late-1970s, we
can, moreover, identify how the human capitalist theorists have been intent on
‘hollowing’, and completely ‘emptying out’ what it means to be a more rounded
human being (Marx, 1981 [1857–58]: 488). Indeed, the whole notion of human
capital is posited on a renunciation of the human and it runs entirely counter to the
ethics at the core of social work.
Focusing on the U.S. form of neoliberalism and the notion of human capital,
Wendy Brown extends Foucault’s examination. Although her perspective has
rightly been criticised as a little too emphatic and too U.S.-centric (Balibar,
2015: Ch. 7), it still illuminates facets of the lives and jobs of those of us based
elsewhere. Brown’s insights are not conceptually framed by Gramscian ideas,
but she implies that neoliberals have been adept at installing a particular form of
‘common sense’ (Crehan, 2016). One example she provides is how both individ-
uals and, indeed, nation states are increasingly constructed along the lines of the
‘contemporary frm’ and are encouraged to hone ‘practices of entrepreneurial-
ism, self-investment and/or attracting investors’ (Brown, 2015: 22). In this con-
text, Schultz, referred to earlier, is an interesting fgure because he was alert to
the ethical problems spawned by this view of the world. In short, the theorisation
 Neoliberalism, human capital & biopolitics 59

of human capital risked debasing human beings (Cooper, 2017). In a fascinating

paper, published in the early 1960s, Schultz (1961: 2) argues that:

Free men [sic] are frst and foremost the end to be served by economic
endeavor; they are not property or marketable assets … . Our values and
beliefs inhibit us from looking upon human beings as capital goods, except
in slavery, and this we abhor. We are not unaffected by the long struggle to
rid society of indentured service and to evolve political and legal institu-
tions to keep men free from bondage. These are achievements that we prize
highly. Hence, to treat human beings as wealth that can be augmented by
investment runs counter to deeply held values. It seems to reduce man once
again to a mere material component, to something akin to property. And
for man to look upon himself as a capital good, even if it did not impair his
freedom, may seem to debase him.

The approach that Schultz was wary and ethically uncomfortable about is, per-
haps, also refected in the contemporary notion that a ‘brand’ is vital if an indi-
vidual is to prosper (Peters, 1997). This same ‘vibe’ is similarly apparent in the
growth of LinkedIn and related ‘platforms’, which are available and cater for the
potential enhancement of the ‘self ’s future value’ (Brown, 2015: 34).
Partly refected in the discursive shift that has taken place in most large organ-
isations from the ‘Personnel Department’ to ‘Human Resources’, Brown (2015:
10) suggests the ‘neoliberal reason’ constructs and governs us as merely human
capital ‘tasked with improving and leveraging’ our competitive positioning in
order to enhance value. This neoliberal reasoning runs counter to the analy-
sis of Marx because the employer/worker categories are, effectively, dissolved
and replaced by the omnipresent fgure of the ‘entrepreneur’. Within this U.S.
neoliberal paradigm, therefore, the need for class solidarity, trade unions and
workers’ parties is extinguished because each of us has become a mini-frm.
Interpreted somewhat differently, this move can be understood as an ideological
ploy by neoliberals aiming to obscure the continued signifcance of employer/
worker, capital/labour (see also Chapter 2).
If there is a strategic concession, recognising labour as a collective endeavour,
it is to be found in the neoliberal promotion of ‘team consciousness’ within
the workplace (Brown, 2015: 211): a construct, derived from a competitive
and sporting register which implicitly seeks to ward off a mutual sense of ‘class
consciousness’. Rather, with ‘team consciousness’, all ‘staff ’ are encouraged and
chivvied to aspire to achieve the same ‘goal’ and to remain fully committed to
‘winning’. Moreover, an important dimension inherent in this move is the aim to
obscure power relations within the workplace. Satirised in TV series, such as The
Offce, the ‘team’ – which is supposed to coalesce via, for example, ‘team-build-
ing’ and similar technologies – is now a prevalent form of discursive governance
across grocery chains, universities, social work services etc.
60 Neoliberalism, human capital & biopolitics

The initial interest of many of the human capital theorists was in U.S. edu-
cation and how it might be reconfgured to boost the reserves of human capital
(Heckman, 2006). In this context, universities are subjected to scathing criti-
cism by Brown on account of their lack of dissent and unbridled enthusiasm for
this turn which capitalism has taken. These institutions have largely jettisoned
‘quaint concerns with developing the person and citizen’ and tend to merely
focus on the economic benefts that will accrue to students by attending a par-
ticular university (Brown, 2015: 23). Hence, universities market themselves
as unabashed ‘winners’ with a surprisingly substantial proportion highlighting
the fact that they are in the ‘world’s top 1%’. What is more, the relentlessly
relayed message proclaims that if an individual invests – by paying the enrol-
ment fee – this will subsequently maximise their competitive edge, employ-
ability and earning capacity when they emerge, as enhanced forms of human
capital, in the ‘real world’. Others, such as Marnie Holborow (2015: Ch. 6),
point out how academic institutions amplify and mimic private sector practices
circulating around themes such as ‘performance’, ‘customer’, ‘employability’,
‘enterprise’ and ‘entrepreneurship’. According to Brown (2015: 177–8), knowl-
edge and training are ‘valued and desired almost exclusively for their contribu-
tion to capital enhancement’ with a sole focus on “positive ROI” – return on
investment’.
The fgure of the ‘human as an ensemble of entrepreneurial and investment
capital’ is evident on every college and job application, every package of study
strategies, every internship, every new exercise and diet program’ (Brown, 2015:
38). Importantly, we can also see how some of Brown’s ideas might be brought
into conversation with the analyses of social reproduction discussed in the previ-
ous chapter. Marxist feminist interrogations of this theme highlight the role of
women and wider issues pertaining to care, yet the U.S. human capital theorists
seek to erase these elements. As Brown (2015: 103) observes, human capital is
‘nourished by sources and qualities themselves not featured in the story’. Human
capital is ‘dependent upon invisible practices and unnamed others’ (Brown, 2015:
104). As Brown (2015: 105) lucidly maintains, as providers of:

care for others in households, neighbourhoods, schools, and workplaces,

women disproportionately remain the invisible infrastructure for all devel-
oping, mature, and worn-out human capital – children, adults, disabled
and elderly. Generally uncoerced, yet essential, this provision and respon-
sibility get theoretically and ideologically tucked into what are assumed as
preferences issuing naturally from sexual difference, especially from wom-
en’s distinctive contribution to biological reproduction. It is formulated, in
short, as an effect of nature, not of power.

Brown is insightful in working with a facet of Foucault’s analysis – that regard-

ing U.S. neoliberalism, particularly how this relates to ideas pivoting on human
capital. However, perhaps her analysis is fawed in that it risks appearing overly
 Neoliberalism, human capital & biopolitics 61

gloomy and pessimistic. Just like Foucault, Brown insuffciently acknowledges

that people are often reluctant to accept seemingly hegemonic ideas and notions
about how they should conduct and comport themselves in the world. This
aspect is evinced in her assertion that our ability to resist capitalism is far less
apparent now than it may have been when Marx was writing. Brown (2015: 111)
affrms, for example, that Marx’s analysis ‘remains unequalled in its account of
capitalism’s power, imperatives, brutality and world-making capacities’, yet it
also ‘presumed subjects who yearned for emancipation and had at hand a political
idiom of justice … through which to demand it’. Today, in contrast, these ‘sub-
jects and principles can be presumed no longer’ (p. 111). Mindful of Bourdieu’s
sociology, we can question if it was ever tenable to ‘presume’ that people, mired
in oppression, long for emancipation. However, she continues:

Weber and Marx assume a political exterior and subjective interior that is
disharmonious with capitalism – political life featuring at least the promise
of freedom, equality and popular sovereignty and a fgure of subjective
personhood bound to ideals of worth, dignity, self-direction, even soul-
fulness. It is precisely such an exterior and interior that neoliberal reason’s
confguration of states, citizens and souls … threaten to extinguish.
(Brown, 2015: 111)

Here, her views risk conveying an understanding that most of us no longer pos-
sess the capacity to dissent because we are all now far too attached, perhaps
even unknowingly, to neoliberal imperatives and aspirations. The argument
appears to be that our neoliberal subjectivities cannot give rise to dissenting
practices and alternative visions of economies, relationships and ways of living.
However, Bernie Sanders bid to become president of the United States the year
after Brown’s book was published, and again in 2020, provides some evidence to
refute her analysis. These attempts by a self-declared ‘socialist’ galvanised – and
indeed, refected – the groundswell of public support for remaking the world
by escaping the confnes imposed by neoliberalism. In short, Sanders’ two cam-
paigns, and the arrival in Congress of similar radical and dissenting leftist fgures,
appear to contradict Brown’s implied notion that neoliberal regimes of capitalist
accumulation, along with their associated political and cultural orders, are never
confronted by movements and dissenting subjectivities manifestly ‘disharmoni-
ous with capitalism’.

Theory into practice?

It is important to recognise that the theorisation we have looked at does not
merely exist in some abstract realm because the aim of neoliberal ideologues is
to prompt and promote material changes. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Marx
may have broached the subject of what is dubbed ‘human capital’, when he
argues that working lives – and the selling of labour power – and lives beyond
62 Neoliberalism, human capital & biopolitics

the point of production cannot be tidily separated. This is because the potency
and quality of our labour power is often enhanced beyond the workplace. For
him, ‘free time’, viewed as ‘both idle time and time for higher activity’, fre-
quently ‘transformed its possessor into a different subject’ who then in turn
re-enters into the ‘direct production process as this different subject’ (Marx,
(1981 [1857–58]): 712). So, to give an example, we might become better social
workers and more attuned to the demands of the feld by reading a book on
‘communication skills’ outside the offce and this might well aid our ‘skills’ in
interacting with ‘clients’ and ‘colleagues’. Alternatively, and in a more abstract
sense, a relationship begun and sustained in our ‘private world’ might provide us
with insights which can then be ‘put to work’ in social work practice. In some
senses, this interpretation is hardly profound. Underpinning Marx’s thinking,
however, is an awareness that workers themselves do not beneft from augment-
ing their skills and labour power. Instead, capital exploits these ‘gains’ made
outside of the ‘world of work’.
The perspective of neoliberal human capitalist theorists implies that all life
activities can and should be annexed to boost the market value of atomised human
capital: this is not only legitimate but a vital imperative in terms of how people
should conduct themselves in the world. As we saw earlier, Foucault particularly,
drew attention to how those articulating such theories dwell on the micro and
familial as well as the larger, societal picture. These U.S. theorists, whose books
and articles are often peppered with graphs and statistical data, are driven by a
novel, calculative and economically driven form of reasoning (see, for example,
Heckman, 2000; 2006). Inherent within this colonialising logic is the idea that
every action, from signing up for a ‘continuing professional development’ course
to ‘upskill’ ICT abilities to, say, routinely running around the local park, can be
viewed as self-investment in human capital. Even though their future is more
truncated than that of the young, so-called ‘third-agers’ are also encouraged to
enhance their value through ftness regimes and constant ‘busyness’ (Shimoni,
2018). Whilst investing in their corporeal selves, they may also offset – at least
for a little while longer – becoming frail and a ‘burden’ needing to have recourse
to health and social services (see also Bowman et al., 2017).
Becker stridently and succinctly concludes that the ‘economic approach is a
comprehensive one that is applicable to all human behaviour’ (in De La Fabian
and Stecher, 2017: 604, emphasis added). Indeed, occasionally sounding rather
like a Marxist, Foucault perceives such views as an articulation of an attempt to
counter the problem historically haunting capitalism – namely the threat of fall-
ing rates of proft – by dint of ‘innovation’ and investments ‘made at the level
of man [sic] himself ’ (p. 231). As people are turned into ‘abilities machines’, the
honing of new skills – and not imperialism as suggested by Rosa Luxemburg –
might be a vital new platform for capital accumulation. Foucault fails, however,
to develop this facet of conceptualisation of U.S. neoliberalism.
Theorists, such as Becker, are disturbingly audacious in how they seek to
expand this ‘science’ of human behaviour to try and discover precisely how, for
 Neoliberalism, human capital & biopolitics 63

example, affective relations – such as those, already noted by Foucault, relating

to the mother-child attachment relationship – might, if appropriately confg-
ured, result in an augmentation in human capital. Mothers not able to devote
themselves to this task and unable to achieve ‘work-life balance’ are increasingly
being encouraged to postpone giving birth. Particularly attuned to preserving
and enhancing their corporate stocks of human capital, ‘cutting edge’ frms like
Facebook and Apple are now offering fnancial support for female workers opt-
ing to avail of such technologies (Rottenberg, 2016).
According to the human capitalist theorists, interactions in the family, in and
of themselves, appear irrelevant because their sole concern seems to be whether
such relationships produce measurable, narrowly conceived ‘outcomes’ that are
normatively benefcial. Hence, their perspective on such interactions is framed
by a future-oriented cost-beneft calculus in which the core issue becomes one
of calibrating where ‘smart’ investments should be made and what behaviour
and dispositions are likely to result in the best ‘returns’. This becomes, there-
fore, a question for individuals, families and states. Units appearing to lack the
will to energetically embark on this quest for future benefts become the targets
for interventions, by social workers and others, aiming to craft more appropri-
ate, aspirational forms of calculative subjectivity. These, to return to Foucault’s
phrase, are ‘abilities-machines’ requiring more fne-tuning (Foucault, 2008:
229).
Pertaining to children and families, some social policy developments seem to
entirely gel with, or be informed by, the perceptions of the U.S. human capital
theorists. The former U.K. prime minister, Tony Blair, drew on this literature
arguing that the ‘return on human capital was very high in the early years of life
and diminished rapidly thereafter’ (Blair, 2006). More generally, thinking relat-
ing to human capital partially underpins the ‘early intervention’ logic in social
work and related felds. Moreover, when advocates of this approach in the United
States began to promote the idea that the frst three years of life are critical for
brain development, wealthier parents, intent on maximising their household’s
store of human capital, became ‘consumers of brain-based products and activities
that would help their children to achieve educationally (which then left them
even more anxious)’ (Edwards et al., 2015: 182).
Morgan Adamson (2009: 275) maintains that

since its inception, the concept of human capital has been deployed to
measure phenomena at the level of the population by analysing differ-
entials among groups and supplying “forecasts, statistical estimates, and
overall measures” regarding the “stock” of human capital within the
population.

To explore this connection and ideas circulating around the ‘population’, it is

important to have regard to Foucault’s conceptualisation of biopolitics.
64 Neoliberalism, human capital & biopolitics

Sifting the population: Neoliberal-infected

biopower and pandemic reasoning
As some commentators point out, the title of Foucault’s 1979 lecture series is
somewhat misleading because the focus tends to be on neoliberalism and not
biopolitics. To better understand his ideas on biopolitics, there is a need to
explore another series of lectures, titled ‘Society Must Be Defended’, which he
gave in 1976. As mentioned at the chapter’s outset, these warrant brief examina-
tion because some of Foucault’s thinking may have new resonance following the
outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 and the revitalised
focus of states on public health.
In intellectual contributions, such as Discipline and Punish, Foucault (1991[1977])
dwells on disciplinary power (applied to individual bodies by the techniques of
surveillance, normalising sanctions and the panoptic organisation of punitive
institutions). Subsequently, somewhat revising his earlier theorisation, he arrives
at the understanding that modernity’s ‘signal trait’ is, in fact, biopower and not
disciplinary power (Behrent, 2016: 40). Foucault relates this development to the
appearance, in the eighteenth century, of an ‘absolutely new political personage’,
‘the population’ (Foucault, 2009: 67). Biopolitics and biopower are illustrated by
the emergence of the ‘technologies, knowledge, discourses, politics and practices
used to bring about the production and management of a state’s human resources’
(Danaher et al., 2000: ix). Such forms of power become detectable in the nascent
interest in statistics and other moves to ascertain and render more knowable the
multifaceted characteristics of populations. Hence, it is possible to perceive a
new ‘attentiveness to the biological or biosociological processes characteristic of
human masses’ (Foucault, 2003: 250). Thus, the most advanced states increas-
ingly come to intervene to maintain the well-being of the population and this is
evinced by the introduction of laws and regulations pertaining to public health,
mass vaccination programmes and, over time, the emergence of the social work
profession. Populations and, perhaps, especially children and the care they are
afforded, thus become the subjects for new forms of, broadly conceived, ‘govern-
ment’ and ‘monitoring’ by social workers and kindred professionals (Rose, 1985;
1989). Even though Foucault insuffciently acknowledges it, some biopolitical
interventions can be wholly benefcial in that they can lead, of course, to sub-
stantial improvements in health: for example, mass vaccination to ward off polio
largely eradicated the disease (Cockburn, 2020).
The key question, therefore, is this: whose interests are served by such biopo-
litical interventions? Although Foucault is inconsistent in his account of the
emergence of biopower, he occasionally recognises that its evolution is insepara-
ble from the development of capitalism. For example, he observes that biopower
was:

without question an indispensable element in the development of capi-

talism; the latter would not have been possible without the controlled
 Neoliberalism, human capital & biopolitics 65

insertion of bodies into the machinery of production and the adjustment

of the phenomena of population to economic processes … . The adjust-
ment of the accumulation of men [sic] to that of capital, the joining of the
growth of human groups to the expansion of productive forces and the
differential allocation of proft, were made possible in part by the exercise
of bio-power in its many forms and modes of application.
(Foucault, 1978 [1976]: 140–1)

Foucault (2003: 239) also claims that the evolution of biopolitics is intertwined
with ‘state racism’. Indeed, the ‘emergence’ of biopower ‘inscribes’ racism as the
‘basic mechanism of power, as it is exercised in modern States’ (Foucault, 2003:
254). This entails distinctions amongst races and the assembling of a ‘hierarchy’
with some deemed ‘good’ and others as ‘inferior’ (Foucault, 2003: 255). Not
restricting himself to differentiations relating to skin colour, Foucault argues
that such endeavours are prompted by an aspiration to separate out groups within
a population with the state creating caesuras amongst the ‘species it controls’
(Foucault, 2003: 255). One of the focal aims of this structuring is the ‘death of
the bad race, of the inferior race (or degenerate, or abnormal)’ because the aim
is to make ‘life in general healthier: healthier and purer’ (Foucault, 2003: 255).
In short, the ‘death of others makes one biologically stronger’ and ‘race or racism
is the precondition that makes killing acceptable’ (Foucault, 2003: 258; 256).
Addressing developments in the twentieth century, he connects these modes of
managing, sifting and controlling populations to Nazism, given that there was
never ‘any other State in which the biological was so tightly, so insistently regu-
lated’ (Foucault, 2003: 259).
Can this analysis have a complicated resonance in the context of responses
to the COVID-19 pandemic? Certainly, since the 1970s – when Foucault was
considering biopower – scientifc and technological transformations have vastly
added to the capacity of states to know and to intervene in the lives of popula-
tions. For example, biometrics and biometrical surveillance have signifcantly
augmented the powers of states in this regard (see also Chapter 4). Shorn of the
provocative Nazi dimension, is it legitimate to view current responses to the pan-
demic as complex biopolitical projects? If so, do such projects implicitly harbour
notions about which lives warrant preservation and which lives are dispensable,
expendable? Questions, such as these, are reasonably posed because biopoliti-
cal interventions are constituted by both life-maintaining and death-produc-
ing components. At the micro-level, this is refected in decisions that medical
experts, in conjunction with ‘ethics committees’, make in relation to which body
is provided with a ventilator to aid respiration and which is not (Ryan, 2020). In
Ireland, for example, this issue prompted the Irish Human Rights and Equality
Commission (IHREC) (2020a: 2) to express concern about the insertion of the
‘ambiguous’ phrase ‘long term functional status’ into offcial ethical framework
documents designed to aid decision-making in the critical care triage process. It
might, argued IHREC, have ‘potentially profound implications’ for ‘vulnerable
66 Neoliberalism, human capital & biopolitics

groups’ such as the disabled and elderly. Indeed, as of late May 2020, 63 per cent
of all confrmed and probable COVID-related deaths were associated with Long
Term Residential Care settings (IHREC, 2020b: 5).
A calibration of human worth (or lack thereof ) was also central to the reason-
ing of the Texas Lieutenant Governor’s notion that those over-seventy-year-olds
were more likely to choose to die than have public health measures, such as a
prolonged ‘lockdown’, damage the U.S. economy (Beckett, 2020). Here were
can also recall that Foucault’s use of the word ‘killing’ tends to be expansive and
metaphorical, encompassing ‘every form of indirect murder: the fact of exposing
someone to death, increasing the risk of death for some people’ (Foucault, 2003:
256).
Predicated on the assumption that a percentage of the population of the U.K.
would be infected and annihilated by the COVID-19 virus, was not the so-
called ‘herd immunity’ strategy, introduced and then rhetorically abandoned by
the Johnson government, a glaring example of a biopolitical programme (BBC
News, 2020g)? More pervasively, the focus on the composition and circula-
tion of populations and how these might be instructed, prompted, ‘nudged’,
restricted, monitored, tracked, assessed and categorised in terms of health status
and ‘risk’ is, to differing degrees, now a manifest and magnifed concern of gov-
ernments. Perhaps with good reason, states currently prescribe how components
of the population – individual human bodies – ought to be spatially ordered;
for example, by having to remain at home or, when outside the house, by being
appropriately ‘socially distanced’ from others. Unsurprisingly, albeit with a pub-
lic health policy rationale, states already most adept at managing, monitoring
and regulating ‘problem populations’ have been amongst the prime ‘innovators’
during the pandemic. Hence, the expanding surveillance role of the Israeli state
which, in order to map and model the spread of the virus, has been able to rely
on intelligence-gathering and ‘pattern recognition’ algorithms initially devised
to maintain the ghettoisation of dispossessed Palestinians (Yiftachel, 2020; see
also Chapter 8).
Given the pandemic, assessments and judgements, made by states and their
agents, are likely to have profound implications in that if, for example, a seg-
ment of the population is identifed as being ‘at risk’ or as potentially constitut-
ing a ‘risk to others’, it may have its liberties drastically restricted and curtailed.
Discussions currently taking place in relation to so-called ‘immunity passports’
may extend this development (Proctor and Devlin, 2020). What is more, social
workers may become a part of public health networks monitoring compliance
with how states regulate mobility. In Italy, for example, the health minister has
proposed ‘sectioning’ individuals refusing COVID-19-related treatment and it
is not unlikely that social services, with a good deal of experience of handling
such measures in the feld of mental health, might become incorporated into such
schemes (Giuffrida, 2020).
Since the eruption of the pandemic, it might also be suggested that some
elements of the population have been constructed as being of less worth than
 Neoliberalism, human capital & biopolitics 67

others? Clearly, these are questions for detailed future investigation, but we
can consider if the disproportionately high number of deaths of elderly people,
enclaved in care homes (in, for example, Italy, the United States, Spain, Sweden
and the U.K.), may be grounded in biopolitical projects and eugenics exhibiting
a certain disregard for those perceived as ‘weak’? Does the initial failure to even
make publicly available the virus-related daily death toll in care homes hint at a
disregard and negative valuation of those eliminated or at risk of elimination by
the virus? The leading U.K. public health specialist, Richard Coker (2020) refers
to the ‘harvesting’ or ‘culling’ occurring in such establishments in the U.K. on
account of an ‘unacceptable, unarticulated strategy’. Following a forensic exami-
nation of data for England and Wales published in May 2020, Comas-Herrera
and Fernández (2020) suggest that the emerging mortality fgures are likely to
be a gross underestimation of the actual number of deaths occurring. By 1 May,
conclude London School of Economics researchers, there has been ‘in excess of
22,000 deaths of care home residents during the COVID-19 pandemic (54% of
all excess mortality)’.
Linking this back to our earlier discussion on Foucault, the elderly, residing
in these frequently privatised care homes, are populations comprised of depleted
and ‘worn-out’ stocks of human capital and are largely tended to by the simi-
larly ‘disposable’ and ‘replaceable’ (Higgins, 2020), often precariously employed,
migrant female carers. What is more, the language deployed often functions to
discursively diminish aged bodies confned to ‘twilight areas’ ordinarily ‘off-
limits for a large majority (and the majority which counts) of society’s mem-
bers’ (Bauman, 1989: p. 97) (see also Refection and Talk Box 3). In the U.K.,
an unannounced strategy of protecting the NHS by, seemingly, aiming to dis-
place the epidemic into the elderly care home system also echoes the notion that
older people, unreasonably taking up precious hospital spaces, are ‘bed-blockers’
(Garrett, 2018a: Ch.1). Still related to the distribution of death amongst the
population, the Offce for National Statistics (ONS) (2020) report that

deaths involving COVID-19 had occurred at more than twice the rate in
the most deprived neighbourhoods in England (55.1 deaths per 100,000
people) compared with the least deprived (25.3). The respective mortality
rates for all deaths suggest that the impact of COVID-19 has been propor-
tionally higher on those living in the most deprived neighbourhoods.

The disproportionate numbers of fatalities in Black and minority ethnic com-

munities is similarly a signifcant issue in many parts of the world (Gore, 2020;
Munn, 2020). Public Health England (2020: 4) found that the

highest age standardised diagnosis rates of COVID-19 per 100,000 popu-

lation were in people of Black ethnic groups (486 in females and 649 in
males) and the lowest were in people of White ethnic groups (220 in
females and 224 in males).
68 Neoliberalism, human capital & biopolitics

This is partly attributable to class and capitalist labour market positioning that
leaves Black and ethnic minority people more vulnerable; it is also bound up with
how racism and discrimination detrimentally impact on engaging with health ser-
vices. Indeed, this high number of deaths of Black and minority ethnic people is
suggestive of Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s (2007: 28) defnition of racism as the ‘state-
sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vul-
nerability to premature death’. However, unsurprisingly, as soon as concerns about
the disproportionately high deaths and infection rates with Black and ethnic minor-
ity groups surfaced, many right-wing and libertarian commentators attempted to
‘reframe’ the debate in terms of ‘biological inheritance, lifestyle choices, and cul-
tural differences that have no connection to discrimination’ (Farah, 2020).

Conclusion
Did a neoliberal-infected biopower, already embedded in economics and social
policy prior to the outbreak of the pandemic predictably result in a certain pattern-
ing of illness and death within particular populations? (see also Mbembe, 2003;
Weheliye, 2014; Robertson and Travaglia, 2020). Furthermore, at the time of
writing, can Foucault’s conceptualisation of biopolitics aid our comprehension
of how states formulate plans to emerge out of ‘lockdowns’? Implicitly within
such plans, are certain groups – especially those providing the labour power for
capitalism to ‘reset’ – viewed as potentially disposable, potentially replaceable?
(Levin, 2020). More fundamentally, a core question is this: how can labour
power be (re)activated and (re)commodifed to (re)generate processes of capital
accumulation without that power being placed at risk of further impairment,
even extinction? This is the question lying at the heart of a new biopolitics and
it is one at the heart of the current crisis of capitalism.
In the 1970s, Foucault (1991[1977]) famously related the signifcance of sur-
veillance to the evolution of the ‘disciplinary society’. In the following chapter,
we will turn our attention to how surveillance technologies have been deployed
in more recent years within neoliberal capitalist societies. This dimension
directly relates, of course, not only to redevelopments since the outbreak of the
pandemic; it also pertains to the themes of human rights and social work dis-
cussed in Chapter 1.
 Neoliberalism, human capital & biopolitics 69

REFLECTION AND TALK BOX 3

Ageist Language: For the attention of media editors,
the National Union of Journalists and the Press Council
In the Republic of Ireland, the following statement was issued, in April 2020, by work-
ers spanning the fields of nursing, public health, medicine, social care, social policy,
advocacy and NGO organisations.

We write to express our utmost concern over recent examples of the inappropriate
use of language by some media outlets in their reporting of the current COVID-19
pandemic. We ask that those in a position to shape the narrative of older people’s
experiences in our media do so carefully.
Terms such as ‘elderly’, ‘seniors’, ‘pensioners’, ‘elders’, ‘OAPs’ are considered stere-
otypical, ageist and disrespectful. One national newspaper used the term ‘nappies’
to describe continence management whilst a journalist on RTÉ news made refer-
ence to older people ‘dropping like flies’ both which are particularly unacceptable
and upsetting. The overuse of the phrase 'underlying condition' diminishes the
lives and deaths of people who die from COVID-19. It also contributes to a creep-
ing narrative that some lives are more expendable than others.
The consequence of using such discriminatory language is that it reinforces preju-
dicial attitudes and stereotypes. It may also be quite emotionally damaging and
disempowering for some older people who feel misrepresented and demeaned
by such terms.
Ageist and stereotypical language is in opposition to Ireland’s 2019 achievement as
being the first country recognised as Age-Friendly by the World Health Organization.
We fear this language may reinforce ageist stereotypes which negate the common
humanity and dignity which is enjoyed by all people, regardless of their age.
We would like to remind our media about the power they wield through the lan-
guage they choose to report on the experiences of older people during this cur-
rent crisis. It is widely understood that language has a role in shaping our culture,
our values and our social relations. We therefore urgently request that editorial
guidance is modified to recognise the diversity within older people through the
use of inclusive language. Where it is necessary, the term older people is more
appropriate; however, it should always be understood and acknowledged that no
two people age in the same way.
We acknowledge and thank you all for the work you have done in reporting the
COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland. We hope that this letter will encourage further
action and ask in particular that you revise your editorial guidelines to ensure more
inclusive language.

Can we relate any of this group’s concerns to some of the conceptualisa-

tions relating to neoliberalism, human capital and biopolitics explored in
this chapter?

Note
1 For ease of reference, all future mention of Foucault (2008) will simply include the rele-
vant page numbers. Although my focus is very different, some of the material discussed
in the frst half of this chapter features in Garrett (2019a). I am grateful to Cambridge
University Press for allowing me to have recourse to some of my earlier work.
4
SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM:
SHOSHANA ZUBOFF

Introduction
In an article, published two decades ago, I argued that it was vital that critical
and dissenting forms of inquiry and practice should be attentive to the new pat-
terning of surveillance evolving in social work with children and families. My
article appeared the same month that Facebook was launched in February 2004
(Garrett, 2004). Only having been in existence for six years, Google – soon to
become the pioneer of ‘Big Data’ – was still a fedging organisation. Located in
Mountain View, California, the scale of its ambition was, nevertheless, already
becoming decipherable.1 Since that time, the way in which capitalism and its
associated social and institutional orders have evolved have magnifed the con-
cerns that I tried to articulate in 2004. Technological transformations have also,
of course, contributed to the enormously enhanced surveillance capacity of states
and corporations. Moreover, the COVID-19 crisis suggests various new forms
of surveillance will be introduced which will become embedded and part of
what is presently described, perhaps rather too blandly and too uncritically, as
the ‘new normal’. The core understanding at the heart of the chapter, therefore,
is that dissenting social work (DSW) should critically engage with some of these
unfolding developments.
The World Wide Web was only launched on Christmas Day, 1990, but over
the space of a mere thirty years data gathering processes have been tremendously
enhanced (Dyer-Witheford, 2020). We have also witnessed the spectacular rise
and increased data extraction capacity of so-called FAANG (Facebook, Amazon,
Apple, Netfix and Google). This is not to forget the role of other key players,
such as Microsoft and, in the People's Republic of China (PRC), Baidu, Alibaba
and Tencent (Strittmatter, 2019). Furthermore, following the revelations of whis-
tle-blower, Edward Snowden, there has been appropriately heightened concern
 Surveillance capitalism 71

about the ‘security’ state’s surveillance activity (Lyon, 2015). Still in the realm of
politics, critical public discourse has been generated on account of how Facebook
tries to mould choices and infuence behaviour by, for example, manipulating
its ‘News Feed’ (Harcourt, 2015). Not unsurprisingly, the murky engagement
of the corporation with Cambridge Analytica to generate the ‘psychographic’
profling of voters also produced a good deal of disquiet (Biddle, 2018). Not only
Facebook but others – such as Snapchat, Microsoft and Google – have access to
a vast amount of data that social scientists are not able to collect. Facebook alone
has a ‘list of 2 billion people’ and knows what they ‘like, what they think, and
who they know’ (Biddle, 2018; see also Ryan and Garrett, 2018)
Surveillance, as a practice, is not intrinsically repressive, but dominant eco-
nomic and social forces in society determine how it evolves (Roberts, 2019).
Hence, there is a need to recognise that currently the concern for ‘proft and
domination’ canalises technological development (Adorno, 2003: 118). In
Capital, Marx (1990 [1867]: 560) refers to the ‘constant advance of technology’ in
the new workplaces of the mid-nineteenth century: he was, however, clear that
‘machinery’ was not to blame for the hardships and oppression of the industrial
working class. As he lucidly remarks, it ‘took both time and experience before
the workers learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by
capital, and therefore to transfer their attacks from the material instruments of
production to the form of society which utilises those instruments’ (Marx, 1990
[1867]: 554–5, emphasis added). Following this logic, we can also grasp how, if
the ownership of evolving technologies were socialised, they might immensely
beneft people and planet.
At the outset of a new century, Lyon (2001: 2) defned ‘surveillance’ as ‘any
collection and processing of personal data, whether identifable or not, for the
purposes of infuencing or managing those whose data has been garnered’. It was
‘hard to fnd a place, or an activity, that is shielded or secure from some purpose-
ful tracking, tagging, listening, watching, recording or verifcation device’ (Lyon
2001: 1). By the beginning of the twenty-frst century we inhabited, what the
sociologist Gary T. Marx refers to as, a ‘surveillance society’ (in Lyon 2001: 32:
see also Lyon, 2015).

The concept of a surveillance society denotes a situation in which disem-

bodied surveillance has become socially pervasive. The totalitarian fears of
Orwellian control all relate to state surveillance, whereas the notion of sur-
veillance society indicates that surveillance activities have long spilled over
the edges of government bureaucracies to food every conceivable conduit.
(Lyon 2001: 33; see also Lyon, 2015)

This analysis implies that vertical or state surveillance still exists, but tends to be
‘less centralised’ as personal data circulates ‘more and more between public and
private (commercial) realms’ (Lyon, 2001: 33). The main utility of the ‘surveil-
lance society’ motif is that it captures the sheer omnipresence of surveillance
72 Surveillance capitalism

practices. Associated with such practices are a bundle of keywords such as arti-
fcial intelligence (AI), machine learning, algorithm and data mining or extrac-
tion (see also Table 4.1).
The scholar and columnist, Shoshana Zuboff (2019: 182), maintains that ‘just
about everything we now do is mediated by computers that record and codify
the details of our daily lives at a scale that would have been unimaginable only
a few years ago’.2 Related to what I dubbed social work’s ‘electronic turn’, prac-
titioners’ day-to-day lives have also been remarkably transformed on account of
the relentless fow of email, smartphone activities, apps, texts, video meetings
and so on (Garrett, 2005). As Bauman (2002: 149) predicted early in the century,
the physical workplace risks being ‘abolished altogether, or rather dissolved into
life’. What is more, corporate consultants, eager to service capitalist imperatives
are keen to deepen this process. As Deloitte (2019: 98) asks, in a recent survey

TABLE 4.1 Keywords and Processes Associated with the Operationalisation of

‘Surveillance Capitalism’

Keywords Defnition and processes

Artifcial Refers to the capacity of computers or other machines to exhibit

intelligence (AI) or simulate intelligent behaviour. This is refected in the ‘ability
to make appropriate generalisations in a timely fashion based on
limited data’ (Kaplan in Dyer-Witheford et al., 2019: 9).
AI is present in the algorithmic processes that shape everyday life,
e.g. from warehouse work to military targeting.
AI does not simply refer to the use of robots. Most AIs ‘act invisibly
in the background of activities conducted on smartphones and
computers; in search engine results, social media feeds, video
games and targeted advertisements; in the acceptance or rejection
of applications for bank loans or welfare assistance; in a call centre
inquiry or summons to an on-demand cab; or in encounters with
police or border guards’ (Dyer-Witheford et al., 2019: 2).
AI also defnes the feld of study concerned with this activity which
began to evolve from the mid-1950s.
Machine Refers to the capacity of a computer to learn from experience and
learning to modify its processing on the basis of newly acquired information.
This form of AI incrementally enables computers to get better at
recognising patterns in future data.
Algorithm Refers to an AI procedure or set of rules used in calculation
and problem-solving. It also refers to a precisely defned set of
mathematical or logical operations for the performance of a
particular task.
Data mining or Refers to the practice of using specialised computer software to
extraction examine large collections of data so as to generate new information.
The process entails searching for patterns, such as associations
between variables and clusters, in the data.
 Surveillance capitalism 73

of ‘global human capital trends’, how can ‘we’ ‘extend where and how work is
performed using virtual collaboration platforms, remote communications tools,
digital reality, and other technologies?’ The COVID-19 pandemic functions to
‘fast-forward’ this agenda. However, the process is complex because it might also
be interpreted as something of a ‘re-wind’ to the period before the Industrial
Revolution when the primary space of production, prior to the construction of
factories, was the household (Marx, 1990 [1867]).
Many also express worry about the amount of time that so-called ‘Generation
Z’, the cohort born after the mid-to-late 1990s, spend on social media checking
their phones and so on (Hern, 2018). This behaviour is, of course, no accident
because social media corporations’ intention is to craft products that are habit-
forming, even addictive. The very design practices of, say, Facebook are founded
on the desire to ensure that the ‘maximum possible amount of users’ time and
consciousness’ is consumed (p. 451). In short, the various devices and applications
are actually meant to be ‘sticky’ products and are supposed to totally command
our attention. Relatedly, online activity can give rise to mentally damaging
forms of competition, forlorn quests for ‘perfection’ and falling prey to particular
forms of bullying and harassment (Marsh, 2017).
Zuboff (2019) states that ‘surveillance capitalism’ best describes the epoch in
which we live. Perhaps her main conceptual infuences are, to some extent, Marx
and, more emphatically, Arendt (Zuboff, 2019: Ch. 17; see also Chapter 7). The
impact of the latter is most apparent in her opposing the way that our homes and
privacy are being encroached on by those she terms ‘surveillance capitalists’.

Demanding privacy from surveillance capitalists or lobbying for an end

to commercial surveillance on the internet is like asking Henry Ford to
make each Model T by hand or asking a giraffe to shorten its neck. Such
demands are existential threats. They violate the basic mechanisms and
laws of motion that produce this market leviathan’s concentrations of
knowledge, power, and wealth.
(p. 191)

Although her perspective is likely, of course, to have been partly infuenced

by her generation and its associated ‘techno-habitat’ (Dyer-Witheford, 1999),
Zuboff is alert to how the way that technology is deployed risks ‘hollowing out’
our lives:

When I speak to my children or an audience of young people … I tell them

that the word ‘search’ has meant a daring existential journey, not a fnger
tap to already existing answers; that ‘friend’ is an embodied mystery that
can be forged only face-to-face and heart-to-heart; and that ‘recognition’
is the glimmer of homecoming we experience in our beloved’s face, not
‘facial recognition’.
(p. 521)
74 Surveillance capitalism

Indeed, an example of dissent is provided by those creating masks to evade ‘facial

recognition’ cameras (Rogers, 2016; Kaltheuner, 2020).
Katie Fitzpatrick (2019) provides an incisive critique of some of the many
failings in Zuboff ’s book. With its occasionally forid prose, it can certainly be
criticised for hinting at a ‘golden age’ of capitalism which has only become sul-
lied by the exploitative, vampiric encroachments of Big Tech. Although she lacks
a convincing account as to how the current state of affairs can be combatted,
Zuboff ’s bestseller is signifcant because it illuminates the centrality of ‘surveil-
lance capitalism’ at our current conjuncture. What is more, even though social
work does not feature in her study, we can bring Zuboff into our conversation to
help us grapple with some of the core concerns in Dissenting Social Work.
The issues explored in this chapter are expansive and draw on a range of
writers and commentators, but we begin by focusing on Zuboff and articulate
some of her main points and insights. Five aspects of her inquiry are of particu-
lar interest for those readers drawn to dissenting ideas within social work. First,
her understanding as to how ‘surveillance capitalism’ is constituted. Second,
why this form of capitalism has appeared so quickly over the past couple of
decades. Third, what the tech corporations, such as Google, seek to achieve.
Fourth, how surveillance capitalists are constantly seeking to eliminate chance
by refning technologies so as to try to constitute us as entirely predictable
human subjects. Finally, the trajectory of their interventions and how they
seek to ‘ramp up’ processes of data extraction. We will then turn to examine
how technology, and specifcally the use of surveillance technology and algo-
rithms, may be impacting on the felds of social work, welfare provision and
crime detection. The fnal part of the chapter argues that examining questions
pertaining to technology and surveillance are particularly signifcant, in the
context of COVID-19, if we are to develop an informed and dissenting form
of social work.

Explaining ‘surveillance capitalism’

How ‘surveillance capitalism’ is constituted
First, Zuboff asserts that ‘surveillance capitalism’ is an ‘antidemocratic and anti-
egalitarian juggernaut’ that is best perceived as a ‘market-driven coup from above’
(p. 513). Its prime, economic imperative is to systematically and relentlessly extract
information and data from the activities of ‘users’ of the various ‘services’ it makes
available (p. 87). So, for example, when someone uses Google as a search engine,
this produces a ‘behavioural surplus’ which, on account of machine intelligence, can
be harvested to predict which products are likely to attract them as consumers. In
addition to keywords, each ‘Google search query produces a wake of collateral data
such as the number and pattern of search terms, how a query is phrased, spelling,
punctuation, dwell times, click patterns and location’ (p. 67).
 Surveillance capitalism 75

Such information is commodifed and traded to companies aiming to better

‘target’ customers. As Zuboff summarises, you ‘get on Google, and it seems like
it’s free. It’s not free. You’re giving them information; they sell your information’
(p .212). This enterprise is, of course, immensely proftable because companies,
such as Google and Facebook, are able to mine enormous sets of data:

Surveillance capitalist frms, beginning with Google, dominate the accumu-

lation and processing of information, especially information about human
behaviour. They know a great deal about us, but our access to their knowl-
edge is sparse: hidden in the shadow text and read only by the new priests,
their bosses, and their machines … This unprecedented concentration of
knowledge produces an equally unprecedented concentration of power.
(p. 191)

Surveillance capitalists are successful because they have evolved their practices
very speedily and indicative of the strategy is, of course, Facebook’s motto,
prominently trumpeted within the company until 2014, ‘move fast and break
things’. As Ruha Benjamin (2019: 13) maintains, the ‘people and places broken’
as a consequence of this ethos are viewed as expendable. This strategy is also
coupled with the aspiration to minimise ‘legal and governmental constraints’
(United Nations General Assembly, 2019: 13). Attentive to the fact that they are
actually addressing people’s needs (for communication, access to information
and new forms of consumption), Big Tech has also been adept at appropriating
and utilising a range of keywords central to the discourse of social work (such
as ‘empowerment’, ‘inclusion’, ‘participation’, ‘community’) so as to nurture
a particular affective ambiance tapered to entice and retain users for the pur-
poses of data extraction (Zuckerberg, 2017). A good example of how language
is manipulated is provided by Amazon. The company tracks and monitors every
move made by its warehouse workers and, if they are deemed too slow or are sus-
pected of having taken too much ‘time off task’ – abbreviated in companyspeak
to TOT – then they are routinely fred and swiftly replaced. However, CEO
Jeff Bezos chooses to call his massive warehouses cuddly ‘fulfllment centers’
(Lecher, 2019). Meanwhile, suggesting that his privately owned corporation has
‘built the world’s largest social infrastructure for collective action’, Zuckerberg
(2017) hubristically implies that his privately owned corporation is evolving into
an alternative UN, even a form of world government. What is also striking is
how some of the leading CEOs of ‘surveillance capitalism’ are close to the U.S.
Democrats. Despite an antipathy to labour unions and government regulation,
they like to present themselves as, not only ‘cool’ and appropriately philanthropic
but palpably ‘woke’ and achingly ‘liberal’ (Coren, 2017). However, according
to Zuboff, whilst skilled at ‘romance and beguile’, the Big Tech sector remains
‘ruthlessly effcient at extinguishing space for democratic deliberation, social
debate, individual self-determination’ (p. 193).
76 Surveillance capitalism

Why has ‘surveillance capitalism’ appeared NOW?

A second aspect of the evolution of surveillance capitalism that is important
to note is the historical moment at which it began to evolve. Central here is
the ‘neoliberal zeitgeist’ in that the CEOs and associated key players broadly
adhere to key tenets of this ideology and practice (p. 340). Unsurprisingly, the
‘leaders of tax evasion have been companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook,
Amazon and Uber’ (Srnickek, 2017: 59). Zuboff comments on the ‘cyber-
libertarian’ philosophy which has driven ‘surveillance capitalism’ and how it is
refected in ‘free speech fundamentalism’ and focal ideas circulating around the
notion that governments should not introduce obstacles and regulatory frame-
works that impede, what is presented, as inevitable and simply determined by
technological ‘progress’ (p. 109). Relatedly, the suggestion is conveyed that
ultimately governmental and public regulation is futile given the dawning of a
new ‘age’ (p. 221). Associated with such tactics is, however, a relentless pursuit
and defence of the right to maintain corporate control of cyberspace. Zuboff
adds that the events of 9/11 and the requirements of the U.S. state security
apparatus may have also nurtured the burgeoning success of the tech sector in
that the government was keen to avail of its technical expertise to algorith-
mically identify the potential ‘threats’ posed by ‘radicals’. In this context, the
relationship between the Obama administrations (2008–2016) and Google was
especially close (p. 340).

The aims of Google and Big Tech

Third, whilst not to entirely neglect the role played by Facebook, perhaps it
is Google, created in 1998, that is surveillance capitalism’s iconic corporation.
Maybe there was a ‘time when you searched Google’, avows Zuboff, ‘but now
Google searches you’ (p. 261). Although much smaller in terms of the numbers
it actually employs, it is what the ‘Ford Motor Company and General Motors
were to mass-production’ (p. 63). Signifcantly, the Mountain View-based cor-
poration recognised the ‘gold dust in the detritus of its interactions with its users
and took the trouble to collect it up’ from what is often referred to as the ‘data
exhaust’ (p. 68). Google’s ‘unique prowess’, therefore, is its capacity for ‘hunt-
ing, capturing, and transforming surplus into predictions for accurate targeting’
(p. 80). The by-products, or leftovers, of our numerous searches provide raw
material which reveal, if analysed, potentially ‘detailed stories about each user
– thoughts, feelings, interests – could be constructed from the wake of unstruc-
tured signals that trailed every online action’ (pp. 67–8). This information is a
product which can be sold to companies seeking to sell us a whole array of goods
and services. Google, in fact, is best perceived, like Facebook, as a giant ‘advertis-
ing platform’ (Srnickek, 2017). The company is also characterised by its alacrity
in introducing ‘pricing innovations’, including pricing metrics based on so-called
‘click-through rates’ or ‘how many times a user clicks on an ad through to the
 Surveillance capitalism 77

advertiser’s web page, rather than pricing based on the number of views that an
ad receives’ (p. 82).
For capitalism to function, the scale of consumption has to be maintained,
or else there will be a block in the system (see also Chapter 2). In short, com-
modities have to be produced, but they also have to be purchased and hence
there is a need to entice and persuade people to constantly ‘extend the circle
of their enjoyments’ (Marx, 1990 [1867]). What corporations, such as Google,
quickly discerned was that the data it accumulated might enable advertisers to
‘deliver a particular message to a particular person at just the moment when
it might have a high probability of actually infuencing his or her behaviour’
(pp. 77–8). What is more, after a long decline in the manufacturing sector, the
tech industries provided a sluggish capitalism with a new vitality and buoyancy
(Srnickek, 2017).

Eliminating chance and aspiring to create

predictable human subjects
How the surveillance capitalist corporations incessantly seek to eliminate chance
by using technologies to try and shape us into predictable human subjects is a
fourth important component of Zuboff ’s analysis. Central here is the drive to
embed certainty and outcomes that are guaranteed on a societal basis. This
involves the design of a multiplicity of programmes intent on behaviour modi-
fcation in order to render our futures entirely predictable, particularly in terms
of what we choose to buy and how we relate to each other within the wider
fabric of capitalism. For the sake of the ‘plan, the totality of society – every per-
son, object, and process – must be corralled into the supply chains that feed the
machines’ (p. 401).
The efforts of surveillance capital are preoccupied with how ‘objects’ act and
perform as consumers and workers. Zuboff maintains, moreover, that what is
taking place is novel because, within the dystopian imaginary of the past, pub-
lic fears about such widespread surveillance tended to be focused on the role of
states, not private corporations. However, in our contemporary world, it is the
latter which is empowered to avail of a ‘vast digital apparatus, world-historic
concentrations of advanced computational knowledge and skill, and immense
wealth’ (p. 351). One of the primary defners articulating and advocating along
these lines is an MIT computer scientist and entrepreneur Alex Pentland (2011).
Infuenced by B. F. Skinner, an American behavioural psychologist and social
philosopher, his specialism is wearable technology, and Pentland’s perceptions
on the role of such devices in the workplace are particularly interesting. His
experimental work involving speech-recognition technology has, we are told,
been able to identify ‘profles of individuals based on the words they use’ and
this enables employers and workplace managers to ‘form a team of employees
with harmonious social behaviour and skills’ (in Zuboff, 2019: 422–3). Pentland
also outlines how the information gathered by wearable sensor devices – what
78 Surveillance capitalism

he terms ‘sociometers’ or ‘sociometric badges – is able to measure workplace

communications, voice cadences and body language (Choudhury and Pentland,
2003). This might, therefore, empower and assist ‘managers understand who is
working with whom and infer the relationships between colleagues’ and ‘would
be an effcient way to fnd people who might work well together’ (in Zuboff,
2019: 423). The aim, according to Pentland, is to address situations where people
are not ‘interacting correctly’ and making ‘bad decisions’ (in Berman, 2016).
In such scenarios, data goes a long way to mending, what he terms ‘broken
behaviours’ (in Berman, 2016). Relating this technology to our discussion in
Chapter 1, wearables might assist social work employers and regulators to surveil
whether a particular practitioner is being suffciently ‘professional’.
It is, of course, not diffcult to see how this form of thinking – and the tech-
nology that such thinking spawns – might produce an infation of surveillance
practices within all workplaces. What is also manifest is that Pentland, and simi-
lar fgures, see nothing fundamentally wrong with the way that the world is
economically confgured. Workers, it appears, should be exploited in order to
maintain current patterns of capital accumulation and the core role of social
technicians, such as him, is to assist in the fne tuning of workplace relation-
ships so as to create and maintain a functionally consensual, compliant, proftable
workforce (Lecher, 2019). Equally discernible, is the more overarching idea that
politics should be trumped by technical and ‘neutral’ governance and here the
core ideological understanding is that human behaviour ‘must be herded and
penned within the parameters of the plan’ (p. 434). Pentland asserts:

Revolutionary new measurement tools provided by mobile telephones and

other digital infrastructures are providing us with a God’s eye view of
ourselves. For the frst time, we can precisely map the behaviour of large
numbers of people as they go about their daily lives. For society, the hope is
that we can use this new in-depth understanding of individual behaviour to
increase the effciency and responsiveness of industries and governments.
For individuals, the attraction is the possibility of a world where every-
thing is arranged for your convenience – your health check-up is magically
scheduled just as you begin to get sick, the bus comes just as you get to the
bus stop, and there is never a line of waiting people at city hall.
(Pentland, 2011, emphases added)

One might, of course, wonder who exactly helps to constitute the ‘us’ and the
‘we’ overseeing this hubristic and grand vision. Pentland presents us with a fric-
tionless, confict-free world in which social problems are dealt with by techni-
cians and technology. More conceptually, he – and other ‘organic intellectuals’
of ‘surveillance capitalism’ – appear wholly committed, even if failing to recog-
nise it, to create a ‘police’ order of the type articulated by Jacques Rancière (see
also Chapter 5).
 Surveillance capitalism 79

‘Doubling down’ on data extraction by

expanding the ‘extraction architecture’
A ffth important dimension to Zuboff ’s analysis of ‘surveillance capitalism’ is her
focus on how Big Tech frms, such as Google, are continually aiming to expand
the ‘extraction architecture’ so as to hone ‘prediction products that attract and
retain more customers’ (p. 129). These efforts provide us with insights into the
trajectory of ‘surveillance capitalism’. Signifcant here is the idea, refected in
phrases such as ‘ambient computing’, the ‘internet of things’ and ‘ubiquitous
computing’ (Weiser, 1991), that the internet and the devices we associate it with
may actually disappear by becoming absorbed into the quotidian background.
However, this notion of disappearance is misleading in that what would occur
would be a new omnipresence. Such ideas have been around for many years. As
long ago as the early 1990s, Mark Weiser (1991: 94) suggested that the informa-
tion and communication technologies of the time might weave themselves into
the ‘fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it’. Subsequently,
such notions infuenced key players such as Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of
Google. In 2015, Schmidt – partly exhibiting the hyperbole associated with his
sector – confdently maintained that the internet will disappear. There will be

so many IP addresses … so many devices, sensors, things that you are

wearing, things that you are interacting with, that you won’t even sense it.
It will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room
and the room is dynamic.
(in Zuboff, 2019: 197)

This world evoked by the billionaire, in which the internet and connectivity is
unshackled from personal computers and smartphones, might have appeal for
some ‘users’, but the core driver for such aspirations is to maximise the data
extraction possibilities to create better products for advertisers who can, in turn,
target potential customers more effciently. This endeavour is, Zuboff explains,
best comprehended as the

new frontier of behavioural surplus where the dark data continent of your
inner life – your intentions and motives, meanings and needs, preferences
and desires, moods and emotions, personality and disposition, truth telling
or deceit – is summoned into the light for others’ proft.
(p. 254)

This planned expansion of the ‘extraction architecture’ is illustrated in the ideas

of infuential fgures such as Schmidt and those sharing his vision who hanker to
create a new apparatus in which

world, self, and body are reduced to the permanent status of objects …
His washing machine, her car’s accelerator, and your intestinal fora are
80 Surveillance capitalism

collapsed into a single dimension of equivalency as information assets that

can be disaggregated, reconstituted, indexed, browsed, manipulated, ana-
lysed, reaggregated, predicted, productized, bought, and sold: anywhere,
anytime.
(p. 210)

In more detail, the creation of this new apparatus is envisaged as occurring on

two fronts: by geographically extending operations into ‘real world’ domains
lying beyond the computer or other devices such as the smartphone and by
increasingly mining the human body for data (Pentland, 2011). The extension
of extraction practices from the ‘virtual’ into the ‘real’ world targets poten-
tially new resources located in the actual, lived environment. For example,
Amazon, Google and Apple, in conjunction with Ford and BMW, are explor-
ing ways in which the dashboard of cars can enable shopping from the ‘steer-
ing wheel’ (p. 268). Hence, surveillance capitalists perceive that their future
sources of wealth are likely to be accrued by accessing ‘new supply routes that
extend to real life on the roads, among the trees, throughout the cities’ (p.
199). Ultimately, the encompassing project is to ‘engineer’ a ‘new nervous sys-
tem for humanity’ and to evolve a new planetary sensorium (Pentland, 2011).
Related to this vision, public spaces (such as parks and shopping malls), along
with their inhabitants, will become knowable and readable objects that can be
aggregated into a ‘seamless fow of searchable information, sights, and sounds
in much the same way that Google once aggregated web pages for indexing
and searching’ (p. 208). In this context, although not explored by Zuboff, so-
called ‘smart dust’ may well be an area of technological expansion and com-
mercial exploitation in the next few decades. Coined in 1997, the term refers
to networks of microelectromechanical sensors, or ‘motes’, which will ‘unlock
unprecedented levels of data collection’ (Goldsmith, 2019). These millimetre-
sized devices may have the capacity to ‘rove around the world collecting all
kinds of data: visual, thermal, chemical and biological’ (Goldsmith, 2019).
In short, ‘smart dust is the natural next step for today’s Internet of Things’
(Goldsmith, 2019). However, the deployment of mobile microscopic sensors
capable of collecting audio and visual data clearly raises a plethora of questions
circulating around the enhancement of the surveillance capacity of corpora-
tions and states.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley raise the possibility of
‘neural dust’ being implanted in the body and used to monitor the activity of
different organs and to stimulate nerves and muscles (Goldsmith, 2019). More
generally, tech corporations view the human body as merely another object that
can be ‘tracked and calculated for indexing and searching’ (p. 241). Much of this
is taking place under the banner of improving services and – another social work
keyword – ‘personalisation’ (p. 255). The rendered body could, in fact, fur-
nish another ‘highly lucrative’ behavioural surplus that could be ‘plumbed from
intimate patterns of the self ’ (p. 199). Hence, processes of extraction would be
 Surveillance capitalism 81

targeted at ‘your personality, moods, and emotions, your lies and vulnerabilities’
with every kind of intimacy ‘automatically captured and fattened into a tidal
fow of data points’ (p. 199).
By 2015, 29.5 million U.S. adults used wearable devices – mostly ftness track-
ers such as Under Armours and smart watches (p. 603). However, health insur-
ers, in particular, may become keen to utilise wearable devices to monitor if
their insured customers are adhering to ‘agreed’ ftness and self-care regimes.
Digestible sensors might also provide granular data better equipped to detect if
there is adequate compliance with proscribed diet and medication. Some may
object, of course, to this degree of invasive surveillance, but corporate consult-
ants, such as Deloitte, maintain that inducements to participation might include
savings on health insurance premiums. Moreover, if pricing policies fail to alle-
viate privacy concerns, insurers are advised to repackage such intensive behav-
ioural monitoring as ‘interactive’ and ‘fun’ (Zuboff, 2019: 215).
Bodies can also, of course, be tracked using global position system (GPS) data.
Derived from military intelligence practice, Google is at the forefront of com-
mercial location tracking (p. 242). Recognising again the public opposition that
this may prompt, the company’s infuential chief economist Hal Varian contends
that all of us can ‘expect to be tracked and monitored, since the advantages, in
terms of convenience, safety, and services, will be so great…continuous moni-
toring will be the norm’ (in Zuboff, 2019: 256). Invariably, it is also maintained
that the behavioural surplus accruing from this type of tracking and monitoring
is only gathered, analysed, retained and stored in such a way as to prevent the
identifcation of individuals. However, informed commentators, such as Zuboff,
cast doubt on these assertions given that ‘re-identifcation science’ reveals just
how simple and easy it is to de-anonymise meta-data (pp. 243–4).
Big Tech is particularly interested in how the human voice might become
more of a focus for data extraction. That is to say, there is a realisation that
human conversations are a medium which might be harnessed to the extractive
apparatus. Indeed, this development can be connected to how private living
spaces are increasingly evolving into rich sources of data. Purporting to conjure
into being so-called ‘smart’ houses or apartments, home automation systems,
such as Amazon Echo and Google Home ‘render rivers of casual talk from which
sophisticated content analyses produce enhanced predictions that “anticipate”
your needs’ (p. 260). This attentiveness to the human voice, or what Zuboff
dubs the ‘spoken surplus’, results in analyses of its various components, such
as the breadth of vocabulary, along with ‘intonation, cadence, infection, dia-
lect’ (p. 261). In 2016, Bloomberg Businessweek declared that Amazon, Apple and
Microsoft had commenced a ‘hunt for terabytes of human speech’ (in Zuboff,
2019: 262). The same report also gave an account of how Microsoft had con-
structed ‘mock apartments’ in cities around the globe to record volunteers speak-
ing in typical home settings. The aim was to capture the spontaneous fow of
talk, from smartphones and other devices, so as to record, retain and subject to
detailed analysis the words used.
82 Surveillance capitalism

A related growing feld of data analysis and marketing is variously termed

‘affective computing’, ‘emotion analytics’ and ‘sentiment analysis’ (p. 281; see
also Levine, 2016). Zuboff suggests that if this project of ‘surplus from the depths’
is to succeed, then our ‘unconscious – where feelings form before there are words
to express them – must be recast as simply one more source of raw-material sup-
ply for machine rendition and analysis, all of it for the sake of more-perfect pre-
diction’ (pp. 281–2). Describing itself as the ‘world’s leading emotion artifcial
intelligence platform’, a company called Realeyes which is partly EU funded,
deploy specialised

software to scour faces, voices, gestures, bodies, and brains, all of it captured
by ‘biometric’ and ‘depth’ sensors, often in combination with impercepti-
bly small, ‘unobtrusive’ cameras. This complex of machine intelligence is
trained to isolate, capture, and render the most subtle and intimate behav-
iours, from an inadvertent blink to a jaw that slackens in surprise for a frac-
tion of a second. Combinations of sensors and software can recognize and
identify faces; estimate age, ethnicity, and gender; analyse gaze direction
and blinks; and track distinct facial points to interpret ‘micro-expressions’,
eye movements, emotions, moods, stress, deceit, boredom, confusion,
intentions, and more: all at the speed of life.
(p. 282; see also Mannion, 2016; Virdee-Chapman,
2016; Simonite, 2019; Realeyes can be found @
https://www.realeyesit.com/)

The company stresses that measuring the emotions can enable clients – those
using their software – to surpass their competitors because often intangible
‘emotions’ can ‘translate into concrete social activity, brand awareness, and
proft’ (in Zuboff, 2019: 283). Relatedly, the CEO of Affectiva refers to a ‘chip
embedded in all things everywhere, running constantly in the background,
producing an “emotion pulse”’ each time a person checks their phone. She
declares: ‘I think in the future we’ll assume that every device just knows how to
read your emotions.’ (in Zuboff, 2019: 288; Affectiva can be found @ https://
www.affectiva.com/).
These companies are, of course, small in size when compared to the tech
giants and we also need to be mindful of the fact that much of this ‘science’ is
unproven and the publicity speaks more, perhaps, of the success of entrepre-
neurs and corporate hucksters in marketing their wares and ‘charms’. However,
these developments are still signifcant because micro frms, regarded as poten-
tially proftable innovators, are frequently ‘bought out’ by the large corporations.
More fundamentally, companies, such as Realeyes and Affectiva, furnish us with
insights into the trajectory and evolving agendas of the surveillance capitalist
sector.
The specifc focus on the surveillance and monitoring of emotions has
been termed AI-enabled ‘affect recognition’ and the central – and unproven
 Surveillance capitalism 83

– assertion is that such technology can ‘read’ our ‘inner emotions by interpret-
ing physiological data such as the micro-expressions on our face, tone of voice,
or gait’ (AI Now, 2019: 12). However, dissenting and critical commentators
note the

similarities between the logic of affect recognition, in which personal

worth and character are supposedly discernable from physical character-
istics, and discredited race science and physiognomy, which was used to
claim that biological differences justifed social inequality. Yet in spite
of this, AI-enabled affect recognition continues to be deployed at scale
across environments from classrooms to job interviews, informing sensi-
tive determinations about who is ‘productive’ or who is a ‘good worker’,
often without people’s knowledge.
(AI Now, 2019: 12)

Currently, it is clear that the

owners of the great digital corporations regard AI as their technology –

and with good reason, for it is they who possess the intellectual property
rights, the vast research budgets, the labour-time of AI scientists, the data
and the centres that store it, telecommunications networks, and the ties to
an enabling state apparatus that are the preconditions for the creation of AI.
(Dyer-Witheford et al., 2019: 3)

However, companies such as Facebook and Amazon perform, albeit driven by

entirely proft-seeking motives, fulfl vital social roles and this has been evident
during the COVID-19 crisis where forms of sociality were able to be maintained
(in the case of Facebook) and goods and products continued to be delivered (in
the case of Amazon). Extraordinarily, Apple and Google ‘software controls about
3 billion smartphones, equal to almost 40 percent of the world’s population’
(Vogelstein, 2020). Consequently, given the power that these private corpora-
tions wield, serious consideration might also be given to the public seizing con-
trol of the extractive apparatus of surveillance capitalism (see also Tarnoff, 2018;
Just Net Coalition, 2019). Certainly, in the context of the global pandemic, as
Naomi Klein (2020) signals, a range of serious political questions urgently need
to be posed:

Will that technology be subject to the disciplines of democracy and public

oversight, or will it be rolled out in state-of-exception frenzy, without
asking critical questions that will shape our lives for decades to come? …
If we are indeed seeing how critical digital connectivity is in times of cri-
sis, should these networks, and our data, really be in the hands of private
players like Google, Amazon, and Apple? If public funds are paying for
so much of it, should the public also own and control it? If the internet is
84 Surveillance capitalism

essential for so much in our lives, as it clearly is, should it be treated as a

non-proft public utility?

Social work, welfare and crime

Would it be too wackily outlandish to suggest that, in the future, some of the
emerging technologies already discussed might be deployed within social work
arenas? If, for example, the ‘welfare of the child is the paramount consideration’,
as most legal frameworks suggest, why not deploy some of these technologies (for
example, those analysing the ‘spoken surplus’, facial expressions and emotional
analytics) in the domain of child protection? An argument could be made that
these forms of affect recognition would better equip social workers to forensi-
cally ‘test’ the veracity of parental statements and dispositions. I am not advocat-
ing for this to occur, of course, yet one does not have to have a sci-f mindset
to be able to recognise how surveillance technologies transfer into areas and
practices for which they were not originally intended.
In the United Kingdom and elsewhere, testing for alcohol use and other
drugs is frequently used with parents where multidisciplinary professionals
remain unconvinced about their trustfulness (BBC News, 2020c). Indeed, some
of the technologies mentioned earlier might begin to fulfl a more substantial
role within the child welfare arena, particularly if the parents concerned come
freighted with an ambiguous symbolic load of potential ‘dangerousness’ (Dale
et al., 1986). Clearly, this is an area that warrants more detailed exploration.
However, next we will turn to examine how machine learning now enables
computers to become more adept at recognising patterns in future data. As a
result, large data sets can be processed to produce predictions related to, say, car
insurance and the likelihood of certain drivers having an accident, but also the
vulnerability of certain children to abuse within their family. Moreover, ‘auto-
mated systems are alluring because they seem to remove the burden from gate-
keepers, who may be too overworked’ to make ‘sound judgements’ (Benjamin,
2019: 30).
Importantly, we also need to note the origins of this way of utilising com-
puter science. First, in historical terms, communist, socialist, social-democratic
projects have always aimed to utilise the state to deploy science and technol-
ogy to provide more effcient services. Indeed, one of the core charges often
levelled at capitalism is that it is chaotic, grossly ineffcient and fails to ade-
quately make use of scientifc innovations. In 1918, the Fabian socialist George
Bernard Shaw refected such a leftist, modernist sensibility when he foresaw
how algorithms and machine learning might assist social welfare and health
professionals:

In the clinics and hospitals of the near future we may reasonably expect
that doctors will delegate the preliminary work of diagnosis to machine
operators as they leave the taking of a temperature to a nurse. Such
 Surveillance capitalism 85

machine work may only be a registration of symptoms; but I can conceive

of machines which would sort out combinations of symptoms and deliver
a card stating the diagnosis and treatment according to rule.
(in Crowe et al., 1978: 1)

Today, some unconvincingly maintain that trajectory of technological transfor-

mations, including movements to automation, should be accelerated because the
replacement of human labour might aid the political project of the Left (for cri-
tiques, see Bassett and Roberts, 2019; Dyer-Witheford, 2020).
Second, the origins of the various modes of pattern analysis, fnding a way
into social work and the related area of criminal justice, lie in the logics of mili-
tary targeting. For example, the almost 600 drone strikes authorised by President
Barack Obama were undertaken on the basis of a belief – often mistaken – that
military commanders could predictively pattern, recognise and identify individ-
uals and groups posing a risk to the United States and its political and economic
imperatives. Similar forms of surveillance and targeting were – and continue – to
be undertaken by the Israeli air force (Weizman, 2020).
In numerous instances, surveillance companies have been tasked with tar-
geting dissenting communities of activists. Zuboff, for example, draws atten-
tion to how a company called Geofeedia provides U.S. police departments with
‘detailed location tracking of activists and protesters, such as Greenpeace mem-
bers or union organizers, and the computation of individualized “threat scores”
using data drawn from social media’ (p. 382). Another company recommends
‘life pattern marketing’ based on techniques derived from military intelligence
(referred to as ‘patterns of life analysis’) which assemble intelligence on the daily
behavioural patterns of a “person of interest” so as to predict’ future behaviour (p.
242). Such endeavours reveal how technologies used in the context of military
operations, are spilling over into the spheres of civilian life. This development is
also likely to be fast-forwarded by companies closely linked to the intelligence
and defence ‘community’ in the United States. For example, Palantir, a ‘data
mining company founded with seed money from the CIA’s venture capital fund’,
has been at the centre of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s deten-
tion and tracking operations, but it has now been mentioned in relation to the
U.K. government’s interest in developing a COVID-19 contacting tracing app
(Winston, 2018).

Minding the machines in the ‘automatic factory’: Social work

Perhaps in social work and related felds, algorithmic technologies have a certain
appeal, especially to neoliberal policy-makers, planners and managers, because
they appear to achieve a number of things simultaneously: for example, it appears
that algorithmic power may ‘deliver’ a new capacity to predict where ‘need’ is
occurring and where ‘intervention’ is ‘objectively’ warranted. It enables, accord-
ing to such reasoning, a better ‘targeting’ of ‘limited resources’ and reduced
86 Surveillance capitalism

fnancial costs in, for example, safeguarding children. However, as Peter Buzzi
(2020) observes, this aspiration to do ‘more with less’ risks ‘hard-coding auster-
ity’. In 2018, a Guardian editorial observed:

Between a tenth and a third of the jobs in Britain are at risk of being
automated away … Should social workers be among them? It might seem
that the particular and personal skills of social work are of a nature that
could never be replaced by a machine, but from the point of view of an
economist they are part of the machinery to provide help in the most cost-
effective way.
(The Guardian, 18 September 2018)

Despite the corporate ‘spin’ and hyperbole of the corporations developing and
selling predictive modelling ‘tools’, the same newspaper notes that uncritical
usage of algorithmic technologies produces serious errors.
Signifcantly, newer ways of algorithmically led working can appear to be
‘scientifc’, ‘fact’ driven, less prone to human bias and even anti-discriminatory
because, so goes this line of reasoning, how can mathematical modelling and
mere systems of scoring be, for example, ‘racist’? The appeal is also grounded
in the idea that the use of such technologies can furnish ‘fast’ ‘solutions’ to,
seemingly, intractable social ‘problems’ and ‘threats’. Moreover, such discourses
are intertwined with ideas pivoting around anticipatory and ostensibly benign
forms of ‘early intervention’ to combat a multiplicity of ambiguous types of ‘risk’
(Garrett, 2018a: Ch. 6).
Such new forms of working also partly illustrate the prescience of Bauman’s
concerns from over two decades ago when he spoke of the ‘proceduralisation’
of social work evidenced by the increased use of centrally devised schedules
and instruments. Due to such ‘proceduralisation’, the profession risked becoming
dislocated from the complex ethical complexities inherent in working alongside
people with pressing diffculties (Bauman, 2000). According to Bauman (2000:
10), ‘clarity and unambiguity’ are the drivers of ‘procedural execution’, but if
constant efforts were made to eradicate ‘ambivalence and uncertainty’, it might
result in the destruction of the ‘moral substance of responsibility, the founda-
tion on which the world rests’ (see also Chapter 8). Since Bauman made these
remarks, what we might term ‘techno-proceduralism’ has become much more
entrenched because, as a number of research papers attest, of the way that com-
puter innovations are deployed across social services (De Haan and Connolly,
2014; Gillingham, 2016; 2017; 2019; Gillingham and Graham, 2017; Keddell,
2015; 2019). Indeed, for many years, there has been an appetite for the wholesale
deployment of new statistical techniques within social work, with suggestions
coming from North America, that ‘social work informatics’ (Parker-Oliver and
Demiris, 2006) or ‘child welfare informatics’ (Naccarato, 2010) might evolve
into new disciplinary sub-specialities. In 2006, an article in the fagship journal
of the U.S. social work profession opined that the ‘future is promising for a new
 Surveillance capitalism 87

social worker, a social work informatician’ (Parker-Oliver and Demiris, 2006:

133).
Collecting, organising and analysing data, if done using a critical lens,
can potentially enhance policy and practice (Gillingham and Graham, 2017).
However, what is often marginalised within techno-utopic thinking is the fact
that predictive analytics are entirely dependent on the quality, completeness
and representativeness of the data set accessed. What is more, the danger exists
that calculative logic and an over-reliance on machine learning might radically
dilute the capacity for refection, assessment and judgement within social work.
Relatedly, it may be the case that the word BIG – in Big Data – is becom-
ing unduly valorised and implicitly perceived and coded, in some quarters, as
BETTER.
Big Data, it has been helpfully suggested, is best perceived as a ‘cultural, tech-
nological, and scholarly phenomenon’ that is defned by the interplay of:

•• Technology: maximising computation power and algorithmic accuracy to

gather, analyse, link and compare large data sets.
•• Analysis: drawing on large data sets to identify patterns in order to make
economic, social, technical and legal claims.
•• Mythology: the widespread belief that large data sets offer a higher form
of intelligence and knowledge that can generate insights that were previ-
ously impossible, with the aura of truth, objectivity and accuracy (boyd and
Crawford, 2012: 663).

In terms of the third element, it is worth remembering that one of social work’s
prime attributes is an embedded willingness to dwell on and investigate the
‘small’, the marginal, the micro, the feeting and the often unseen. This not only
conveys something about social work epistemology but also gives rise to par-
ticular ‘styles’ and ways of interacting and relationship-building with individual
people within specifc milieus.
Other concerns relate to potential ‘decisional blindness’ resulting from the
misguided perception that data is merely ‘objective, unambiguous and inter-
pretation free’ (Buzzi, 2020). One consequence of this ‘empiricism-washing’
may well be a failure to consider excluded or absent data (Doctorow, 2020).
The old Warner Brothers cartoons used to end with the cheerful motif ‘That’s
all Folks!’: might this also be what is conveyed by many corporate purveyors of
predictive analytics? One potential pitfall here is that in-depth ‘social explana-
tions of the complex problems faced by service users’ may increasingly become
‘replaced by informational surface descriptions’ (Gillingham and Graham, 2017:
139). Important questions, as to ‘why’ someone may do ‘x’ or ‘y’ may become
marginal concerns because the motivational dimension risks becoming drained
of signifcance.
In an important book, Virginia Eubanks (2018) investigates how the use
of algorithms can produce highly adverse consequences for some of those in
88 Surveillance capitalism

contact with ‘human services’ and child protection agencies in the United
States. However, not dissimilar developments have taken place in Denmark
and Aotearoa/New Zealand. In England, Joanna Redden and her colleagues
identify algorithmic systems being used or trialled by Thurrock, Newham,
Tower Hamlets, Somerset, Hackney and Bristol councils. Moreover, the What
Works Centre for Social Care has entered into partnership with the Office of
the Children’s Commissioner to pilot risk scoring systems in some unnamed
councils (Redden et al., 2020: 511). Other councils, including Manchester, are
not using risk scoring systems, but are developing ‘data warehouse or data lakes’
to ‘profle individuals and families and in others for population level analyt-
ics’ (Redden et al., 2020: 511). Corporate consultancy frms, such as Ernst and
Young (EY), are integral to a number of these schemes. For example, Hackney’s
Children’s Safeguarding Profling System was produced as a result of it working
with EY and a company called Xantura. The – now cancelled – system pivoted
on alerts being sent to practitioners when a risk threshold has been crossed.
Importantly, discussions of the ‘accuracy surrounding the use of risk scor-
ing systems’ has been limited (Redden et al., 2020: 519; see also Church and
Fairchild, 2017). Questions circulating around power and human rights are
also insuffciently interrogated. Such data gathering exercises are founded on
immense ‘asymmetries of power’ in the relationship between the child welfare
agencies and those whose personal information is ‘being continuously collected
and combined’ (Redden et al., 2020: 515). This is also a context in which chil-
dren and families who are algorithmically profled and are ‘subject to these sys-
tems have very little say or ability to know how their data is used’ (Redden et al.,
2020: 515).

Wandering ‘zombie-like into a digital dystopia’: Welfare

During the summer of 2020, widespread demonstrations erupted in England
because of the government’s decision to assess school pupils’ examination perfor-
mances via a predictive algorithm. This move was partly prompted by the COVID-
19-related school closures and the cancellation of examinations. However, having
received their results, child demonstrators, many deprived of an expected place
at university, carried banners announcing ‘The algorithm stole my future’ and
‘Fuck the algorithm’ (Amoore, 2020). Confronted by such protests, the govern-
ment ditched the algorithms and decided to revert to teacher-led centre-assessed
grades. However, the algorithmic assessment of welfare benefts has been com-
mon in some countries for many years (Mchangama and Yan-Liu, 2018). Entailing
claimants needing to ‘go online’ to access welfare systems, it has resulted in various
forms of algorithmic injustice and major problems for claimants who are often in
contact with social workers (see also Refection and Talk Box 4).
Illustrating again some of the strategic moves of Big Tech and neoliberal
governments, the shift to ‘digital welfare’ is presented as politically neutral, a
mere refection of ‘common sense’ and a sensible striving for effciency. Hence,
 Surveillance capitalism 89

the promotion of the switch to, and embedding of, digitalisation is marketed as
an ‘essentially benign initiative’ (United Nations General Assembly, 2019: 23).
Indeed, in some instances, the ‘embrace of the digital welfare state is presented
as an altruistic and noble enterprise’ (United Nations General Assembly, 2019:
4). Discursive framing plays an important role and in Ireland the Department of
Employment Affairs and Social Protection developed an online portal for ‘cus-
tomers’ cosily titled ‘My Welfare’; perhaps, in truth, a problematic construction
because it may remind some ‘customers’ of the rapacious practices of a well-
known Irish-based budget airline whose portal is called ‘My Ryanair’. More
generally, the digitalisation of welfare systems has been

accompanied by deep reductions in the overall welfare budget, a narrow-

ing of the benefciary pool, the elimination of some services, the intro-
duction of demanding and intrusive forms of conditionality, the pursuit
of behavioural modifcation goals, the imposition of stronger sanctions
regimes and a complete reversal of the traditional notion that the State
should be accountable to the individual.
(United Nations General Assembly, 2019: 5)

As we saw earlier, central to the discourse of the surveillance capitalists are ideas
circulating around the ‘internet of things’ and ‘ubiquitous computing’. However,
some people are not able to access the internet. Globally, the statistics are stark
with 3.8 billion people having no access (Dreyfuss, 2018). Fewer than 1 in
5 people in the least developed countries are connected. In the world’s richest
country, the United States, a 2017 report to Congress revealed that 12 million
children are growing up in homes that do not have an internet connection
(Broom, 2020). In the U.K., Ofcom (the communications regulator) highlights
issues related to smartphone usage: whilst 80 percent of all adults owned one of
these devices in 2018, only 47 percent of 65–74-year-olds, and 26 per cent of over
75s did. In terms of income factors, Ofcom data shows that although 93 percent
of low-income households have access to a mobile phone, only 67 percent use
a smartphone, compared to 86 percent of the highest income group (Clarke,
2020a). Lloyds Bank (2019), reporting on what it termed the ‘digitally disadvan-
taged’, identifes 11.9 million people as lacking in essential digital skills.
The shift to a ‘digital welfare state’, across many jurisdictions within high-
and middle-income countries refects, therefore, a structured disregard for those
unable to have ease of access and it represents a continuing coercive and puni-
tive ground war taking place in the sphere of social protection (Alston and van
Veen, 2019). The mandatory use of digital photographs and the imposition of
electronic payment cards, instead of cash, emphasises that ‘customers’ are, in fact,
being managed like prisoners on parole (see also Chapter 6). Such cards are also
a rich source of extractable behavioural data. Partly driven by the world view,
expertise and proft-seeking imperatives of the surveillance capitalists, there is,
according to the UN, a ‘grave risk of stumbling zombie-like into a digital welfare
90 Surveillance capitalism

dystopia’ (United Nations General Assembly, 2019: 2). Central here are systems
of social protection and assistance which are ‘increasingly driven by digital data
and technologies that are used to automate, predict, identify, surveil, detect, tar-
get and punish’ (United Nations General Assembly, 2019: 2). A consequence of
this development is that the ‘digital welfare state often seems to involve various
forms of rigidity and the robotic application of rules’ (United Nations General
Assembly, 2019: 17). Thus, caseworkers and other human decision-makers are
rendered marginal within the processes and the workfows constructed by the
corporate software designers. This is starkly illustrated by, for example, the bru-
tal and lethal administration of ‘universal credit’ in the U.K. (Grover, 2019).
In India, the controversial Aadhaar system was launched in 2009 and all
residents were issued with a unique 12-digit ID number, linked to biometric
information, including fngerprint and retinal scans. Thus, those not registering
under the, nominally voluntary, system are unable to access social protection
payments and, as a result, there have been multiple cases of in which rejected
welfare beneft claims have led to malnutrition and starvation deaths (Mehta,
2020). In Europe, an important ruling by a Dutch court forcefully stresses the
importance of the right to privacy in the context of the evolution of digital wel-
fare systems. The Dutch System Risk Indication (SyRI), established to prevent
welfare fraud, collates seventeen categories of personal data from an array of pub-
lic agencies, but it appears to have mostly focused on fnancially impoverished
and stigmatised neighbourhoods (see also Chapter 6). However, the court ruled
that SyRI violated the principles of human rights and should be terminated. It
was stated that, whilst recognising the need to combat fraud, there is also a need
to achieve a ‘balance’ so as not to infringe on people’s privacy. Emphasis was laid
on article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and, specifcally,
the need to respect private and family life, home and correspondence (Bekker,
2020; Aschoff, 2020a). Relatedly – as Amnesty International (2020) and other
organisations signing an important public statement maintain – the COVID-
19 pandemic is a ‘global public health emergency that requires a coordinated
and large-scale response by governments worldwide’. However, such ‘efforts to
contain the virus must not be used as a cover to usher in a new era of greatly
expanded systems of invasive digital surveillance’.

Policing by machine: Crime

Once again mirroring what has occurred in the United States, some councils in
the United Kingdom have tried to create systems purporting to algorithmically
predict and pre-empt involvement in ‘gang’ violence (Winston, 2018). Police
departments prominently using computer algorithms to identify geographic
areas and individuals at

high risk for crime have included those in Chicago and Memphis. In the
latter city, the police department’s Blue CRUSH program applies IBM
 Surveillance capitalism 91

predictive-analytics software to data on past crimes to identify ‘hot spots’

where offcers are directed to conduct sweeps and show a heightened pres-
ence to deter future criminal activity.
(Roberts, 2019: 1716)

In California, perhaps resonating with discourses around ‘early intervention’ so

prominent in social work, the police have been criticised on account of their
resorting to predictive technologies to identify so-called ‘gangster babies’ (CBS
News, 2016; see also California State Auditor, 2016). More fundamentally, such
computerised predictions simply aim to identify individuals for ‘agencies to reg-
ulate from the moment of birth, without any regard to their actual responsibility
for causing social harm’ (Roberts, 2019: 1713; see also Benjamin, 2019).
As I discussed two decades ago (Garrett, 2003), the London Metropolitan
Police (MP) has had a longstanding interest in using technology to monitor
children. More recently, Amnesty International (2018) has severely criticised
the approach of the MP for its intelligence system purporting to identify and
share data about individuals considered to be linked to gangs. Central here is a
‘matrix’ database on which individuals are featured, in line with a traffc light
classifcation system, as red, amber or green: gang ‘nominals’ coded red are
those the police consider most likely to commit a violent offence whilst those
coded green appear, at least according to the algorithms, to constitute the least
risk. By October 2012, the police had 3,806 individuals on the Gangs Matrix.
However, the system appears to harbour an embedded racialised bias in that
almost 90 percent of those on the matrix were from London’s Black, Asian and
minority ethnic communities: 80 percent were between the ages of 12 and 24;
15 percent were minors (the youngest was 12 years old) and 99 percent were
male.
Unsurprisingly, Amnesty express concern about such fndings due to the
unexamined bedrock assumptions lying at the heart of this and similar predic-
tive software. For example, many of the ‘indicators’ used by the police to iden-
tify ‘gang members’ simply seem to refect elements of urban youth culture and
identity and have absolutely nothing to do with serious crime. Nevertheless,
data sharing between the police and other agencies, such as social work, is likely
to result in certain individuals becoming stigmatised in their interaction with
service providers, from housing to education, to job centres. Data sharing also
appears to lack robust safeguards in that there is no clear process for review-
ing the matrix or for correcting or deleting erroneous or outdated information.
Neither does there seem to be a formal procedure alerting individuals that they
featured on the matrix. Amnesty summarises that, on account of the uncritical
use of the matrix and its associated algorithms, the police and other multidis-
ciplinary services continue to discriminate against already marginalised young
people, especially Black and minority ethnic boys and young men. Echoing such
concerns, the ‘values underpinning and shaping’ new technologies are ‘unavoid-
ably skewed by the fact that there is a diversity crisis in the artifcial intelligence
92 Surveillance capitalism

sector across gender and race’ in that those designing systems tend to be ‘over-
whelmingly white, male, well-off and from the global North’ (United Nations
General Assembly, 2019: 22).
Although ‘race’ is undertheorised within the academic feld of ‘surveillance
studies’, all of this is occurring in historical and contemporary contexts in which
Black bodies are frequently targeted for particular types of oversight and scru-
tiny (Browne, 2015; Benjamin, 2019). In terms of how this translates in prac-
tice, if you have a machine learning ‘system to predict who the police should
arrest, it will suggest that they go arrest the same people similar to the ones they
have been arresting all along’ (Doctorow, 2020). Indeed, a ‘predictive policing
system doesn’t predict crime, it predicts policing’ (Ball in Doctorow, 2020).
Indeed, it is not diffcult to detect how predictive algorithms merely ‘package’
deeply unequal social structures into scores which ‘necessarily refects individu-
als’ privileged or disadvantaged positions’ (Roberts, 2019: 1708). Alert to this
situation in the United States, Roberts (2019: 1720) observes that because they
are ‘under law enforcement supervision at such high rates, it is almost impossible
for any Black person living in America – especially those living in predominantly
Black neighbourhoods – to have a social network free of connections to crime’.
Consequently, risk assessment modelling that ‘import institutionally biased data
become a “self-fulflling feedback loop”’.
Highlighting the circularity seemingly integral to such approaches, this per-
ception might also be re-worked to propose that if a ‘predictive child protection
system fails to predict child abuse, it predicts social work’. For DSW, unpack-
ing such issues is important because it helps us to decentre the technology and to
emphasise the social dimension; more fundamentally, our concerns in this chap-
ter do not, in reality, focus on the technology per se. Rather, the key question is
the deployment of technology within a world that is economically and politically
ordered in a particular way.
Liberty (2019), in the evocatively titled Policing by Machine, also criticises pre-
dictive technologies and associated forms of heightened surveillance. What is
occurring, maintains the pressure group, is an embedding of pre-existing pat-
terns of social and economic inequality. Moreover, Big Data can result in the
practice of ‘apophenia’ which refers to ‘seeing patterns where none actually exist,
simply because enormous quantities of data can offer connections that radiate in
all directions’ (boyd and Crawford, 2012: 668). Despite such problems, partly
prompted by neoliberal policies, the police and other public services are still
led to seek out technological ‘solutions’ that appear ‘cost-effective’. However,
rights are eroded and there is a detectable drift in the direction of deferring to
algorithms because, blandly and misleadingly, the ‘numbers speak for themselves’
(Anderson, 2008). One consequence of this development, refecting the logics
of the occupying army, is the identifcation of so-called ‘hot spots’; areas of cities
which warrant particular attention and a concentration of state forces intent on
quelling disturbances (Roberts, 2019).
 Surveillance capitalism 93

In the United States, the organisation ‘Data for Black Lives’ (D4BL) expresses
concern about how data collected relating to COVID-19 might, given embed-
ded structural racism, become ‘weaponised’ against Black and other minority
ethnic communities. Although relating to one country, their demands have more
global resonances. D4BL demands that COVID-19 data should not be used to
‘determine risk. It should not be used to surveil, criminalize, cage, and deny
critical benefts’. Neither should this data be deployed to ‘inform any of the fol-
lowing automated decision making systems’, for example:

•• Predictive policing and enforcement of social distancing orders (i.e. COVID-

19 hot spots should not be assigned greater police presence and prioritised
enforcement of social distancing measures).
•• Public safety assessments to determine whether a person can be released
from jail or prison.
•• Forced testing (general and antibodies testing) that would disproportion-
ately target Black, Latinx and/or poor communities.
•• Denying a person credit.
•• Reinforcing historical practices of redlining in the form of denying loans,
lowering property values and reducing public and private investments.
•• Denying a person a job.
•• Denying a person housing.
•• Denying a person access to health care, treatment or services (i.e. ventilators).
•• Denying a person access to public services and benefts (i.e. public transpor-
tation). (Data for Black Lives (D4BL), 2020: 25)

Surveillance capitalism and COVID-19

Given the COVID-19 global pandemic and some of the responses of states in
different parts of the world, it is not diffcult to see how some of the concerns
identifed in this chapter become extraordinarily magnifed. Prominent here
is the lure – and risk – of tech ‘solutionism’ and the use of advanced forms
of technology supposed to provide swift ‘magic bullet’ responses to the spread
of the virus. However, there is little informed public debate on the ‘solutions’
being considered and deployed and, on occasions, it appears that innovation talk
is distracting public attention from the inequalities which make some people
more likely to be lethally infected than others. Moreover, governments and Big
Tech have been able to repurpose habits and ways of relating to the ubiquitous
smartphone that have developed and become individually and culturally embed-
ded over the past decade. For example, in Poland, smartphones were used to
strictly enforce quarantine with individuals mandated to remain at home hav-
ing to send a photograph of themselves within ‘twenty minutes of receiving
a prompt from government offcials’ (Aschoff, 2020a); if this did not occur, a
police visit was immediately triggered. In this way, the ‘selfe’, perhaps associated
94 Surveillance capitalism

with celebratory narcissism, began to resemble the ‘mugshot’ of the incarcerated

prisoner (see also Datta, 2020).
Utilising algorithms may, in some countries, have supported contact tracing
and the identifcation of chains of COVID-19 transmission. At the time of writ-
ing, the situation is still fuid, but there are – as the Polish instance illustrates –
complex human rights and civil liberties issues needing to be addressed (Mehta,
2020; Lewis et al., 2020). The signatories of a Joint Statement on Contact Tracing
(2020) voice concerns that some ‘solutions’ to the crisis may, via ‘mission creep’,
result in systems allowing ‘unprecedented surveillance’. For example, the various
apps used and being considered for use can too easily be ‘repurposed to ena-
ble unwarranted discrimination and surveillance’ ( Joint Statement on Contact
Tracing, 2020). In this context, perhaps the notion of ‘balance’ introduced in
the Dutch ruling on ‘digital welfare’, mentioned earlier, has relevance in terms
of surveillance technologies, contact trancing and public health (Bekker, 2020).
Facial recognition and biometric identifcation technology may play a role in
relation to the concept of ‘immunity passports’. At the time of writing, NHSX
(the health service’s digital arm), in the U.K., is considering such passports and
the ways that technology could be deployed (Clarke, 2020b). In the United
States, smartphones are tracking movement to locate where people are moving
to and from during the pandemic. The government has also engaged Palantir
to produce a new Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) surveil-
lance platform called HHS Protect Now (Aschoff, 2020b). Israel is using its
security and intelligence services, honed in its efforts to maintain the occupation
of Palestine, to log the movements of those testing positive for COVID-19. In
South Korea, individuals identifed as COVID-19 ‘positive’ are publicly identi-
fed so as to alert others in proximity to them.
In the PRC, the Alipay Health Code system assigns individuals differ-
ently coloured codes on the basis of COVID-19 status. The system pivots on
the downloading of apps that convert smartphones into, effectively, ‘electronic
passes’ (Ling, 2020: 14). People seeking to enter public places (e.g. restaurants or
boarding trains) must scan a Quick Response (QR) barcode with their smart-
phones and only those displaying the colour green (‘nothing abnormal detected’)
are able to proceed. Other colours result in varying degrees of restriction: yel-
low (‘quarantine at home’) and ‘red’ (‘quarantine at an approved facility’) (Ling,
2020: 14). The specifc colour is ‘determined by place-specifc algorithms that
software engineers tweak daily in line with shifting government directives on
city-by-city risk levels’ (Aschoff, 2020b). The system facilitating the tracking
of movement is not – at the time of writing – as intensively enforced as it was a
number of months ago, but it can be reactivated in the event of new surges in
virus infection. This smartphone strategy is complemented by deployment of
other forms of surveillance technology. For example, 5G-powered police patrol
robots roam public places, such as shopping malls and airports in large cities
such as Guangzhou and Shanghai. These robots use infrared thermometers and
 Surveillance capitalism 95

high-resolution cameras to scan for anyone with a fever or anyone who is not
wearing a mask. Once detected, they are reported to the police (Aschoff, 2020b).
Whilst recognising the advantages conferred by such heightened forms of
technological monitoring in containing contagion, Harari (2020) ponders if we
are at an important ‘watershed in the history of surveillance’. Certainly, there are
a bundle of complex issues connected to some of the schemes outlined above.
For example, if digital methods are deployed, what of those (frequently older
and low-income citizens) who lack smartphones? (Broom, 2020). Moreover,
some states may go on to incorporate information related to immigration status
into an ‘immunity passport’ or QR barcode on a smartphone. Already, it is easy
to see how the various surveillance systems which are rapidly coming into use
could be re-purposed to enhance the surveillance of workers. One area where
this is apparent is that associated with wearable sensors which track movement
on the ‘shopfoor’ in the manufacturing and logistics sectors. As we saw earlier,
such technologies, championed by Pentland and others, were already beginning
to proliferate even before the global pandemic. Corporations might opportunis-
tically use the crisis to press for more widespread usage. For example, as a num-
ber of countries begin to ease ‘lockdown’ restrictions, it might be argued that
wearable sensors are benign and vital, if ‘social distancing’ measures are to be
properly regulated. However, such devices furnish fne-grained data on the pace
that workers are working, who they are associating with, how long they pause
to speak to workmates and so on. The danger, of course, is that surveillance sys-
tems introduced in a time of pandemic risk being permanently retained and re-
purposed by employers, particularly in the context of a pending economic crisis
when the potential revolt of workers needs to be averted and quelled (Aschoff,
2020b).
Even beyond the workplace, as Harari (2020) avows, many of the supposedly
‘short-term emergency measures may become a fxture of life. That is the nature
of emergencies. They fast-forward historical processes’. Thus, he invites us to
embark on a ‘thought experiment’ so as to consider a

hypothetical government that demands that every citizen wears a biomet-

ric bracelet that monitors body temperature and heart-rate 24 hours a day.
The resulting data is hoarded and analysed by government algorithms. The
algorithms will know that you are sick even before you know it, and they
will also know where you have been, and who you have met. The chains
of infection could be drastically shortened, and even cut altogether. Such a
system could arguably stop the epidemic in its tracks within days … Even
when infections from coronavirus are down to zero, some data-hungry
governments could argue they needed to keep the biometric surveillance
systems in place because they fear a second wave of coronavirus, or because
there is a new Ebola strain evolving in central Africa.
(Harari, 2020)
96 Surveillance capitalism

Important developments relating to health surveillance need to be theoretically

situated within the economic and political landscape evolving prior to our having
even heard of COVID-19. Our conceptual tools forged prior to the pandemic
are still vital – we are not thrown into some kind of conceptual ‘ground zero’.
That is to say, responses envisaged to combat the virus are likely to be largely
determined by some of the key conjunctural factors identifed in the book’s frst
chapter; neoliberal capitalism and related crises attributable to climate, forced
migration and the threats posed by neo-fascism. As we have also seen, in the
present chapter, Zuboff ’s ideas circulating around surveillance capitalism add to
our understanding of what may be occurring.
Technologies can, of course, support human fourishing and, as mentioned
earlier, in Dissenting Social Work, we are not seeking to mount an argument
against surveillance technologies per se. Rather, we need to fgure out how the
technology is being used to either entrench or potentially erode class power. At
present, capital is responsible for enabling the design of technologies as an exten-
sion of the power of the market. Consequently, technological innovations are not
used as instruments intent on – to use the phrase featuring in the International
Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) defnition of social work – benefcially
facilitating ‘social change and development’. Instead, technology is primarily
used to maximise proft accumulation and to bolster the social and cultural infra-
structure which enables this to occur and to be reproduced.
What troubles Naomi Klein (2020) is that these developments – impacting,
of course, on social work – are ‘poised for a warp-speed acceleration’. For educa-
tors, such as those involved in social work teaching programmes, this may entail
largely surrendering the ‘tried-and-true technology of trained humans teaching
younger humans face-to-face, in groups where they learn to socialize with one
another’ (Klein, 2020). This is also, of course, a potential future, still lit by neo-
liberal ‘austerity’ lighting in which there are:

fewer teachers, doctors, and drivers. It accepts no cash or credit cards

(under guise of virus control) and has skeletal mass transit and far less live
art. It’s a future that claims to be run on ‘artifcial intelligence’ but is actu-
ally held together by tens of millions of anonymous workers tucked away
in warehouses, data centers, content moderation mills, electronic sweat-
shops, lithium mines, industrial farms, meat-processing plants, and prisons,
where they are left unprotected from disease and hyperexploitation. It’s a
future in which our every move, our every word, our every relationship
is trackable, traceable, and data-mineable by unprecedented collaborations
between government and tech giants.
(Klein, 2020)

For workers in manufacturing and a number of service sector roles, the aim,
albeit with the heightened risk of infection, is to slowly return to work as ‘lock-
downs’ measures are [at the time of writing] beginning to be eased. However,
 Surveillance capitalism 97

Ariadna Estévez (2020) observes, for many white-collar workers, Zoom and
similar platforms for video-conferencing will continue to have a major impact.
In April 2020, over a third (37 percent) of those currently working in the EU
began to ‘telework’ as a result of the pandemic – over 30 percent in most member
states (Eurofound, 2020). Estévez (2020) identifes a strategy to curtail human
mobility to introduce enormous changes to our way of life. Work, henceforth,
is increasingly likely to be conducted from an array of virtual platforms, but
it is presently Zoom that is establishing a particular ‘production model’ that
many white-collar workers are being ‘disciplined for’ (Estévez, 2020). What
she terms ‘Zoomism’, is the mode of production for ‘self-enclosure, which also
increases added value since the operating costs of corporate offces are transferred
to workers: electricity, the internet, water and even coffee. Without the need
for time to travel to work or even to venture outside, we become more pro-
ductive’ (Estévez, 2020). Relatedly, suggests Estévez (2020), there may well be
attempts to eliminate collective forms of dissent and resistance. In particular, she
associates emerging patterns of work organisation, social governance and polic-
ing with a drive to suppress the global feminist movement with many female
white-collar workers increasingly becoming confned to the home. Restricted
to narrow forms of cyber activism, their roles could, therefore, evolve into a mix
of paid employment, full-time mothering and caring. In short, we are ‘facing
an epochal shift, perhaps on the scale of the economic restructuring that led to
neoliberalism’ (Estévez, 2020).
This avoidable dystopian future is one that refects some of the aspirations of
Big Tech and the exploitative dynamics that, as we have seen, preoccupy Zuboff.
Berardi is a little more optimistic in that he believes that the incessant drift to
working ‘online’, fast-forwarded by the responses of states and corporations to
the pandemic, will prompt dissenters to slowly begin to ‘identify online con-
nectivity with sickness’ and this will result in a craving for ‘experiences that are
haptic, shared, void of digital mediation’ (in Petrossiants, 2020). Indeed, such
‘experiences’ might also be perceived as characteristics of social work.

Conclusion
What about those who do not agree with or fail to adhere to the agenda surveil-
lance capitalism? As Benjamin (2019: 19) suggests, ‘attempts to opt out of tech-
mediated life’ are often viewed as threats to the ‘digital order of things. Analog
is antisocial, with the emphasis on anti …”what are you trying to hide”’? The
totalitarian orientation of this form of reasoning clearly relates to this book’s
main concerns. That is to say, the ‘apparatus of connected things is intended to
be everything, any behaviour of human or thing absent from this push for uni-
versal inclusion is dark: menacing, untamed, rebellious, rogue, out of control’
(Zuboff, 2019: 209–10, original emphases). Those dissenting from this hubristic
and grand vision can be viewed as a potential threat to a particular type of – what
Rancière would term – ‘police’ order (see also Chapter 5).
98 Surveillance capitalism

It is vital to recognise, however, that the technologies deployed to monitor

and prevent dissent can also be utilised by those targeted. Darnella Frazier, for
example, bravely flmed police offcer Derek Chauvin extinguishing the life of
George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 (Belle, 2020). Ramsey Orta flmed the
police killing of Eric Garner on Staten Island, in New York, during the sum-
mer of 2014 (Cooper Jones, 2019). The African-American scholar Dorothy E.
Roberts (2019: 1716–7) reminds us that people can use technology in:

novel ways to facilitate social change social justice movements like Black
Lives Matter, Say Her Name, and Survived and Punished have organised,
publicised, and raised money for their efforts using social media platforms,
including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Organizations use electronic
tools to collect and circulate data that document rising inequalities and
state violence in order to end them. Ordinary residents monitor the actions
of police offcers in their neighbourhoods and capture incidences of brutal-
ity on their cell phones.

This perception hints at the need for dissenters to be alert and creative in using
technology to defend oppressed communities and to further progressive social
and economic aims. In our next chapter, we will turn to examine Jacques
Rancière and will consider how his philosophy might enhance DSW.
 Surveillance capitalism 99

REFLECTION AND TALK BOX 4

In a coruscating report, Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme
poverty and human rights, comments:

Egalitarianism is a consistent theme of the technology industry, as exemplified

by Facebook’s aim ‘to give people the power to build community and bring the
world closer together’. At the macro level, however, big tech has been a driver of
growing inequality and has facilitated the creation of a ‘vast digital underclass’.
For its part, the digital welfare state sometimes gives beneficiaries the choice to go
digital or to continue using more traditional techniques. In reality, however, poli-
cies such as ‘digital by default’ or ‘digital by choice’ are usually transformed into
‘digital only’ in practice.
(United Nations General Assembly, 2019: 15)

Do these remarks have resonance for social work with particular ‘client groups’?
In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein (2007) provides an account of how ‘natural’
disasters, such as hurricanes and floods and the associated public disorientation
that accompanies such events, are used by the capital to opportunistically prompt
‘reforms’ in the interest of the ruling class. More recently, in the context of the pan-
demic, she has returned to similar thematic preoccupations with her concept of the
‘Screen New Deal’ (Klein, 2020). She observes:

It has taken some time to gel, but something resembling a coherent Pandemic Shock
Doctrine is beginning to emerge. Call it the ‘Screen New Deal’. Far more high-tech
than anything we have seen during previous disasters, the future that is being rushed
into being as the bodies still pile up treats our past weeks of physical isolation not
as a painful necessity to save lives, but as a living laboratory for a permanent – and
highly profitable – no-touch future … . It’s a future in which our homes are never
again exclusively personal spaces but are also, via high-speed digital connectivity,
our schools, our doctor’s offices, our gyms, and, if determined by the state, our jails.

What is your view of Klein’s ‘Screen New Deal’ and how can we relate this conceptu-
alisation to social work?
Located in the United States, Roberts (2019: 1695) explains that many ‘life-changing
interactions between individuals and state agents’ are now

determined by a computer generated score. Government agencies at the local, state,

and federal levels increasingly make automated decisions based on vast collections
of digitized information about individuals and mathematical algorithms that both
catalogue their past behaviour and assess their risk of engaging in future conduct.

What are the implications of this development for social workers?

Notes
1 Alphabet is the parent company of Google, but throughout the chapter we will con-
tinue to refer to the latter given it is more familiar.
2 For ease of reference, all future mention of Zuboff (2019) will simply include the
relevant page numbers.
5
EQUALITY NOW
Jacques Rancière

Introduction
According to Jacques Rancière (2014 [2009]: 29), dissent is ‘what makes society
livable’ and politics – or more precisely his own conception of politics – is the
‘organisation of this dissent’.1 In what follows, it is argued that a critical engage-
ment with his contributions may assist us in trying to think more deeply about
dissent and social work. Central here is Rancière’s commitment to active equal-
ity with all his work characterised by the ‘consistent attempt to scrupulously
follow the implication of the idea that human beings are equal in all respects’
(Deranty, 2010a: 3). Equality is not simply a destination, as some radical theorists
and activists suggest, situated in the remote future. Rancière entirely dismisses
this approach as a way to prompt change because it is likely to result in constant
deferral. As he argues, all

forms of prohibition, proscription or prescription always go through the

idea that ‘it’s not yet time’, ‘it’s no longer the time’ or ‘it’s never been the
time’ … time always functions as an alibi for the prohibition … I’ve tried
to replace that with space.
(Rancière, 2016 [2012]: 58)

My understanding of this remark is that Rancière is not only criticising the idea
that struggle for equality can be deferred, in shifting the register from the tem-
poral to the spatial he is also emphasising the local, the micro and the particular.
This move means that his thinking circulates in the orbit of social work which
often has similar preoccupations. (See also Refection and Talk Box 5.)
The task, therefore, becomes one of incessantly seeking to verify equality.
Transformative politics, aspires to reveal that equality, is ‘always a possibility:
things could always be otherwise’ (Davis, 2010: 79). This reasoning can be
 Equality NOW 101

viewed as optimistic given that any ‘state of affairs is always a landscape of pos-
sibility’ (Rancière, 2016 [2012]: 64). However, Rancière concedes that this lived
verifcation of equality ‘actually happens very little or rarely’ (Rancière, 1999
[1995]: 17). Indeed, inverting Rancière, we can often observe how inequality,
rather than equality, has become a ‘supposition’ impacting negatively on the lives
of many of those who practitioners work alongside.
Rancière’s idea is, perhaps, strikingly simple and thinking and acting in
accordance with his ‘supposition’ can potentially have profoundly de-stabilising
and transformative consequences. This is because the ‘supposition’ that we are
all equal must be perpetually encouraged and promoted across an array of what
he often calls ‘scenes’ (Rancière, 2016 [2012]: 125). Relatedly, he is intent on
acting in the present moment, the NOW. One example of this form of action
is provided by the spontaneous, mass, global responses to the murder of George
Floyd in May 2020. Seemingly not centrally organised or directed, mass demon-
strations resulted in protesters simply appearing on the streets. Interesting also,
in terms of Rancière’s ideas, protesters in U.S. cities refused to abide by temporal
constraints and to defer demonstrating until the so-called ‘curfews’, put in place
by anxious city mayors, had expired.
Bringing Rancière into conversation with social work, we might inquire what
might happen if all the participants in, say, a child protection case conference
were to be considered equal, irrespective of their ‘standing’ and ‘expertise’? This
question, rather than producing defnitive answers, might lead us to think in dis-
senting ways and view the world – and the conference event – somewhat differ-
ently than we would ordinarily do. Would this move conjure up a new sensory
reality inside the room? How might roles be re-thought and redistributed? How
might dispositions alter if the normally unquestioned coordinates were shuffed?
How might relationships transform? What we might be left with is simply human
beings sharing a space and trying to fgure out how to speak and relate to each
other and to address a pressing issue. Looking at the ‘scene’ from a slightly differ-
ent angle, do such questions hint at the need to entirely eliminate child protection
conferences as legitimate spaces for deliberation, assessment and planning?
Rancière is very much a philosopher still committed to the ideals associated
with the events in Paris and elsewhere in 1968 (Deranty, 2010a: 5). Indeed, he
vows that the ‘more time passed, the more I believed in 68’ (Rancière, 2016
[2012]: 16). Then he lent his support to a ‘world where things were being decom-
partalised’ (2016 [2012]: 16). This was a series of moments when students ceased
to ‘function as students, workers as workers, and farmers as farmers. The month
of May ‘68 was a crisis in functionalism and insurgency took the form of political
experiments in declassifcation and in disrupting the natural “givenness” of places’
(Ross, 2002: 25). During the weeks of insurrection, everydayness seemed to be
momentarily, but radically, transformed. For example, meetings held were neither

magical nor mythical but simply the experience of incessantly running into
people that social, cultural or professional divisions kept one from meeting
102 Equality NOW

up with, little events that produced the sense that those mediations or
social compartments had simply withered away.
(Ross, 2002: 103)

Pleasure appeared to be generated simply because ‘social compartmentalisation’

appeared to be overcome with unexpected ‘dialogues conducted across that
segregation’ seeming to ‘transmit a sense of urgent, immediate transformation
being lived not as a future reward but at that very moment’ (Ross, 2002: 104).
Relatedly, Rancière’s writings are imbued with a restless, dissenting vibe or
ambiance in that he constantly aims to ‘deconstruct positions, to muck up a cer-
tain consensus’ (Rancière, 2016 [2012]: 102). His work also possesses powerful
affective and sensuous dimensions (Rancière and Engelmann, 2019). Frequently,
though, he can appear unduly abstruse and abstract with his meanings seeming
elusive and diffcult to fully grasp. Readers will fnd no programme, no strategy
and, seemingly, no endpoint.
In the context of our exploration of the possibilities for dissenting social
work (DSW), this chapter provides an exploratory and tentative introduction
to Rancière’s eclectic body of work. There are, however, tensions in seeking to
explain Rancière because he remains critical of the act and function of explana-
tion (Rancière, 1991 [1981]). We begin by highlighting how Rancière’s dispute
with the canonical fgure of Louis Althusser (1918–1990) contains, at its heart,
many of the themes and conceptual preoccupations concerning him over sub-
sequent decades. We then move on to looking at Rancière’s archival work and
his interest in workers and crafts people who, dissenting from contemporary
convention in nineteenth-century France, undertook nocturnal intellectual and
aesthetic pursuits. Central to such, often literary, endeavours was the refusal
to abide by the tenet that such interests were ‘not for the likes of us’. The third
part of the chapter briefy examines Rancière’s critique of how various leading
thinkers and intellectuals, stretching back to Plato, accept the notion that every-
one has a ‘proper’ station in society that entirely dictates and structures their role,
dispositions and relations to others within the social hierarchy (Corcoran, 2010).
Sections four and fve investigate how Rancière expands his critical exploration
of this issue by formulating his very particular ideas about a ‘police order’ and
‘politics’. The sixth part of the chapter dwells on the substantial criticisms that
can be levelled at Rancière. Nevertheless, it is subsequently argued that his work
can still contribute to and potentially add to the range of ideas informing our
attempts to shape DSW.

Breaking with Althusser and the

emerging key intellectual themes
In the early 1960s, and partly related to the struggle for Algerian independ-
ence, many students became increasingly radicalised (see also our discussion
on Fanon in Chapter 9). Signifcantly, this radicalism was not simply directed
 Equality NOW 103

towards promoting international solidarity with those seeking freedom from

colonial rule. Rather, the aim was also to prompt radical change within France.
Dissenting students directed attention to the universities and pressed for whole-
sale transformation in the way such institutions were organised. Leftist students,
for example, not only campaigned for the introduction of wages for students but
also demanded participation in administrative and ‘even curricular decisions
on an equal footing with faculty’ (Montag, 2011: 9). Importantly, this attempt
to re-order the life of universities and to reconfgure the dominant power
dynamics produced attempts to dismantle hierarchical pedagogical relations.
Thus, students, many infuenced by Maoism and the Chinese cultural revolu-
tion, ‘criticised the “individualist” nature of instruction’ in which the focal
and unquestioned ‘relation was the vertical one between student and professor’
(Montag, 2011: 9). In contrast to this dominant and dominating approach, dis-
senting students called for a more collectivised approach to learning and knowl-
edge acquisition. Working groups were posited as an alternative that might
gradually usurp the centrality of examinations which were so central to French
academic life.
For many leftists and radicals Althusser was manifestly the leading, most pres-
tigious Marxist intellectual of the period. What is more, his standing had been
enhanced because his insistence that it was important to return to Marx’s own
texts seemed to hint at a disgruntlement with the way in which the PCF, the
French Communist Party, was stifing internal debate and placing itself as the
sole mediating agent between Marx and the working class. In short, Althusser’s
theoretical orientation suggested that a potential opening was being created for
a reinvigorated Marxism. In the mid-1960s, matters drastically changed, how-
ever, with the publication of ‘Student Problems’ (Althusser, 2011 [1964]). Here,
Althusser addressed the demands of students that the university, as an institution,
should be transformed and his intervention had far-reaching implications in rela-
tion to pedagogy, politics and function of theory.
Althusser rejected demands for universities to evolve into spaces which were
less hierarchical and more equal, arguing that no ‘pedagogic questions, which
all presuppose unequal knowledge between teachers and students, can be set-
tled on the basis of pedagogic equality between teachers and students’ (Althusser,
2011 [1964]: 14, original emphasis). This was an anathema to Rancière, who
responded to Althusser’s canonical intervention with a ‘searing polemic against
his former mentor’ (Brown, 2011: 16). In this, he criticises what he refers to as the
centrality of ‘plenitude and lack’ which lay at the core of Althusser’s pedagogy
(Rancière, 2011a [1974]: 144). As he was to later observe, the ‘very idea of a class
in society whose specifc role is to think is preposterous and can be conceived
only because we live under a preposterous social order’ (Rancière, 2014 [2009]:
xiii). Rancière also questions the ‘science/ideology’ binary Althusser deploys to
intellectually substantiate the continuing validity of the traditional pedagogical
relationship. According to Althusser, the role of the radical professoriat is to teach
a ‘pure’ Marxist ‘science’ which transcends ‘ideology’. Within the paradigm, the
104 Equality NOW

structures in which this scientifc knowledge was transmitted (at the university
and through the traditional ways of instructing) were to remain undisturbed.
Very much averse to such ideas, Rancière views the science/ideology distinction
as wholly false because science itself exists ‘within institutions and forms of trans-
mission that manifests the bourgeoisie’s ideological domination’ (Rancière, 2011a
[1974]: 141). He suggests that Althusser’s perspective was merely aiming to ‘jus-
tify the eminent dignity of the possessors of knowledge’ (Rancière, 2011a [1974]:
144). Relatedly, there is a failure on Althusser’s part to refexively interrogate the
‘privileged place’ from which he is able to ‘proffer his discourse’ (Rancière, 2011a
[1974]: 28). Althusser’s theoretical perspective is elitist also in its positioning of the
working class as the passive ‘recipient of university-based Marxist-scientist peda-
gogy’ (James, 2012: 1161). In contrast, and infuenced by Maoism, Rancière argues
that it is the ‘oppressed who are intelligent, and the weapons of their liberation will
emerge from their intelligence’ (Rancière, 2011a [1974]: 14–15, emphasis added).
The task of theorising, for Rancière, is to transform the ‘categories of thought and
language so that they can be receptive to, and participate in, the emergence of new
confgurations, whether in social and political relations, in educational organiza-
tions or in artistic practice’ (Deranty, 2010b: 184).
Althusser’s philosophy had become a discourse which cloaked ‘its consecration
of the existing order in the language of revolution’ (Rancière, 2011a [1974]: 124).
His intervention appears intent on reaffrming existing hierarchies ‘between stu-
dents and workers, between manual and intellectual labour, or between militants
and cadres’ (Bosteels, 2011: 28). In this context, Rancière also encourages his
readers to think more deeply about the ways in which, seemingly, dissenting and
‘subversive thoughts’ begin to work in the ‘service of order’ and how the ‘idea of
domination’ can be propagated by the very discourses that pretend to critique it
(Rancière, 2011a [1974]: xvi).
According to this critique, Althusser’s intention appears to be to keep every-
one in their allotted place within the prevailing order, whilst Rancière’s aspira-
tion is to disrupt such orders. Indeed, for him, it is only in genuinely disruptive
moments that transformative politics occurs. As for Althusser, all ‘his “subver-
sive” theses’ share an ‘interesting peculiarity: they never entail any disruptive
practices’ (Rancière, 2011a [1974]: 12).

Proletarian Nights: Contradicting elite expectations

Following the break with Althusser, Rancière involved himself in archival study
and the journal Les Revoltes Logiques (1975–81) (Rancière, 2011b). The collec-
tive responsible for its production illuminated the dynamising ‘complexity of
“thought from below”’ and it has been compared to the History Workshop Journal
in the United Kingdom (Davis, 2010: 41). Les Revoltes Logiques was characterised
by an ‘insistence on comprehensive and critical remembering, warts and all,
rather than selective eulogising’ (Davis, 2010: 43). There was also an activist
dimension to the collective given its commitment to ‘printing declarations of
 Equality NOW 105

solidarity with political prisoners, analysing penal justice or reporting on strikes

under way’ (Suter, 2012: 74).
Rancière’s intellectual and political project to disrupt accepted ways of catego-
rising and classifying was also evinced in Proletarian Nights (Rancière, 2012 [1981]).
Ostensibly a historical study, the text brought the past into conversation with
contemporary debates in and beyond France. Drawing on his extensive archival
work, Rancière sought to highlight how, historically, many Parisian artisans did
not ft the picture that historians and political thinkers usually presented of them.
Focusing on the period 1830–1848, he reveals how many of these workers devoted
the hours of the night to creative expression, writing poetry, prose, polemics, let-
ters and diaries. For Rancière, such activities took fgures, such as the carpenter
and philosopher Louis-Gabriel Gauny (1806–1889), beyond their allocated roles in
society and enabled them to almost create their own autonomous worlds.
Although writing from within a very different social milieu, Audre Lorde’s
(1984: 120–1) perceptions perhaps also have an affnity with those of Rancière
when she rebels and kicks against structurally generated attempts to defne her
and to reduce her to merely one component of a multilayered and complex sense
of personhood:

My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate

all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources
of my living to fow back and forth freely through all my different selves,
without the restrictions of externally imposed defnition. Only then can I
bring myself and my energies as a whole to the service of those struggles
which I embrace as part of my living.

Rancière (2016 [2012]: 109) concedes he is talking about ‘exceptions’ because

the ‘norm is that people stay in their place and things carry on the same as always
forever’. Nonetheless, characters such as Gauny fascinate him because they dis-
sented from the assumption that ‘intellectual and aesthetic pursuits’ were simply
the ‘preserve of the formally educated’ (Clarke, 2013: 14). Their nightly endeav-
ours constitute tangible expressions of the desire for radical change and practical
assertions of their claims to equality. These workers were committed to conjur-
ing up active equality within the confnes of the hierarchical world in which they
lived. The ‘mere fact of writing’, in fact, contradicts the expectations of elites
who determined material, affective and sensuous parameters of the ‘police order’.
Often inspired by utopian and religious thinkers, Gauny and a number of
other workers appear to win ‘from nightly rest the time to discuss, write and
compose verses, or develop philosophies’ (Rancière, 2012 [1981]: ix). Such ‘gains
in time and freedom’ can be interpreted as a kind of ‘revolution’ in so far as these
men and women seem to have

wrenched themselves out of an identity formed by domination and asserted

themselves as inhabitants with full rights of the common world, capable of
106 Equality NOW

all the refnement or all the asceticism that had previously been reserved for
those classes relieved of the daily cares of work and bread.
(Rancière, 2012 [1981]: ix)

They were, therefore, committed to processes of ‘dis-identifcation’ and intent

on severing the link between themselves and ‘their expected or given roles’
(Woodford, 2015: 818).
Signifcantly, Rancière’s exploration of the archives was driven by the desire
to reveal not only that workers ‘time and again, organized meaningful political
revolt, but also that they had demonstrated an understanding of themselves, their
world and their position within it which was in no sense inferior to Marxist sci-
ence’ (Davis, 2010: 15). According to Rancière (2012 [1981]: ix), and evidenc-
ing the erroneous reasoning of Althusser, workers ‘never needed the secrets of
domination explained to them, as their problem was a quite different one’. The
main challenge is how to intellectually and materially withdraw themselves from
the forms of domination imprinted on their bodies and imposed on their actions,
modes of perception, attitudes and language. For some of them, this withdrawal
was connected to aspirations to consume less, to live more frugally and, by doing
so, to increase their independence and ability to struggle within, but against, the
evolving capitalist economy and its institutionalised social order.

Shoemakers and philosophers:

Rejecting hierarchical relations
This fascination with dissenting workers wandering beyond the roles allot-
ted to them by the dominant forces in society is a recurring preoccupation
of Rancière. The shoemaker, whose image is featured on the cover of The
Philosopher and His Poor ( Rancière, 2003 [1983]), is emblematic. For him, the
shoemaker, or cobbler, is ‘the generic name for the man who is not where he
ought to be’ (Rancière, 2003 [1983]: 48). ‘Shoemaking remains at the very bot-
tom of the trades’, and the shoemaker was the ‘least busy with their work, and
the least deluded about the glory of the artisan’ (Rancière, 2003 [1983]: 59).
The fgure of the restless shoemaker is symbolic of a more generalised latent
refusal to abide by, what we might call, the ‘rules of the game’. Thus, the domi-
nant order is ‘menaced wherever the shoemaker does something else other than
make shoes’ (Rancière, 2003 [1983]: 61). For Plato, for example, it was impor-
tant for individuals to maintain their positions within the existing social order
and not to ‘do anything other than your own affair … if you are a shoemaker,
make shoes – and make children who do the same’ (Rancière, 1991 [1981]: 34,
original emphasis). It is Plato, in fact, who gradually becomes ‘enemy number
one’ against whom Rancière’s politics of ‘radical equality and true democracy’
is defned and articulated (Davis, 2010: 18).
According to Plato, it is vital that there be order in the city-state and this he
relates to the myth of the three metals. In The Republic it is observed that the
 Equality NOW 107

ideal city-state features an anti-democratic, autocratic model of government in

which everyone remains in their allotted place within the hierarchy: workers
(with an amalgam of iron and brass in their souls) servicing the material needs
of the society as a whole; a military class of soldier guardians (with silver in their
souls) and a governing class of philosopher-kings (whose souls are mixed with
gold). Danger ‘lies in confusing orders. Between artisan and warrior, or between
warrior and ruler, there can be no exchange of place and function’ (Rancière,
2003 [1983]: 29).
Within Plato’s seemingly static, airless and encompassing model, there is ‘no
empty space in the fabric of the community’ (Rancière, 1999 [1995]: 68): it
‘grants ways of being and ways of doing, ways of feeling and ways of thinking,
with nothing left over’ (Rancière, 1999 [1995]: 68). Each ‘person should do his
own business and nothing else’ (Rancière, 2003 [1983]: 25). Within this stultify-
ing and stable formation, workers, along with other disregarded categories, are
perceived as possessing few qualities because ‘no virtue or education … belongs
to the labouring people’ (Rancière, 2003 [1983]: 24). Lacking any sense of ‘self-
mastery’, at best they are able to display the wisdom of ‘moderation’ (Rancière,
2003 [1983]: 24). The common and compliant ‘virtue of those of the mob is
nothing more than their submission to the order according to which they are
merely what they are and do merely what they do’ (Rancière, 1999 [1995]: 67).
Equally importantly, Rancière interprets philosophy, from Plato onwards, as
providing an intellectual narrative for the idea that individuals need to remain
stationed and pinned down to specifc roles. Thus, he alleges that there is a
not dissimilar elitist reasoning in the work of seemingly more radical European
thinkers such as Marx, Sartre and Bourdieu (Rancière and Engelmann, 2019).
For Rancière, they all share a common construction of a group he ‘calls “the
poor” (the proletariat, the workers or the dominated), who are held to be con-
stitutively incapable of thought’ (Davis, 2010: 20). Thus, knowledge must be
imported by bourgeois intellectuals. For example, according to Sartre, due
to their daily exertions, workers are unable to avail themselves of the time to
think (Rancière, 2003 [1983]: 137). They are oppressed by the ‘eternal snows
of proletarian fatigue’ and so their material interests can only be represented
by the Communist Party (Rancière, 2003 [1983]: 140). Bourdieu, ridiculed
by Rancière as the ‘sociologist-king’, promotes a ‘depressing’ and ‘determinis-
tic’ social science in which categories and classifcations seem to be fxed; there
‘must be no mixing, no imitation’ (Rancière, 2003 [1983]: 23; 189). In contrast,
Rancière seeks to evoke a world where there is ‘recognition of the equal capac-
ity of all for sophisticated complexity of self-understanding’ (Davis, 2010: 22).
Rancière’s focus on the historical and his celebration of ‘imaginative trans-
gressions’ should not, therefore, be erroneously viewed as refecting a turn-
ing away from some of the themes preoccupying him in the exchanges with
Althusser (Iles and Roberts, 2012). In his early scholarship and political activ-
ism, it is possible – as mentioned earlier – to identify a range of concerns that
were to remain constant: the prevailing social order and the possibility for a
108 Equality NOW

truly transformative politics; the way people are positioned and fxed within
particular social orders; hierarchy and equality; democratic pedagogy that
acknowledges people’s lived experience and the intelligence of all. In short, a
plethora of themes which have clear affnities to this book’s ideas circulating
around DSW. Rancière’s preoccupations can also be associated with a num-
ber of interrelated key concepts and, in what follows, the focus will be on the
‘police’ and ‘politics’.

The ‘police order’: A place for everything

and everything in its place
In arriving at his understanding of ‘police’, Rancière excavates perceptions that
were common in the eighteenth century. For example, in the late 1760s, the
Italian lawyer and philosopher Cesare Beccaria (1738–94) stated that ‘the sci-
ences, education, good order, security, and public tranquility [are] objects all
comprehended under the name of police’ (Allen, 1998: 186). Similar defnitions
were articulated by fgures such as the German political economist Johann von
Justi (1717–71) (Donzelot, 1979). Likewise, for Rancière, ‘police’ is not simply
related to crime prevention and detection and the presence of uniformed police
offcers. Rather, the word refers to a whole network of practices and relationships
which shore up, bolster and promote the prevailing social order and the domi-
nant ways of seeing and perceiving the world. Thus, agencies of government,
such as Social Work (along with, for example, Education and Health), are seen as
the ‘police’ or what we might better perceive as part of a pervasive ‘police order’.
This order also crafts particular types of social policy and structures of feeling
that are integral to the wider management of the state and economy. In a move
which risks diluting the potentially oppressive and lethal power of the actual
forces clad in blue uniforms, Rancière (2007b: 561) makes it clear that with his
use of ‘the police order’ he is not referring:

to repression or the disciplining of bodies. Nor is it solely the affair of

the state apparatus. Policing involves confguring the common world as a
stable distribution of places, identities, functions and competencies. The
police order defnes which places are inside and which are outside, which
bodies are in the right place and which in the wrong one, which names ft
those places and bodies and which do not … For instance, from the point
of view of the police order, a street is made for traffc, not for politics,
which has its own places and its own specialists.

We ‘are all born to police orders’ (May 2008: 60) and, according to Rancière,
these orders concern ‘the way that different groups of society are assembled and
classifed, the way in which power and authority is organized and the way in
which functions, positions and systems of legitimation are distributed’ ( James,
 Equality NOW 109

2012: 122; Rancière, 1999 [1995]: 28). The prime aspiration of any ‘police order’
is to ward off disruption and to ensure that people remain in the allotted places
undertaking the tasks they are earmarked for. The hierarchising and ordering
work ‘effected by this order is readily evoked by the adage “a place for everything
and everything in its place”’ (Davis, 2010: 78). This tendency endures despite
the inclination of governments to discursively promote ‘social mobility’ and to
imply that the existing social and economic hierarchy is open to the ascent of
self-activating individuals from the working class. We might also view this idea
spatially; that is to say, one’s place within a social hierarchy, in a capitalist society,
is inseparably tied to locations of work and of home. Within social work, for
example, knowing where a ‘client’ actually lives, is likely to be suggestive of a
certain milieu, sensory reality, way of life and series of relations with the agents
of the state and with others. This particularly applies to ‘clients’ in certain areas
of towns and cities – oftentimes particular ‘estates’ – viewed as troublesome or
ambiguously problematic (see also Chapter 6).
The more powerful a ‘police order’, the less need there is for the ‘petty police’
embodied by actual police offcers (Rancière, 1999 [1995]: 28). Following this
line of reasoning, cops chemical spraying demonstrators, busting heads and fring
rubber bullets – as is occurring in the United States at the time of writing – is
a sign of the potential breakdown of a ‘police order’. Rancière insists, however,
that his use of ‘police’ is not ‘pejorative’ and that some form of ‘police order’
is inevitable (Rancière, 1999 [1995]: 29). Furthermore, ‘to think, understand
or analyse any particular ‘police order’, we must refuse the temptation to pro-
ject a realm of pure freedom … there is no pure “outside” to the police order’
(Chambers, 2010: 62). Although he fails to provide any indication as to how a
specifc ‘police order’ can be assessed and calibrated, Rancière still asserts that
there is ‘a ‘worse and a better police’ (Rancière, 1999 [1995]: 31). Nevertheless,
whether the ‘police is sweet and kind does not make it any less the opposite of
politics’ (Rancière, 1999 [1995]: 31).
As we have seen, the Platonic philosophical order was erected upon a rigid
and hierarchical structure and this can be regarded as the ‘police order par excel-
lence’ (Chambers, 2010: 59). Still, more contemporary times can also be viewed
as providing illustrations of ‘police orders’. Today, for example, the ‘affrmation
of “objective givens” handled by the “experts in power”’ provides an example of
one dimension of the ‘police order’ (Rancière in Panagia and Rancière, 2000:
124). During the COVID-19 crisis, we can argue that there has been a consoli-
dation of a particular type of ‘expertise’ which is used to try and nullify party
political disputation. More specifcally, this development can be associated with
how medical expertise – albeit itself occasionally internally fractious – is deployed,
in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, with senior medical personal fanking
government ministers at daily press conferences. In responding to the virus, the
government’s policy is rhetorically ‘led’ by what is unequivocally referred to
as ‘the science’. Some of this may, of course, be benignly explicable, but from
110 Equality NOW

Rancière’s perspective, it might be more ambiguously perceived as illustrating

the evolution of a new type of ‘police order’.
Rancière is concerned by the ‘alacrity with which political administrators
look forward to the time when politics will be over and they can get on with
political business undisturbed’ (Rancière, (2007a [1992]: 3). Indeed, following
the economic ‘crash’ of 2007/8, governments comprised of experts and techno-
crats, purportedly better able to manage the economic collapse, were installed
in countries such as Italy. More surreptitiously, this same tendency is refected in
the dominant discourses of most neoliberal Western governments which insist
that there are only certain narrowly conceived ways to conduct economic affairs.
Rancière (2014 [2009]: 39) relates this to the tactic of rulers and elites to use
the ‘entirely vacuous concept of populism’ to dismiss ‘everything that does not
conform to offcial thought’. This perception also goes some way to explain his
support for the Gilets Jaunes [yellow vest] protesters who, he sarcastically avows,
are apt to turn the ‘stomachs of distinguished intellectuals’ in France (Rancière,
2019).

Mainstream politics (the art of suppressing

the political) and Rancièrian ‘politics’
Rancière’s conceptualisation of the ‘police order’ provides a basis for com-
prehending his theoretical work on ‘politics’. As Clare Woodford (2015: 826)
explains, Rancière’s ‘politics’ is a ‘collision between two opposing logics – that
of the police order (inequality) and that of equality’. What is usually ‘called “the
political” rests on a privatisation of politics, on the appropriation by small oligar-
chies of the truly political competence, the competence that belongs to anybody’
(Rancière, 2007b: 563). Here the central charge is that mainstream ideas of
politics (focusing on the conduct of governments, parties and senior politicians)
is far too reductive and insular an understanding. For example, Rancière argues
that political parties

belong to a class of people who supposedly have the specifc competency

to direct the concerns of the community. But for me, politics exists when
there are forms of deviation from this specialisation, when there is a spe-
cifc power among those who have no specifc power and no specifc offce.
(Rancière in Rancière and Engelmann, 2019: 74)

Vitally, for Rancière, genuine ‘political or artistic activities always involve forms
of innovation that tear bodies from their assigned places’ (Corcoran, 2010: 1).
Moreover, everyone has the capacity and competence to act politically, but the
conventional understanding of politics paradoxically constitutes the ‘art of sup-
pressing the political’ and merely functions to bolster the existing ‘police order’
and dilute our sense of individual and popular agency (Rancière, 2007a [1992]:
11).
 Equality NOW 111

‘Politics’ occurs, therefore, when the ‘dividing up of human beings is called

into question, starting with the capacity of uncounted humans to get themselves
counted by themselves declaring their membership and capacity’ (Rancière,
2016 [2012]: 162). A more authentic politics functions, in fact, to reconfgure
the ‘division between human beings’ (Rancière, (2016 [2012]: 162); it is the
‘possibility for anyone at all’, irrespective of their perceived status or allotted role,
to ‘get up and declare their capacity’ (Rancière, (2016 [2012]: 164). A political
event erupts if there is a ‘change in the way a situation can be told and in the
divvying up of capacities for telling it’ (Rancière, 2016 [2012]: 70). ‘Politics’,
in this sense, is the antithesis of the ‘police order’ and can only become truly
animated in opposition to that order. Hence, it only occurs when the ‘logic of
the police order (domination) fnds itself challenged by a wholly different logic
– that of equality’ (Chambers, 2010: 67). Here, the aspiration becomes one of
subverting, disrupting and declassifying the existing ways the world is perceived,
confgured, ordered. ‘Politics’, therefore, emerges as a ‘supplement to the sen-
sory worlds framed by state, military, economic, religious and scholarly powers’
(Rancière, 2010: 80). It ‘frames a sensory world that is its own’, yet is always ‘at
risk of being swallowed up’ by those it struggles against (Rancière, 2010: 80).
Emphasising this point, Rancière is clear that ‘politics’ only really exists in
those

moments when what shouldn’t happen happens. All of a sudden, the nor-
mal powers are delegitimized, what happens in the street is no longer what
normally happens in the street, people no longer look at the organs of
power in the usual way or at those around them in the street.
(Rancière, (2016 [2012]: 134)

At certain moments, refected in the activities of those involved in the Black

Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrations in the summer of 2020, an ‘entity known
as the “people” appears, as a subject of power that is no longer the usual one –
people voting every fve years to elect their leader’ (Rancière, 2016 [2012]: 135).
During such times, the prevailing order is punctured, and disruption occurs.
Thus, Rancièrian politics is a practical, yet insistent and emphatic, assertion of
absolute equality and the rejection of social hierarchy. In this context, the strug-
gle for equality seeks to ‘declassify, to undo the supposed naturalness of orders
and replace it with the controversial fgures of division’ (Rancière, 2007a [1992]:
33).
Given Rancière’s perception, ‘politics’ might be better understood as truly
transformative politics prompted when those previously not recognised within the
‘police order’ burst on to the scene, asserting that they have the capacity to
express and articulate their own rights. Thus, a ‘political subject is a being that
arrives as supplement to the social distribution, since it cannot be identifed as
a part of the police order’ (Rancière, 2007b: 561). In this way, the genuinely
political results when ‘certain subjects … put into contention the objective status
112 Equality NOW

of what is “given” and impose an examination and discussion of those things that
were not “visible”, that were not accounted for previously’ (Rancière in Panagia
and Rancière, 2000: 125). The agents of this ‘political’ activity are those who
ordinarily have no real part or share in the existing community (Davis, 2010:
80). These are people who are regarded, to use the phrase of Rancière’s contem-
porary Alain Badiou (2012: 56), as ‘the inexistent’.
The ‘fundamental idea’ that Rancière tries to hold on to, therefore, is that the
dominated do not need masters or leaders to tell them what they think and what
to say. Their plight is not due to false consciousness or ignorance, but to a social
organization that systematically makes their voices and their achievements invis-
ible and inaudible. This is the constant intuition throughout his work (Deranty,
2010a: 6). For Rancière, a ‘constant intuition’ is realisable but ‘only on two con-
ditions’ (Rancière, 2007a [1992]: 84):

First, it is not a goal to be reached but a supposition to be posited from the

outset and endlessly reposited … The second condition … the community
of equals can never achieve substantial form as a social institution.
(Rancière, 2007a [1992]: 84)

In order to articulate what he perceives as the essence of ‘politics’ and ‘active’

equality, Rancière frequently refers to a specifc historical event: the withdrawal,
or secession, of the plebeians from the city of Rome in 494 BC (Rancière, 1991
[1981]; 1999 [1995]). This was a response to the severity of patrician rule and it
can be understood as a forerunner of the modern general strike. The event is of
the utmost signifcance for Rancière’s theorisation because the plebeians – newly
audible and visible – were, for the frst time, recognised as speaking beings and as
a political entity. In expressing themselves, and acting in a way they were clearly
not supposed to act, they were disputing the ‘order of the city and, implicitly, the
order of propriety’ (Panagia, 2010: 102–3).
Rancière (1999 [1995]: 35–36) refers to this struggle for existence as a political
subject as a process of political ‘subjectifcation’. This brings with it the potential
to transform allocated identities, roles and functions in a given and stultifying
‘police order’: associated with the process is a questioning of what was previously
perceived as obvious, self-evident and incontestable. For Rancière, ‘subjectifca-
tion’ is a ‘dis-identifcation’ and a willed ‘removal’ from the ‘naturalness of a
place’ and it amounts to a shedding of the identity one has been given (Rancière,
1999 [1995]: 36). Crucially, this is a self-activating activity because ‘no party or
government, no army, school, or institution, will ever emancipate a single per-
son’ (Rancière, 1991 [1981]: 102). Rancière maintains that the notion of ‘con-
sensus’ is a core component of the logic of ‘police orders’ and this constantly
entails ‘closing spaces’ for dissent by ‘plugging intervals and patching up any pos-
sible gaps between appearance and reality’ (Rancière, 2010: 71). However, as we
have seen, Rancière’s theorisation recognises that ‘consensus’ can still be subject
 Equality NOW 113

to challenge by resistance, dissent and, residing at the heart of ‘politics’, what he

terms ‘dissensus’ (Rancière, 2010: 139).
Very much aligned with the thematic and political thrust of Dissenting Social
Work, what is important here, according to Rancière, is the fact that ‘dissensus’
operates in a way which demonstrably works to disrupt the logic of ‘consensus’.
Relatedly, at the root of every ‘consensus’ are ideas about what is ‘appropriate’ or,
as Rancière would have it, ‘proper’. For him, this logic underlies every hierarchy
and every ‘police order’. In marked contrast, the logic of ‘dissensus’, lying at the
core of Rancière’s idea of ‘politics’ and grounded in a commitment to equality, is
a willed manifestation of ‘impropriety’ (Corcoran, 2010: 2). This can, of course,
be connected to orthodox styles and modes of protest, but we can also link it to
avant garde or radical art and to less conventional forms of oppositional action
intent of producing the ‘effects of dissensus’ (Rancière, 2010: 140).
The foundational aim of those dominating and shaping a ‘police order’ is,
therefore, to bolster the normal arrangements in society. Incessantly, following
outbreaks of ‘dissensus’, it remains their ‘unconditional demand that “things
should return to normal” with each doing his or her particular job’ (Žižek, 2004:
70). One again, this understanding has resonance in the context of COVID-19
with demands – mostly coming from the political right – that everything and
everyone should, following the various ‘lockdowns’ of early 2020, return to
their ‘normal’ jobs and societal roles within the fabric of capitalism. Countering
this logic, dissenters are more likely to view the present conjuncture as – in
Rancièrian terms – a moment for ‘politics’ and deep thinking about how we
might create new ‘scenes’ which allow for the possibility of something less
exploitable, more communally benign and ecologically sustainable emerging
(Rancière, 2016 [2012]: 82).

Really Jacques?: Criticising Rancière

Before turning to examine further the connections between DSW social work
and Rancière’s thinking, it is important to mention criticisms that we can direct
at his theorisation. Here, three will be briefy dwelt on: his failure to high-
light the power of the state within the ‘police order’; his occlusion of the role
of organisational activism in creating transformational politics; his tendency to
privilege speech.

State and economy

Rancière (2006 [2005]: 73) maintains:

We do not live in democracies … We live in States of oligarchic law …

We know the advantages of these sorts of States as well as their limitations.
They hold free elections [that] essentially ensure that the same dominant
114 Equality NOW

personnel is reproduced, albeit under interchangeable labels, but the ballot

boxes are generally not rigged and one can verify it without risking one’s
life.

This pronouncement is interesting because, in articulating his concepts of the

‘police order’ and of ‘politics’, Rancière usually has very little to say about the
role of the state. Yet within different national contexts, the state clearly steers
and maintains particular types of economic structures and organises and pat-
terns – and, indeed, outlaws and criminalises – an array of relationships within
society. This has, of course, been emphatically the case during the COVID-19
crisis when the state, in various national settings, has been empowered to create
and utilise ‘emergency’ legislation to curtail and restrict businesses and, in some
instances, to introduce new fnancial forms of social protection. Exemplifying
such developments, state directives choreograph bodies in space given the meas-
ures to promote ‘social’ or ‘physical’ distancing. Badiou is alert to this theoretical
gap, alleging that Rancière prefers to refer to ‘society’ or the ‘police’ rather than
‘the actual State, the one around which parties, elections, and fnally “demo-
cratic” subjectivity are organised. This State remains unnamed’ (Badiou, 2005:
119, original emphasis).
Importantly, the state also performs sustained ideological work that renders
certain groups of people as defcient and lacking what are perceived as the key
attributes for success within neoliberal ‘police orders’. Primary defners, mostly
within the political feld, but also within the media also, set about the task of
fxing and embedding a range of derogatory keywords attached to particular
groups (Williams, 1983). For example, in relation to those on ‘welfare’ with
their alleged proclivity to become ‘welfare dependent’ (Garrett, 2018a: Ch. 10).
Although a target of Rancière’s invective, Bourdieu (2000) appears better able to
account for the powerful role of the state as a force of symbolic and classifcatory
violence (Rancière, 2003 [1983]: Ch. 9).
Much more substantially damaging, Rancière’s failure to adequately theo-
rise the state, and the role it fulfls within capitalist societies, can be also con-
nected to his lack of interest in the economic and his, albeit qualifed, disavowal
of Marxism (Rancière and Engelmann, 2019). Because Rancière appears to
perceive Marxism and Marxist strategies to defeat the ruling class as of lim-
ited utility (Rancière and Engelmann, 2019), this produces many problems.
Consequently, whilst we can ‘welcome the generosity of spirit that lies behind
his presupposition of equality’, there is a manifest ‘lack of attentiveness to the
material conditions and historical contexts which act to limit such equality’
(Lane, 2013: 28).

‘Random’ politics and the lack of political organisation

Rancière’s approach to transformational politics and the promotion of active
equality is profoundly individualistic. In his ‘concern to restore the agency of the
 Equality NOW 115

individual human actor, he appears … to side-line if not to discount altogether

longer-term social, economic and geographical forces’ (Iles and Roberts, 2012:
73). Hence, he constantly implies that individuals possess the ability to free them-
selves from the stickiness of, what Bourdieu (2002) refers to as, their ‘habitus’.
According to Badiou (2005: 109), Rancière is ‘within the French anarchist and
utopian tradition of old’. Other commentators likewise locate Rancière within
the current of anarchist thinking (May 2008). Indeed, in recent years, he con-
cedes that he has constructed ‘little by little, an egalitarian or anarchist position’
(Rancière, 2004 [2000]: 50). This seems to be related to his scepticism about
the effcacy of political organisation (Rancière, 2009). The more organisational
‘dimensions of coming together are the object of suspicion for Rancière’ (Clarke,
2013: 4). Consequently, he tends to propose a ‘conception of politics that puts
dissensus’ at its heart, but what he ultimately offers is a ‘politics of moments,
rather than a politics of movements’ (Clarke, 2013: 17; 21). Rancière fails, there-
fore, to give ‘enough credit to the smaller moments in our everyday lives that
may contribute to, or lay the groundwork for, “politics’’’ (Woodford, 2015: 819).
However, as anyone knows who takes part in the organisation of a campaign or
picket line, planning and preparation are essential. For example, those student
social workers who organised a demonstration to protest against plans to cut the
salaries of newly qualifed practitioners outside the Irish Parliament building in
2014 spent weeks networking and coordinating this successful event (Cuskelly
et al., 2014).
Certainly, Rancière under-theorises how emancipatory change can happen: it
can merely appear to be an ephemeral and feeting occurrence, ‘a random process’
that is starkly bereft of a capacity to absolutely eliminate the ‘social inequalities
inherent in the police order’ (Rockhill, 2004: emphasis added). His world seems
to be one in which conventional ways of organising are eschewed and the long,
arduous process of trying to assemble the forces of counter-hegemony are – along
with his Marxism of yesteryear – abandoned. In short, Rancière’s perspective
becomes one in which it is diffcult to identify the motor for change. Where does
‘politics’, as conceived in Rancière’s terms, come from? Where does it go? How
can equality and what would be conceived of as ‘politics’ be infused with a sense
of longevity? How can it withstand threats? As Woodford (2015: 824) inquires,
does his conception of ‘politics’ really furnish a ‘way to smash open’ the ‘police
order’ and to ‘reorganize the world in a meaningfully different way as reading
Rancière may imply, or is it merely a way to stage dramatic moments which then
get tidied back into an all-encompassing order with only a few smaller changes
to show for it?’. More fundamentally, revolutions do not happen ‘suddenly, nor
do they immediately transform a society … most of the time, the building of
the revolutionary momentum is glacial’ (Dunbar-Ortiz et al., 2019). Badiou
(2005: 122), once again, succinctly highlights the conceptual diffculties with
Rancière’s engagement with these themes. For him, a vacuum exists in so far as
Rancière ‘fails to say that every political process … manifests itself as an organised
116 Equality NOW

process’. As a consequence, Rancière ‘leads us to nothing in the order of real

politics that could serve as a replacement’ (Badiou, 2005: 110).
Rancière’s (1999 [1995]: 137) defnition of the democratic community or
‘community of equals’ is ‘a community of interruptions, fractures, irregular and
local, through which egalitarian logic comes and divides the police commu-
nity from itself … Political being-together is a being-between: between identi-
ties, between worlds’. However, comments such as this risk appearing as merely
obscure and elliptical wordplay. Alternatively, the dwelling on the ‘in between’,
the indeterminate and the uncertain edges him onto the shifting terrain of the
postmodern. Related to this lacuna, there is something of a gap in how Rancière
fails to refer to those moments of ‘dissensus’ which might also emerge from the
political right, as well as the left (see also Chapter 1).

Words
Bringing the discussion closer to the concerns of DSW, a third criticism of
Rancière’s contribution relates to a tendency to privilege speech-driven interac-
tions. For him, a ‘political’ event is ‘a change in the way a situation can be told
and in the divvying up of capacities for telling it’ (Rancière, 2016 [2012]: 70).
That is to say, for Rancière, the clash between regimes of perception, of differ-
ent ways of dividing the world, is a clash between different ways of doing things
with words (Robson, 2005: 8). Hence, he stresses the ‘power of words to create
new perspectives; it is our “way with words” that unlocks the door of politics’
(Woodford, 2015: 827). Indeed, rulers have always realised that the maintenance
of a ‘police order’ has partly hinged on their capacity to disqualify the domi-
nated from speaking and this has frequently been ideologically sanctioned by
philosophers. Kant, for example, was emphatic that the ‘negroes’ of Africa were
so ‘talkative that they must be driven apart from each other with thrashings’ (in
Gilroy, 2000: 60).
In examining how transformative politics can be sparked and in seeking to
generate an active approach to the promotion of equality, this focus on the cen-
trality of words is, of course, vital (Garrett, 2018a). The ‘political transition from
mutism to speech is made using the words that aren’t yours, that already exist,
the subversive act being appropriation of those words’ (Rancière, (2016 [2012]:
73). Rancière (2016 [2012]: 80) is also of the opinion that spoken language is a
universal resource given that the ‘language we speak, that philosophers speak,
may have a certain number of specifcs, but it remains everybody’s language’.
Accordingly, language and spoken interventions can be used strategically and
lots ‘of revolutionary movements’ have begun with a ‘capacity to turn around
… the adjectives the people at the top have imposed on the people at the bot-
tom’ (Rancière, (2016 [2012]: 71). Rancière’s (1991 [1981]: 39) basic theoretical
and philosophical assertion, therefore, is a ‘principle of equality of all speaking
beings’. Moreover, he emphasises the ‘ability of anyone whatsoever to grab hold
of words’ (Rancière, 2016 [2012]: 55).
 Equality NOW 117

However, as we attempt to ascertain if Rancière can be helpful for DSW, it

is also imperative to try to keep in vision those, who practitioners often work
alongside, who may lack the capacity to speak lucidly because of issues related
to age (the very young) and/or disability (those who have experienced a brain
injury or who are suffering from a degenerative brain disorder). This is a com-
plex area which, it seems, is likely to complicate ideas about how to transcend
‘police orders’ with Rancièrian ‘politics’ so, seemingly, reliant on vocalisation.
Despite substantial criticisms of Rancière’s contributions, can he still assist our
project to shape DSW? In conclusion, we consider this question in terms of three
themes: social work in relation to classifcation practices, history and education.

Rancière and dissenting social work

Rancière alerts us to the way it which classifcatory practices aspire to ‘stick’ peo-
ple to their allotted places within a ‘police order’. Still, it might be countered that
some form of classifcation is vital, not only in biological and physical sciences
but also in human affairs and interactions. For social work to be rendered doable,
on a day-to-day basis, classifcation is probably inevitable. What is more, some
forms of classifcation are clearly necessary and warranted. Some human beings
are, for example, regarded as ‘children’ and this functions as a legal and ethical
safeguard, shielding them from, for example, the potentially sexually predatory
behaviour of some other human beings regarded as ‘adults’ (Bowker and Star,
1999: 10). More broadly, a ‘classifcation system’ is merely a ‘set of boxes (meta-
phorical or literal) into which things can be put to then do some kind of work
– bureaucratic or knowledge production’. Such systems have, of course, been
central to social work since its inception (Woodroofe, 1962); indeed, social work
can rightly be viewed as one of the ‘people-processing professions’ apt to situ-
ate individuals into ‘boxes’ (Cohen, 1985: 183). In the past, this was refected
in the naming practices and types of descriptive language used in depicting and
‘fxing’ a person in a ‘case’ fle. In more recent times, such activity is more likely
to be undertaken, as we have seen, by having regard to algorithmic sorting (see
Chapter 4). Nevertheless, classifcations used by practitioners, often associated
with ‘scientifc’ and neutral ‘expertise’ and rooted in particular ‘police orders’,
can result in oppressive ramifcations for those targeted for social work interven-
tion (Mayes and Horwitz, 2005; see also Chapter 5).
‘Client’, along with ‘service user’ and ‘patient’, are words that tend to be
saturated in stigma (Crossley and Crossley, 2001; Heffernan, 2006; McLaughlin,
2009; see also Tyler, 2020). Such words – often legally nailed down – can con-
note and convey, within mainstream professional discourses, vague and even
suppressed notions of inferior, tainted or spoiled personhood. Relatedly, ideas
pivoting on professional aspirations to ‘empower’ still frequently fail to address the
political, economic and social structures which give rise to stigma (McLaughlin,
2014). Furthermore, ‘social worker’ and ‘client/service user/patient’ are usually
perceived as fxed and discrete categories despite the fact that during a single
118 Equality NOW

lifetime an individual may fnd themselves passing from one to the other or
simultaneously inhabiting both categories. Other recurrent binary oppositions in
social work include that between ‘lecturer’/‘practice teacher’ and ‘student’. How
might the social world of social work be re-thought and re-enacted without
recourse to embedded and familiar naming practices?
For example, in contemporary Ireland, many children and families are cor-
ralled into ‘direct provision’ accommodation for ‘asylum seekers’ (Arnold, 2012;
Ombudsman for Children, 2020). As Sayad (2004: 279) asserts, it is ‘as though
it were the very nature of the state to discriminate … between the “nationals” it
recognizes … and “others” with whom it deals only in “material” and instrumen-
tal terms’. Moreover, the ‘legal and administrative categories of “asylum seekers”,
“refugee” and “economic migrant” are important in that they confer different
rights and entitlements’ (Loyal, 2003: 83). Crucially, such bureaucratic classifca-
tion schemes engender and embed systematic patterns of discrimination which
are then potentially reinforced in micro-level or face-to-face encounters. More
generally, we can see how discrimination against ‘asylum seekers’ functions to
demarcate the perimeters of the ‘police order’ (Irish Refugee Council, 2020).
More lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI) people are now open
about their identity than in the past, but fear, violence and discrimination remain
high within the ‘police order’ in Europe. A number of places in Poland have
claimed they are LGBTI ‘free’ towns. The EU Fundamental Rights Agency
(2020) surveyed 140,000 respondents to gauge LGBTI experiences in Europe
and it reveals that six in ten avoid holding hands in public with their partners;
two in fve report they were harassed the year before the survey; one in fve trans
and intersex people were physically or sexually attacked, double that of other
LGBTI groups; one in fve feel discriminated against in employment and one in
three feel discriminated against when going out to eat, drink or socialising (see
also Hicks and Jeyasingham, 2016).
How a ‘police order’ is confgured and calibrated will vary across time and
space. In the Introduction to this book it was observed that a characteristic of
DSW is that it encourages analyses vibrating with a historical pulse and that it is
keen to examine the history of economic, state and cultural processes aiming to
marginalise, stigmatise or exploit different groups. In conducting such enquiries,
we might, therefore, use Rancière to try and gain a better understanding of how
certain groups have been subjected to ‘epistemic violence’ and have been devalued,
smothered or entirely silenced (Dotson, 2011; 2014; Bailey, 2018). Within social
work and related felds, children and young people placed into what is termed
‘care’ might, for example, be seen as constituting such a group and this was illus-
trated by the failure of the Irish state to even produce reliable data on the numbers
of children dying whilst ‘in care’ (Shannon and Gibbons, 2012; Garrett, 2014).
Historically, other groups have often been rendered invisible, without a voice,
in terms of how social work and social policy constructed and managed them.
Oftentimes, this was related to the fact that their behaviour was perceived, within
the ‘police order’ of the day, to have been ‘inappropriate’ or ambiguously at odds
 Equality NOW 119

with dominant understandings of ‘proper’ conduct. Although not responsible

for breaking any laws, ‘birth mothers’ were, in the past, frequently left voiceless
and entirely marginal within the gendered and class-based ‘police order’ that
shaped child adoption processes and practices, particularly during the years of
mass adoption in the 1950s and 1960s (Howe et al., 1992). For example, Felix
Biestek (1975 [1957]: 25), an American Jesuit and one of the primary defn-
ers of what constituted the philosophical foundation for social work, observed
that caseworkers ‘have differed in their evaluation of the capacity of unmarried
mothers, as a group, to make sound decisions. Some feel that unmarried mothers
are so damaged emotionally that they are incapable of arriving at a good decision
themselves’ (see also Garrett, 2020d).
A whole series of reports published in Ireland in recent years illuminates how
particular groups constructed as ‘outcasts’ at specifc historical conjunctures were
symbolically and often spatially located beyond the community of persons to be
accorded ‘respect’ (Garrett, 2013). Those perceived as ‘deviant’ or ambiguously
‘troublesome’ were held within an incarcerative archipelago including industrial
schools (Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, 2009), Magdalene Institutions
and Mother and Baby Homes (Garrett, 2020d). This was also a rigidly gendered
‘police order’ in which women were unable to exercise choice across a range of
spheres. Even into our current period, women who rebel against encasement in
patriarchal ‘police orders’ face sanction and opprobrium. In Spain, for example,
right-wing parties even allege that feminist organisers caused the spread of the
COVID-19 virus (Hedgecoe, 2020).
If we look to history, we can also fnd examples of concerted attempts, fre-
quently by lone activists and campaigners, to create ‘politics’ by seeking – often
despairingly – to wrestle free from ‘police orders’ by shining a spotlight on abu-
sive practices. Such fgures include Peter Tyrrell (1916–1967) who was incar-
cerated in an industrial school in the west of Ireland. He attempted to reveal
institutional abuses in the 1960s, prior to a time when such a narrative could be
voiced, aired or recognised (Tyrrell, 2006). What is more, Tyrrell transgressed
boundaries by writing and seeking to have his own account of his experiences
published. He failed and later took his own life, but his account was later vindi-
cated (Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, 2009). Others, such as Gerard
Mannix Flynn (1983), also a former industrial school resident, have attempted
to disrupt the ‘police order’ by intervening not only in mainstream political
domains but also, beyond this, with interventions in the domain of artistic pro-
duction. Certainly, actions, such as these, might be viewed in terms of what
Rancière calls ‘subjectifcation’.
Although not a focus of the present chapter, dissenting social work educa-
tion may have much to gain in engaging with Rancière. His conceptualisations
are frequently open and amenable to debate; there are always, to use a favour-
ite Rancièrian word, potential ‘supplements’, new ingredients that can be added
despite the appearance of completeness. For him, to have ‘anything to do with
a theory, it must have points where it seizes up, where it measures itself against
120 Equality NOW

something it can’t absorb’ (Rancière, 2016 [2012]: 54). This remark also power-
fully conveys messages which can be connected to practitioners’ engagement with
‘clients’ and in terms of how social work researchers interact with respondents. As
Rancière, (2016 [2012]: 36) maintains, you need to be receptive to the appearance
of the unexpected and unforeseen and to ‘allow yourself to be surprised by the
material, by a provocative jolt that comes from nowhere’ (Rancière, 2016 [2012]:
36). Such comments, which might be connected to his dispute with Althusser,
encourage us to beware of dogma within, and beyond, social work education.
During a period when the social work curricula can increasingly seem air-
tight, regulated, supervised and monitored, Rancière’s theorisation might prompt
social work educators to think more deeply and critically about the pedagogi-
cal and hierarchical relationships. Rancière’s exploration of an alternative peda-
gogy, The Ignorant Schoolmaster, examining the ideas and practice of Joseph Jacotet
(1770–1840), was published in 1981 (Rancière, 1991 [1981]). Here he is critical
of, what he terms, the ‘explicatory order’ within education and schooling. This,
of course, is a complex issue because it could be countered that, in some felds of
knowledge such as social work, it is not feasible to ‘avoid recourse to the economy
of explanation’ (Hallward, 2005: 41). Nevertheless, using a Rancièrian approach,
in which equality is a ‘supposition’, might potentially transform aspects of social
work education. Classrooms could be re-orientated so as to create ‘fat’ spaces
where we may attempt to nurture more equitable and democratic relationships
between the ‘educators’ and ‘students’ (Cowden and Ridley, 2019).

Conclusion
Clearly, there are thematic similarities between Rancière’s work and that of other
contemporary European contemporary philosophers and social theorists who
have recently begun to feature in the social work literature. For example, some
have discerned how his perspective shares some of the preoccupations of writers
associated with the politics of recognition (Garrett, 2018b: Ch. 10). However,
this connection may be fragile because Rancière’s focus envisages a much more
substantial societal transformation than do many of the writers, such as Honneth,
associated with this body of thinking. With Rancière we can observe an inter-
est in dialogue comparable to Habermas, but he remains a very different type of
philosopher because he is resolutely opposed to Habermasian discourse ethics and
the proceduralisation of communication (Hayes and Houston, 2007). Indeed, for
Rancière there cannot be the kind of rational debate between competing and
multiple interests envisaged by the German theorist (see Rancière, 1999 [1995]).
However, although comparisons are rarely made, there may be some affnity
between the theorisation of Rancière and that of Bakhtin (Irving and Young,
2002). More specifcally, there may be resemblances between the latter’s feeting,
transgressive notion of ‘carnival’ and Rancière’s similarly disruptive moments
when transformative ‘politics’ erupts out of a, seemingly, stable ‘police order’.
More generally, Rancière prompts critical refection. Using his disruptive
philosophical optic, the discipline and practice of social work can be situated,
 Equality NOW 121

both historically and in contemporary terms, as a component within shifting

‘police orders’. His idea of ‘politics’ articulates an understanding that equality is,
albeit in apparently ephemeral bursts, always a possibility. Relatedly, Rancière’s
main aspiration is to disrupt and declassify dominant ways of perceiving the
world. This chapter has, therefore, aimed to provide a somewhat simplifed and
tentative introduction to some key conceptual formulations central to his diverse
body of work. Indeed, many of the connections which can be made with DSW
practice and education merit further exploration and discussion. Certainly – and
despite the criticisms mentioned – we might engage with Rancière because his
restless and disruptive ideas operate as a theoretical counterweight against forces
committed to curtailing dissenting forms of education and practice within social
work.
As mentioned earlier, a problem with Rancièrian reasoning is that the theo-
retical expansion of ‘police’ risks drawing our attention away from what he terms
the ‘petty police’, issues pertaining to ‘crime-management’ and the role of cops
on the streets. What is more, and elided by Rancière, is the deeply racialised
dimension to the perceptions and practices of the ‘petty police’. For example,
following the ‘petty’ police killing of George Floyd, The New York Times mapped
how the recorded use of force, by the Minneapolis Police Department was dis-
proportionately used against Black people; only 20 percent of the population
of Minneapolis is Black, but in 2015, when offcers became ‘physical’ (more
accurately and disturbingly when they resorted to ‘kicks, neck holds, punches,
shoves, takedowns, Mace, Tasers or other forms of muscle’), the person subject
to that force was Black nearly 60 percent of the time across sites of almost 6,700
‘reported’ instances (Gamio and Oppel, 2020). Driven by events such as these,
there have been renewed calls in the United States to defund, disempower and
disarm the police and the wider social and economic structure that houses such
forces (McDowell and Fernandez, 2018).
In the following chapter, we will turn to examine some of the ideas of Loïc
Wacquant who places much more emphasis on the role of the criminal justice
infrastructure which is so vital to contemporary capitalism and to its associated
racialised institutional order.
122 Equality NOW

REFLECTION AND TALK BOX 5

According to Rancière, equality furnishes the ‘point of departure, a supposi-
tion to maintain in every circumstance’ (Rancière, 1991 [1981]: 138, original
emphasis):

This means starting from the point of view of equality, asserting equality,
assuming equality as a given, working out from equality, trying to see how
productive it can be and thus maximising all possible liberty and equality.
(Rancière, 2007a [1992]: 52)

How can this understanding relate to a social work visit or meeting?

Is the social work profession more intent on achieving ‘consensus’ than

Rancière’s ‘dissensus’? If so, why might this be?

Rancière tells his readers:

The essence of the police is the principle of saturation; it is a mode …

that recognizes neither lack nor supplement. As conceived by ‘the police’,
society is a totality comprised of groups performing specific functions and
occupying determined spaces.
(in Panagia and Rancière, 2000: 124)

What are the chief characteristics of the particular ‘police order’ in which your
role is situated? How does it locate human beings termed ‘clients’ or ‘service
users’? How are they fixed in language and material practices?

Can we use the idea of the ‘police order’ to consider how power operates
inside of families?

Can we interpret issues related to ‘race’ or indigenous communities within

Rancière’s conceptual framework? Similarly, how can questions pertaining to
‘race’ and sexual orientation be encompassed?

Note
1 Albeit in radically different form, some of the material featured in this chapter orig-
inally appeared in Garrett (2015b) and Garrett (2018c). I am grateful to Oxford
Academic and SAGE for allowing me to have recourse to this earlier work. Many
of Rancière’s books are specifc interventions in particular topical affairs occurring
within the domains of philosophy, politics and education in France, but this is often
rendered blurry for those reading him in English because of the delayed translation.
In what follows, I will adhere to the convention of identifying two publication dates
in respect of Rancière’s various books. Hence, Rancière (2014 [2009]), indicates the
year of English translation followed by the year of publication in the original French.
6
CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP
AND NEOLIBERAL PENALITY:
LOÏC WACQUANT

Introduction
A student and close associate of Pierre Bourdieu, Loïc Wacquant is Professor of
Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Having collaborated with
Bourdieu on a number of books and articles, Wacquant continues to promote his
former mentor’s work (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1999; 2001; Wacquant, 2004a).
Bourdieu provides a ‘conceptual arsenal’ which can be used to enable us to better
understand the social world (Wacquant, 1998: 220). Moreover, Bourdieu fur-
nishes an example of how sociologists can become public intellectuals committed
to illuminating and confronting the harm caused by neoliberal capitalism (see
also Garrett, 2018b: Ch. 7). Having trained to become a boxer, when completing
his ethnography of the profession in Chicago, Wacquant’s style of engagement
within sociology is, as will become apparent, noteworthy (Wacquant, 2004b). In
short, he is a highly combative fgure who often tends to depart from ‘academic
decorum’ in his polemics and intellectual pugilism (Wacquant, 2009b: 122; see,
for example, an aggrieved Duneier, 2002).
The frst part of the chapter briefy introduces fve of Wacquant’s main critical
themes which are all potentially useful as we think about trying to shape dis-
senting social work (DSW). These are Wacquant’s criticism of compliant ‘aca-
demics’ and his favouring of critical and dissenting ‘intellectuals’; his opposition
to neoliberal capitalism; his concern about the hegemonic role of the United
States in decisively infuencing policies and practices elsewhere; his conceptuali-
sation of the state and his notion of ‘territorial stigmatisation’. A sixth theme, and
Wacquant’s chief recent focus, relates to ‘neoliberal penality’ and this is explored
in the third part of the chapter and where we look at his Punishing the Poor
(Wacquant, 2009a).
124 Critical scholarship & neoliberal penality

In Chapter 1, it was argued that DSW is committed to critically interrogating

‘false trails’ and to sifting critical theorisation to ascertain how it may mislead or
misdirect. In light of this commitment, it is ‘important to identify and refect on
the weak points in Wacquant’s analysis – not least as a basis for building produc-
tively on his insights’ (Lacey, 2010: 780). The third part of the chapter maintains,
therefore, that it is possible to tentatively identify six weaknesses in the presen-
tation of the neoliberal government of social ‘insecurity’ Wacquant outlines in
Punishing the Poor. These relate to his defective analysis of the state; failure to
pinpoint which forces proft from the infation in prisons and prisoner numbers;
defnitional and methodological ambiguity; undue focus on the United States;
the insuffcient attention given to the history of punitive strategies; apparent lack
of interest in various and evolving forms of detention and quasi-incarceration
beyond the prison. Nevertheless, despite these possible defects in his perspec-
tive, in the chapter’s fourth section, it is suggested that Wacquant’s contribution
remains important for DSW.

Critical themes
Dissenting ‘intellectuals’ and compliant ‘academics’
First and foremost, Wacquant is a thinker situating himself within the tradition
of critical theory which dissents from dominant ways of seeing, thinking and
acting. In terms of his own conception of the research task, he acknowledges
that he is positioned at the confuence of two different traditions resulting
in an ‘existential and occupational tension that is not always easy to handle’
(Wacquant, 2009b: 124). One tradition is European and fnds its ‘clearest form
in France’ (Wacquant, 2009b: 123). This, seemingly entirely male, ‘lineage’,
runs from dissenters such as ‘Zola to Sartre, and then from Foucault to Bourdieu
and others’ (Wacquant, 2009b: 124): vital to this tradition’s conceptualisation
of the ‘intellectual’ is the commitment, even perceived as a ‘duty’, to re-inject
the ‘fruit’ of ‘refections and observations into the civic and public sphere’
(Wacquant, 2004a: 124). Now working mostly in the United States, he con-
cedes that an alternative tradition also has an impact. A dominant perspective,
this is focused on ‘methodological precision’ with an ‘ideal’ of the ‘professional’
as the ‘bearer’ of ‘technical competency’ and ‘expert’, ‘neutral’ knowledge.
Such fgures refrain from entering into public debate and move within the
insular world of peers and colleagues (Wacquant, 2009b: 124). Given that the
word ‘intellectual’ is regarded with some suspicion in the United States, the
preferred label for this social actor is that of the ‘academic’. Relating this back
to the previous chapter’s exploration of Jacques Rancière, we might maintain
that this latter ‘tradition’ also plays a specifc and functional role within the
‘police order’. Moreover, we can clearly see how this construction resonates in
terms of how the notion of ‘professional’ is constructed in mainstream social
work (see also Chapter 1).
 Critical scholarship & neoliberal penality 125

The role of ‘academic’ is, according to Wacquant, ‘one-dimensional’ and apt

to orientate ‘exclusively towards the microcosm of the university’ (Wacquant,
2009b: 124). It unfavourably contrasts, therefore, with the ‘European’ tradi-
tion which seeks to combine the roles of ‘scholar and active citizen’ (Wacquant,
2009b: 124). Wacquant (2009b: 125) asserts that when you

remain cloistered in your university circles, you allow yourself to get

caught up in the games and stakes of the microcosm, and in the end you
lose your civic energy, your capacity for astonishment at the world, and the
perspicacity needed for deciphering it.

Although it is readily apparent where his allegiances lie, Wacquant (2009b: 124)
concedes that ‘each of these traditions has its own virtues and vices’. For example,
he recognises that a willingness to engage in the civic and public sphere need
not result in an abandonment of a scholarly and ethical commitment to meth-
odological rigour.
Wacquant’s contributions are informed by Marxism, but he is not a Marxist.
Nevertheless, in illuminating his approach to intellectual activity, Wacquant
refers to the famous letter Marx sent to Arnold Ruge in 1843, which we also
referred to in our Introduction (see also Chapter 2). Here, Marx argues that there
is a need for communist intellectuals to strive towards a ‘new world’ through a
‘ruthless criticism of everything existing … ruthless in two senses: the criticism must
not be afraid of its own conclusions or of confict with the powers that be’ (Marx
in Tucker, 1972: 13, original emphasis). Wacquant, (2004a) asserts that this pro-
gramme and ethos is currently ‘timelier than ever’. Entirely attuned to some of
the ideas underpinning DSW, he argues that the ‘primary historical mission of
critical thought’ is to constantly

question the obviousness and the very frames of civic debate so as to give
ourselves a chance to think the world, rather than being thought by it, to
take apart and understand its mechanisms, and thus to reappropriate it
intellectually and materially.
(Wacquant, 2004a: 101, original emphasis)

This willingness to challenge social convention and the taken for granted also
refects the perspective of Bourdieu. Questioning the seemingly ‘natural’ order
of things can also be perceived as possessing a class dimension because the ‘domi-
nated classes have an interest in pushing back the limits of doxa’ whilst the ‘domi-
nant classes have an interest in defending’ its integrity (Bourdieu, 2003, [1977]:
169). However, according to Wacquant, the ‘mission’ of critical and dissent-
ing thinking is impeded because of the ‘competition’ of ‘false critical thought’.
Frequently, this type of thinking beguiles because of its use of ‘apparently pro-
gressive tropes’ such as ‘identity’, ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘diversity’ and ‘globali-
sation’. Such ideas ultimately invite ‘us to submit to the prevailing forces of the
126 Critical scholarship & neoliberal penality

world, and in particular to market forces’ (Wacquant, 2004a). Provocatively,

Wacquant (2004a: 99) asserts that whilst an ‘unfinching historical and material-
ist analysis’ is of the utmost importance, discourses pivoting on such keywords
– many of them impacting, of course, on social work – only furnish a ‘soft
culturalism wholly absorbed by the narcissistic preoccupations of the moment’.
Such a perception has subsequently been echoed by Brenner and Fraser’s (2017)
conceptualisation of ‘progressive neoliberalism’.
A further impediment to critical thought, especially in the United States,
contends Wacquant, is the focus of ‘policy research’ and the insular and relentless
emphasis placed on ‘academics’ applying for research grants to investigate top-
ics which might aid governments intent on ‘fxing’ what are blandly viewed as
pressing ‘social problems’. Ensuing research endeavours, also shaping social work
inquiries, are often focused on ‘public policy’ and the ‘applied benefts’ suppos-
edly accruing from particular, ‘objectively’ defned ‘evidenced-based’ approaches.
Signifcantly, within this evolving framework, ‘autonomous researchers’ risk
being ‘supplanted’ by more compliant ones keen to meekly ‘deliver to govern-
ment the answers that offcials wish for and who, above all, accept the questions
posed by politicians’ (Wacquant, 2009b: 24). Wacquant (2009b: 124) also calls
for ‘collective refection’ on the ‘changing nexus between research, the media,
money, and politics’. Fundamentally, his concern is that an opportunistic and
narrowly functional approach constitutes a barrier to dissenting and conceptu-
ally radical research programmes. Hence, he sarcastically maintains that over the
entrance gates of U.S. public policy schools is written in ‘invisible letters’: ‘thou
shallt not ask thy own questions’ (Wacquant, 2004a: 99).

Opposing neoliberal capitalism

A second important characteristic of Wacquant’s sociology linking him to DSW is
that it is imbued with opposition to neoliberal capitalism. The social sciences have
the potential, he argues, to play ‘the double role of solvent and beacon’ (Wacquant,
2009b: 129, original emphasis): acting as ‘solvent of the new neoliberal common
sense that “naturalizes” the current state of affairs … through the methodical
critique of the categories and topics which weave the fabric of the dominant dis-
course’ (Wacquant, 2009b: 129). He recognises that this is no easy task because of
the power and reach of a ‘neoliberal international’ anchored by a network of think
tanks in the United States and ‘relayed by the great international institutions, the
World Bank, the European Commission, the OECD, the WTO, etc.’ (Wacquant,
2004a: 100, original emphasis). Nevertheless, critical intellectuals can function
as ‘beacons’ illuminating alternative social and economic pathways which are
grounded in the fndings generated by the social sciences.

The role of the United States

Relatedly, a third characteristic of Wacquant’s work is his acute sensitivity to
the role which the world’s hegemon, the United States, plays in orchestrating
 Critical scholarship & neoliberal penality 127

a dominant and dominating perspective on economy and society. Since the

‘mid-1970s, [the U.S.] has been the motor for the elaboration and planetary
dissemination of a political project aiming to subordinate all human activities
to the tutelage of the market’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 20; see also Chapter 3). A
similar dynamic is identifable in terms of how dominant ideas on ‘law’ and
‘order’ are often spawned in the United States. Wacquant maintains that there
are three phases in the ‘worldwide diffusion of the new “made-in-the-USA”
ideologies and policies’ (Wacquant, 2001: 405). Initially, there is a phase of ‘ges-
tation, implementation, and showcasing in American cities, and especially in
New York’ (Wacquant, 2001: 405): during this period neoconservative ‘think
tanks’ and associated primary defners play a vital role. At this stage, it is ‘impera-
tive to keep close track of the pseudo-theories concocted’ by such ‘think tanks’
and to ‘submit them to strict custom checks in the form of rigorous logical and
empirical critique’ (Wacquant, 2001: 410). Next, the ‘import-export’ phase
begins ‘facilitated by the links forged with kindred “think-tanks” that have
mushroomed throughout Europe … especially in England’ (Wacquant, 2001:
405); indeed, England is something of a ‘trojan horse’ or ‘acclimation cham-
ber’ for the ‘new, neo-liberal penality with a view to its propagation across the
European continent’ (Wacquant, 2001: 405; see also Garrett, 2007a). The third
phase occurs with the application of a ‘thin scholarly whitewash’ to invest vari-
ous U.S-derived policies with a veneer of respectability. In many parts of Europe
there are likely to be ‘local intellectuals who spontaneously take up the part of
“smuggler” (passeur) or relay by vouchsafng with their university authority the
adaptation of US policies and methods for enforcing law and order to their own
societies’ (Wacquant, 2001: 406). Although his critics often fail to allude to it,
Wacquant is careful to add that this transplanting of ideas is not done by way of
conspiracy or a slavish European adherence to ‘made-in-the-US’ models. That is
to say, importers do not passively receive such models: they ‘often borrow them
on their own initiative and they always adapt them to their needs as well as their
national traditions (political and intellectual)’ (Wacquant, 2003: 171).

Rethinking the role of the state

A fourth element characterising Wacquant’s approach is his re-affrming and
developing of Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of the state (Wacquant, 2001, 2009a).
For Bourdieu, the state’s ‘left hand’ is composed of, for example, social workers,
youth leaders, secondary and primary school teachers, in other words, ‘the set of
agents of the so-called spending ministries which are the trace within the state of
the struggles of the past’ (Bourdieu, 2001: 2). Conversely, the right hand is made
up of Treasury and bank technocrats who, ‘obsessed by the question of fnancial
equilibrium, knows nothing of the problems of the left hand, confronted with
the often very costly social consequences of “budgetary restrictions”’ (Bourdieu,
2001: 5).
Wacquant maintains that it is vital to ‘defend the autonomy and dignity’ of
those in occupations, such as social work, making up the left hand of the state and
128 Critical scholarship & neoliberal penality

TABLE 6.1 Loïc Wacquant’s Model of the State

‘Left hand’ of the state ‘Right hand’ of the state

Gender – Female Gender – Male

Education & Social Work (socialisation) Finance (neoliberal capitalist imperatives)
Health (medicalisation)
Penal Estate (invisibilisation of ‘social
problems’)

important here is refusing to ‘be roped into assuming degraded versions of social
and health functions’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 285; see also Chapter 1). He maintains,
however, that his analysis ‘flls in a gap in Bourdieu’s model by inserting the
police, the courts, and the prison as core constituents of the “Right hand” of the state,
alongside the ministries of the economy and the budget’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 289,
original emphasis). Thus, whilst the ‘left hand’ ‘nourishes and sustains, protects
the dispossessed from the threats of life and reduces inequalities’, the ‘right hand’ is
‘charged with the enforcement of order, moral and economic’ (Wacquant, 2009a:
285; see also Wacquant, 2012). Wacquant departs from Bourdieu in introducing
an interesting gendered dimension to this dichotomising of the state, positing
that the ‘left hand’ is the ‘feminine side’ providing ‘protection and succour to the
social categories shorn of economic and cultural capital’. In contrast, the ‘right
hand’ is the ‘masculine side’ charged ‘with enforcing the new economic discipline
via budget cuts, fscal incentives, and economic deregulation’ (Wacquant, 2009a:
289). Stretching this analogy a little further, he asserts that we are witnessing,
partly in response to the gains of the women’s movement, a ‘remasculinisation of the
state’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 290). Hence, the ‘transition’ which occurred from the
‘kindly “nanny state” of the Fordist-Keynesian era to the strict “daddy state” of
neoliberalism’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 290; see also Table 6.1 above).

Territorial stigmatisation
A ffth thematic component of Wacquant’s overall perspective is focused on the
production of urban ‘territorial stigmatisation’ and processes of ‘advanced mar-
ginality’ (Wacquant 2007; 2008b; 2009b). Refecting the

alleged discovery of ‘underclass areas’ in the United States in the clos-

ing decade of the century, Europe has witnessed the invention of the
‘quartier sensible’ in France, the ‘sink estate’ in the United Kingdom, the
‘Problemquartier’ in Germany, the ‘krottenwijk’ in the Netherlands, etc.
(Wacquant, 2008a: 24)

Often linked to racialised residential segregation, discourses of ‘vilifcation pro-

liferate and agglomerate’ about such territories are generated ‘from below’, in the
 Critical scholarship & neoliberal penality 129

‘ordinary interactions of daily life’, as well as ‘from above’, by journalistic, politi-

cal and bureaucratic felds (Wacquant, 2007: 67). As we will see later, as well as
being subjected to this form of symbolic violence, these vilifed neighbourhoods
and localities – in which social workers are frequently based and source their ‘cli-
ents’ – are also those with disproportionately high mortality rates. Importantly
also, the work of Benjamin (2019) and others has signalled how stigmatisation
can reside in the virtual, immaterial and digital domains (see also Chapter 4).
Neoliberal penality constitutes a sixth thematic focus for Wacqaunt. More
specifcally, he is interested in the infation in the penal estate: a development
which was seemingly unforeseen by theorists, such as Foucault (1991[1977]), and
commentators, experts and bureaucrats (Wacquant, 2009a: 297). Next, there-
fore, we will examine his interpretation of this development.

Punishing the Poor: Neoliberal penality

Wacquant (2009a: 3015) refers to his Punishing the Poor as part of a ‘sort of tril-
ogy’: which started with Urban Outcasts (Wacquant, 2008b) and fnished with
Deadly Symbiosis (Wacquant, 2009c). Each of these volumes aims to explore
and to ‘unravel the tangled triangular connections between class restructur-
ing, ethnoracial division, and state crafting in the era of neoliberal ascendancy’
(Wacquant, 2009a: 315). However, he had begun to explore similar themes ear-
lier in the decade. For example, Wacquant (2001: 405) observes that the penal
apparatus in the ‘post-Keynesian era of employment’ is serving to

discipline the fractions of the working class that buck at the new, precari-
ous service jobs; it neutralises and warehouses its most disruptive elements,
or those considered superfuous with regard to the transformations of the
demand for labour; and it reaffrms the authority of the state in the limited
domain that is henceforth assigned to it.

Whilst, certainly before the 2007/8 ‘crash’, neoliberal rhetoric emphasised the
importance of ‘small government’, prisons – and prisoner numbers – were rap-
idly escalating across a range of jurisdictions. Hence, the tremendous increase of
those in prison in the United States might reasonably be interpreted as the hid-
den face of the U.S. neoliberal model, the ‘necessary counterpart to the shrive-
ling of the welfare state’ (Wacquant, 2005: 21); moreover, it amounts to ‘one of
the most unforeseen and most cruel historical experiments of the democratic
era’ (Wacquant, 2005: 22). Indeed, when the COVID-19 pandemic erupted,
the United States had 924,000 hospital beds across the country, but 2.3 million
prison beds (Petrossiants, 2020).
One of Wacquant’s chief assertions is that those analysing the evolution of
‘welfare’ within neoliberalism often fail to adequately take into account incar-
ceration. For him, the irruption of the penal state in America has gone ‘vir-
tually unnoticed’ by those scholars and commentators focusing on the ‘crisis
130 Critical scholarship & neoliberal penality

of the welfare state’ (Wacquant, 2009a: xiii). Key defners of neoliberalism on

the political left furnish defective analyses because of this lacuna. For example,
David Harvey’s (2005) work on the rise of neoliberalism is deemed ‘woefully
incomplete’ because he has ‘barely a few passing mentions of the prison and not
a line on workfare’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 309).
Wacquant’s prime focus is the United States which he perceives as the ‘living
laboratory of the neoliberal future’ (Wacquant, 2009a: Prologue). Accordingly,
it is vital that we ‘construe the prison as a core political institution, instead of
a mere technical implement for enforcing the law and handling of criminals’
(Wacquant, 2009: xviii). Wacquant stresses the sheer ‘grandeur’ of the penal state
in the United States and he reveals how the growth in prison numbers is approxi-
mately coterminous with the rise of neoliberalism. After 1973, the confned
population ‘doubled in ten years and quadrupled in twenty’ (Wacquant, 2009a:
114). If, in fact, it were ‘a city, the carceral system of the United States would be
the fourth-largest metropolis, behind Chicago’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 114).
Importantly, Wacquant’s theoretical ‘architecture’ establishes an ‘empiri-
cal and analytical rapprochement’ between social policy and penal policy
(Wacquant, 2009a: 14). These two domains continue to be examined separately,
in isolation from each other, by social scientists as well as by those who wish to
reform them, ‘whereas in reality they already function in tandem’ (Wacquant,
2009a: 13). Building on this analysis, Wacquant (2009a: xviii) proposes ‘frst,
that we construe the prison as a core political institution … and, second, that we
recognise that “workfare” and “prisonfare” are two integral components of the
Leviathan’. His aim, therefore, is to provide an account which not only encom-
passes the infation in prison numbers. Rather, Wacquant also seeks to ‘link the
modifcations of social policies to those of penal policies so as to decipher the
double regulation to which the postindustrial proletariat is now subjected through
the joint agency of the assistantial and penitential sectors of the state’ (Wacquant,
2009a: xviii, original emphasis). This is a context in which welfare provision
and criminal justice are ‘thus animated by the same punitive and paternalist phi-
losophy that stresses the “individual responsibility” of the “client”’ (Wacquant,
2009a: 16). Within this neoliberal patterning, systems which ‘ostensibly exist to
serve people’s needs – health care, education, and public housing, as well as pub-
lic assistance and child welfare – have become behaviour modifcation programs
that regulate the people who rely on them’ (Roberts, 2019: 1700).
Vitally, there is a need to depart from traditional frames that simply focus on
‘prisons’ or ‘welfare’ and to substitute a more ‘expansive approach, encompass-
ing in a single grasp the totality of actions whereby the state purports to mould,
classify, and control the populations deemed deviant, dependent, and dangerous
living in its territory’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 16). Thus, it is important to inter-
pret how the various states and their associated bureaucratic felds are manag-
ing and regulating what he terms their ‘castaway categories’ (Wacquant, 2009a:
4). According to Wacquant (2009a: xxi), there are at least ‘three main strate-
gies to treat the conditions and conducts’ perceived as ‘undesirable, offensive, or
 Critical scholarship & neoliberal penality 131

threatening’: socialisation, medicalisation and – the ‘invisibilisation’ of ‘social

problems’ – penalisation (See also Table 6.1).
For those, such as social workers, situated within the feld of ‘welfare’ and
helping to constitute the ‘left hand’ of the state, Wacquant’s discussion on the
U.S. Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996
(PRWORA) is illuminating. Historically, this federal law, which altered the way
in which cash assistance was made available, is important and infuential beyond
the United States. It established, for example, a ‘vast web of “disentitlement strat-
egies”’ to restrict fnancial help (Wacquant, 2009a: 91). The Act also marked the
‘conversion of the right to “welfare” into the obligation of “workfare” designed
to dramatize and enforce the work ethic at the bottom of the employment ladder’
(Wacquant, 2009a: 43). Moreover, the doctrinal vibe of this so-called ‘reform’
fostered a ‘programmatic convergence with penal policy’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 79;
see also Gustafson, 2011).
It is also apparent that ‘welfare’ is increasingly infused by the discursive ambi-
ence of the penal regime and this is likely to impact on social workers’ involvement
with a range of ‘client groups’. As Wacquant (2009a: 15) suggests, the ‘“clients” of
both assistantial and penitential sectors of the state fall under the same principled
suspicion: they are considered morally defcient unless they periodically provide
visible proof to the contrary’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 15). Unsurprisingly, the ‘physi-
cal resemblance of the post-reform welfare offce to a correctional institution is
striking’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 102). The visitors to these offces are positioned as
‘abnormal, truncated, suspect beings who threaten the moral order and whom the
state must therefore place under harsh tutelage’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 81).
It is, therefore, no longer possible to analyse the ‘implementation of welfare
policy at ground level without taking into account the overlapping operations of
the penal institution’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 99). In line with this analysis, we can
see how welfare offces are borrowing the ‘stock-and-trade techniques of the
correctional institutions … a constant close-up monitoring, strict spatial assign-
ments and time constraints, intensive record-keeping and case management,
periodic interrogation and reporting, and a rigid system of graduated sanctions
for failing to perform properly’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 101–2). Such practices are

undergirded by a paternalist conception of the role of the state in respect to

the poor, according to which the conduct of disposed and dependent citi-
zens must be closely supervised and, whenever necessary, corrected through
rigorous protocols of surveillance, deterrence, and sanction, very much like
those routinely applied to offenders under criminal justice supervision.
(Wacquant, 2009a: 59–60; see also Chapter 4)

Thus, the ‘new punitive organisation’ of welfare programmes operates in the

manner of a labour parole programme ‘designed to push its “benefciaries” into
the subpoverty jobs that have proliferated after the discarding of the Fordist-
Keynesian compromise’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 43).
132 Critical scholarship & neoliberal penality

Particular targeted groups, such as ‘poor single mothers’, are positioned not
‘as citizens participating in a Rancièrian ‘community of equals’, but as sub-
jects ‘saddled with abridged rights and expanded obligations until such time as
they have demonstrated full commitment to the values of work and family by
their reformed conduct’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 98). For Wacquant, gender is also
important in that the ‘social silhouette’ of recipients of Temporary Assistance for
Needy Families (TANF), administered and paid under PRWORA, ‘turns out
to be a near exact-replica of the profle of jail inmates save for gender inversion’
given that the state regulates the behaviour of poor ‘women (and their children)
through workfare and those of the men in their lives (that is, their partners
as well as sons, brothers, cousins and fathers) through criminal supervision’
(Wacquant, 2009a: 98; 99).
Some of Wacquant’s critics, as we shall see, argue that he overemphasises the
rupture which has taken place with past practices relating to how problem popu-
lations are confned, managed and regulated. However, partially addressing such
criticisms, he maintains that the key difference today is the reach and capacity
of the state which is now ‘endowed with budgetary, human and technological
resources without equivalent in history’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 28). At the end of
the nineteenth century, it suffced for an individual to change their ‘name and
move to a different city or region and melt into the surrounding landscape for
the authorities to lose track of him’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 28). Today, as we saw in
Chapter 4, the state possesses a heightened and much more comprehensive infra-
structure and surveillance powers which invest it with an enhanced capacity ‘to
penetrate the population under its aegis’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 28).
As for the residual and piecemeal welfare state continuing to exist on the
periphery of ‘prisonfare’, it is best identifed as ‘a charitable state’ which is lim-
ited, fragmentary and informed by a moralistic and moralising ‘concept of pov-
erty as a product of the individual failings of the poor’ (Wacquant, 2009a:
42, emphasis added). Within this framework, the ‘guiding principle of public
action’ is no longer ‘solidarity but compassion: its goal is not to reinforce social
bonds, and still less to reduce inequalities, but at best to relieve the most glar-
ing destitution and to demonstrate society’s moral sympathy for its deprived yet
deserving members’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 42; emphasis added). Indeed, the ‘food
bank’ symbolically represents the evolution of this development (Lambie-
Mumford and Silvasti, 2020). Later we will also associate the new centrality
of charity with the social work’s new interest in the philosophy of Levinas (see
also Chapter 8).
Appropriately, Wacquant is attentive to how imprisonment and welfare are
deeply racialised and racist (Wacquant, 2009a: Ch. 6). However, prior to his
analysis, female African-American scholars, such as Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson
Gilmore (2007) and Michelle Alexander (2012) had already illuminated this
dimension. Dorothy E Roberts (2014: 434) observes how U.S. prisons and ‘out
of home care’ for children (involving processes of fostering and adoption) ‘func-
tion together to discipline and control poor and low-income Black women by
 Critical scholarship & neoliberal penality 133

keeping them under intense state supervision and blaming them for the hard-
ships their families face as a result of societal inequities’. In a way which should
particularly interest social workers, Roberts articulates that we can only begin
the grasp the true extent and scope of the PRWORA if it is analytically and
temporally situated alongside the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) that
emphasised the role of adoption as a means to curb the escalating number of
children in foster care. Viewed as an oppressive constellation of mechanisms, the
‘prison, foster care, and welfare systems operate together to punish Black moth-
ers in particular’ (Roberts, 2019: 1699). Furthermore, there may be an implicit
eugenicist strand to U.S. incarceration policies and practices in so far as the ‘racial
bias of the criminal justice system places a disproportionate number of Black and
Latino men and women in prison at precisely the moment in their life cycles
in which non-incarcerated adults typically start building their families’ (Smith,
2010: 11). California, in fact, was sterilising female prisoners until as recently as
2010 ( Johnson, 2013). Moreover, a system evolved in some states in which the
so-called ‘voluntary’ sterilisation of inmates could be traded so as to reduce the
length of prison sentences (Adams, 2018).
In what follows, therefore, the focus is on the criticism that Wacquant’s theo-
risation has generated. This, in itself, is a rich and diverse body of scholarship
derived from themed issues and symposia in a number of academic journals.

Criticising Wacquant
A defective analysis of the state
First, a cluster of interrelated problems exists with Wacquant’s theorisation of the
state. Wacquant’s positing of a ‘left hand’ and ‘right hand’ of the state, along with
its gendered – and rather essentialist – evocation, is unconvincing (Gelthorpe,
2010). It tends to cast the Keynesian welfare state in an ‘inappropriately rosy
glow’ (Mayer, 2010: 97) and implies that the interventions of the ‘left hand’
are always and unambiguously benign. However, in relation to social work and
related spheres, this conceptualisation fails to adequately address abuses which
take place in ‘care’ settings. In short, the ‘left hand of the state’ can also be a pun-
ishing hand. Similarly, the so-called ‘left hand’ clearly performs a key ideological
role, historically and in a more contemporary context, serving to delineate the
‘deserving’ from the ‘undeserving’ poor (see also Table 6.1).
Given that Wacquant encourages us to look at prisons and ‘welfare’ through
the same analytical optic, it would have been illuminating if he had provided
insights into the movement of personnel across the two felds. This lacuna leads
Jones (2010: 401) to maintain that ‘Wacquant’s project is not completed, and
some aspects of it have yet to be started’: that is to say, investigating the state
apparatus requires a more detailed ethnographic approach following not only
individuals targeted for intervention for prison or ‘welfare’ interventions but also
the employment routes of state personnel involved in the combined felds.
134 Critical scholarship & neoliberal penality

Perhaps also Wacquant’s analysis needs refning given how states changed after
the commencement of the ‘war on terror’ post 2001 and the ‘crash’ of 2007/8.
Indeed, even before the global economic turmoil associated with the latter, ‘big’
government had returned in the form of a new military and intelligence expan-
sion, new surveillance and security systems and so on (see also Chapter 4). In
contrast, Wacquant (2009a: xviii) maintains that ‘the state stridently reasserts its
responsibility, potency, and effciency in the narrow register of crime manage-
ment at the very moment when it proclaims and organizes its own impotence on
the economic front’ (Wacquant, 2009a: xviii). Punishing the Poor may have been
completed prior to the economic implosion of 2007/8, but it is also clear that,
in the United States and European Union, states intervened decisively and were
far from lacking in potency even when Wacquant was writing. Developments
following the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 also highlight the power
of states to decisively intervene in the lives of populations under their control.

Which social forces stand to gain?

Importantly, Wacquant’s readers gain little sense of whom, or what, is driving
the punitive process and what benefts or advantages may be accrued (Nelken,
2010). For example, he observes in an apparently throwaway remark that the
‘notion of dominant class is invoked on occasion in this book, it is only as a
stenographic designation pointing to the balance of patterned struggles over the
remaking of the state going on within the feld of power’ (Wacquant, 2009a:
29). Similarly, he dismisses the notion that the penalisation of poverty may form
a component of a more rounded fuller ‘plan’. For him, what is occurring are the

results of struggles involving myriad agents and institutions … I force-

fully reject the ‘functionalism of the worst case’ which casts all historical
developments as the work of an omniscient strategist or as automatically
benefcial to some abstract machinery of domination and exploitation that
would ‘reproduce’ itself no matter what.
(Wacqaunt, 2009a: xx)

Such comments risk conveying that the evolution of this punitive upsurge is
a consequence of rather arbitrary mechanisms and processes. In short, he fails
to address questions about the forces standing to gain from the growth of pris-
ons. More specifcally, Wacquant does not appear to accept that a particular
class, the ruling, or ‘dominant class’, has differential access to the levers of power
and is able to engineer changes to suit its own interests. Although not directly
engaging with Wacquant’s perspective, Bohrer (2019: 153) rightly notes that the
‘proftability’ is an important factor given how the ‘owners of industries proft
immensely from the structural violence of incarceration … part of the endemic
and indeed, increasing, deployment of this kind of violence can be directly traced
to a proft-motive’ (see also Surowiecki, 2016; Page and Soss, 2018).
 Critical scholarship & neoliberal penality 135

Private prisons are essentially a ‘parasite on the massive publicly-owned sys-

tem’ in the United States (Prison Policy Initiative (PPI), 2020: 10; see also Wang,
2018). However, various measures have been introduced to boost the proft and
income-generating aspects of prison life. In California, for example, some coun-
ties have experimented with various neoliberal ways to reduce costs and increase
revenues. Riverside County, for example, charges inmates $140 per night with
prisoner debts recouped from post-prison earnings. In Fremont, inmates are
given the opportunity to relocate to a quieter and safer area of the prison with
such ‘upgrades’ resulting in a $155 additional charge per night (Aviram, 2016:
270–71).

Defnitional and methodological ambiguity

Third, Wacquant’s perspective is, in some respects, characterised by defnitional
and methodological ambiguity. One critical commentator asserts that his contri-
butions are delivered with ‘maximum rhetorical force’ but at the ‘cost of analytic
clarity’ (Lacey, 2010: 783). Jones (2010: 394) is ‘uncomfortable with the extent
of his macro-generalisations’ and maintains that a range of questions compli-
cate Wacqaunt’s perspective: for example, low prison rates might actually be
an ‘index of an especially punitive social order’. That is to say, low rates might
mask the fact that, beyond the walls of the prison, other forms of social control,
including non-prison detention, could be proliferating. Although not engag-
ing with Wacqaunt’s work, O’Sullivan and O’Donnell (2007) refer to a decline
in coercive confnement in the Republic of Ireland even though in the past
decades prison numbers have risen (Lally, 2020). Their analysis and theorisa-
tion takes into account this increase in prison numbers, but they situate this
escalation alongside the diminution in the numbers confned within places of
semi-confnement, constraint and restriction: Industrial Schools, Mother and
Baby Homes etc. (see also Garrett, 2020d). Hence, for them, what is required is
a more nuanced approach to analysing the institution of the prison which also
brings into vision other locations of coercive confnement. Somewhat similarly,
whilst focusing on the United States, Harcourt (2010) draws attention to the fall
in the numbers of those detained in institutions for the mentally ill alongside a
large escalation in prison numbers. Given this line of criticism, it might be sug-
gested that Wacquant uses ‘broad brush strokes’ to paint his general picture and
that occasionally he neglects the granular details relating to specifc jurisdictions.

An undue focus on the United States

A fourth criticism relates to the emphasis on the United States which, Wacquant’s
critics argue, is exceptional and somewhat at odds with wider international
trends (Mayer, 2010; Nelken, 2010). Wacquant’s ‘story of creeping global “neo-
liberalism” risks projecting a story which is, essentially, an American one onto
the whole planet’ (Lacey, 2010: 787). Some countries, for example, appear not
136 Critical scholarship & neoliberal penality

to have opted for high rates of imprisonment and a punitive approach to law-
and-order issues; Jones (2010) points to apparently more lenient approaches in
Italy. Responding to Wacquant, by examining the situation in Greece, Cheliotis
and Xenakis (2010: 67) stress the ‘danger of occidentalist presumptions’ if theo-
retical frameworks based on ‘Western experiences of capitalist development are
problematically applied to states of the semi-periphery, given their very differ-
ent social and economic trajectories’. More fundamentally, Wacquant ‘under-
estimates the diffculties of concepts “travelling”, and the obstacles to bringing
criminal justice practices into line with those elsewhere’ (Nelken, 2010: 337).
Thus, Lacey (2010: 781) cautions that ‘different states’ have ‘different ways’. In
Western Europe, for example, other culturally embedded approaches are still
able to challenge ‘neoliberal penality’. Nellis (2005) refers to the continuing
relevance of an embattled ‘humanistic-rehabilitative’ discourse’ and the rise of,
what he aptly terms, a ‘mangerialist-surveillant’ discourse which imports con-
cepts and practices from the commercial and corporate sectors.
Other critics focus on Wacquant’s insuffciently nuanced portrayal of devel-
opments even within the United States. Here ‘the ‘workfare’ to ‘prisonfare’
nexus plays out differently in different parts of the country (Lacey, 2010: 783).
Newburn (2010: 346) asserts that ‘all too often, the U.S. is discussed as if it were
uniform in its approach to crime and punishment rather than a federalised system
encompassing diverse arrangements and practices’. However, ‘huge variation can
be seen if we return to state-level changes … since 1999 four states – Kansas,
Michigan, New Jersey, and New York – have reduced their prison populations
by between 5 and 20 percent’ (Newburn, 2010: 348). Indeed, the regional vari-
ations remain signifcant: in 2020, the United States continues to imprison more
people, per-head-of-population than any other country in the world, but the
prison population in New York stands at its lowest since the Second World War
(Marsh, 2020; see also Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) (2020)).

Lack of historical rigour

As we argued in Chapter 1, it is vital that social workers and educators are atten-
tive to history so as to better analytically assess and weigh contemporary pro-
cesses and developments. Relatedly, a ffth criticism levelled at Wacquant charges
that he lacks a developed historical sense ( Jones, 2010: 398). If the ‘primary
impulse of “neo-liberalism”… is the move to the targeted exclusion of mar-
ginalised groups, ‘neoliberal’ punishment has been around in Britain for cen-
turies’ (Lacey, 2010: 784); for Jones (2010: 398), the Poor Law was, in fact,
‘Penal State Mark 1’. Indeed, as the treatment of ‘unmarried mothers’ in Ireland
and elsewhere reveals, ‘mechanisms for the selective demonisation and exclu-
sion of targeted low-status “outsiders” have a depressingly long history’ with the
‘infamous distinction between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor echoing
down through the arrangements of the welfare state, even in its supposed golden
age’ (Lacey, 2010: 783). This form of historically informed critique prompts
 Critical scholarship & neoliberal penality 137

Piven (2010) to dwell on the detectable continuities and parallels between how
the poor are regulated and policed under both Fordist and neoliberal capitalism
in the United States: what was truly novel with the ‘1996 reform was not work
enforcement so much as its administrative reinvigoration’ (Piven, 2010: 113).

Detention beyond the wall of the prison

Sixth, perhaps Wacquant is, as we have already alluded to, insuffciently atten-
tive to other forms of detention emerging outside the prison gates. Based in the
United States, Roberts (2019: 1706) asserts that ‘multiple state systems purport-
edly designed to serve human needs, along with prisons, operate as mutually
supporting aspects of carceral governance’. More pervasively and identifable
across many jurisdictions, a ‘new punitiveness’ (Pratt et. al., 2005), so central to
neoliberalism’s mode of social regulation, is refected in the tendency to locate
particular sections of the population (those regarded as ambiguously ‘trouble-
some’ and ambiguously ‘out of place’) within enclosures which may not be cages
for people, or what we tend to term ‘prisons, but which are nonetheless zones
of varying degrees of confnement, monitoring and supervision’ (Butler, 2004).
What is more, there is the aspiration to increasingly use technology to ‘track’ the
troublesome ‘in the community’ (Nellis, 2005; see also Chapter 4).
In Chicago, ankle bracelets worn by juvenile offenders and pretrial defendants
have been ‘equipped with microphones that permit social services, probation
offcers, and other government agencies to make unscheduled calls and send push
notifcations’ concerning their wearers’ locations (Williams, 2019: 10). These
devices allow ‘authorities to listen in on conversations, including interactions
with parents, teachers, psychologists, or peers in the bedroom, in the bathroom,
or during consultation in an attorney’s offce’ (Williams, 2019: 10). As Patricia
J Williams (2019: 10) observes, wiretapping children in this way facilitates the
state to monitor their ‘entire social world, exposing intimate personal lives far
beyond the criminal-justice system’s jurisdiction’. Many ‘undocumented’ indi-
viduals freed from U.S. immigration detention centres are only released on
the condition that they wear GPS-equipped ankle monitors or what are often
termed ‘grilletes’ (Spanish for shackles) (Gogolak, 2015). Across the United States,
at least, 84,000 immigrants are subjected to these Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) electronic monitoring systems (Pittman, 2020). Such forms
of oversight have been dubbed ‘e-carceration’ and such processes are generating
new proft sources for private companies ( Jay, 2019).

Wacquant and dissenting social work

Bourdieu has had an impact within social work’s academic literature, but
Wacquant’s contributions have rarely been explored (see, however, Cummins,
2015). Nevertheless, despite the warranted criticisms levelled at his work,
Wacquant’s analytical approach potentially adds to DSW’s critical understanding
138 Critical scholarship & neoliberal penality

of the contemporary world. More specifcally, his contributions encourage us to

think more deeply about a range of issues relating to social work practice and
developments impacting on associated research agendas.
First, Wacquant’s aspiration to act as an oppositional thinker in the public
sphere gels with the argument that we are amplifying in Dissenting Social Work.
As we have seen, in terms of questions related to scholarly work, his insights illu-
minate the pitfalls of research agendas becoming too compliant and harnessed to
the politics of the neoliberal capitalist state.
Second, Wacqaunt’s wariness about the role of the United States in seek-
ing to promote a transferable or one-size-fts-all ‘common sense’ view of the
world might be heeded. This is not to suggest that there should be a fool-
ish anti-Americanism within social work or elsewhere; indeed, there is a need
to recognise – historically and in contemporary terms – the sustained efforts
to counter capitalist excesses by practitioners and social work educators in the
United States (Reisch and Andrews, 2002; Abramovitz, 2006). In the United
States, there have always been social workers willing to contest the ‘master nar-
rative’ of the profession which is intent on tapering it to ft capitalist imperatives
(Reisch, 2013). In the area of social policy, Sandy Schram (2015) has produced
a rich corpus of work that is deeply critical of the incessant moves to neoliber-
alise the feld. Nevertheless, it remains important to recognise how U.S. social
work ‘models’ and related social policies infuence developments elsewhere.
For example, in the United Kingdom in the 1990s and entirely ftting with
Wacquant’s perspective, the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) played a piv-
otal role in sponsoring visits by, and publishing fgures such as Charles Murray
(1990; 1994) and drew media attention to his ideas pivoting on the dangers
supposedly posed by a feral ‘underclass’. The IEA also tried to tilt social policy
on child adoption and wider child welfare discourses in the direction of those
favoured by the U.S. New Right (Morgan, 1998; 1999). Partly on account
of thinking derived from the United States, the public debate around ‘social
security’ transmogrifed into one on focusing on the more stigmatised ‘welfare’
(Garrett, 2018a). More recently, as observed in Chapter 4, U.S discourses and
practices relating to the so-called ‘predictive policing’ have transferred to other
countries.
Third, Wacquant’s conceptualisation of the state is, as already mentioned,
deeply problematic: the gendered interpretation and related ideas about the state’s
‘left’ and ‘right’ hands is unconvincing. However, his focus on the changes tak-
ing place in terms of the function of the state remind dissenting social work-
ers and educators of the need to defend ‘welfare’ provision. As Ferguson and
Lavalette (2013: 95) argue, for ‘all its well-documented limitations – its familial-
ist assumptions, its limited conceptions of citizenships, its bureaucratic ethos and
the ways it embedded class inequalities – the welfare state in Britain, like welfare
states that emerged in most advanced capitalist countries in the post-war period,
provided its citizens with some degree of security and freedom from fear’.
 Critical scholarship & neoliberal penality 139

Fourth, Wacqaunt’s ‘territorial stigmatisation’ is a useful concept for social

workers trying to understand why some localities become belittled and degraded
in political, public and professional discourses. For example, his theorisation
highlights how particular geographical spaces can be constructed as ‘symbolic
locations’ and deployed as signifers for crime, assorted threats and troubles
(Campbell, 1993). Taking into account Wacqaunt’s ideas and stretching them,
we might argue that capitalism can, in a sense, be perceived as an engine which
generates profound inequalities which also ‘play out’ spatially and this may high-
light why the ‘clients’ of social workers are frequently pocketed in particular
areas of cities and towns. Importantly, we also need to grasp the impact of this in
relation to mortality rates.
In 2008, the year before the publication of Punishing the Poor, the London
Health Observatory showed that if travelling east on the Tube from Westminster,
every two Tube stops represented more than a year of life expectancy lost for those
residing along the route. Four years later, James Cheshire, based at University
College London (UCL), used a map of the entire Tube network to expand on
this analysis. His research revealed a twenty-year difference in life expectancy
between those born near Oxford Circus and those born close to some of the sta-
tions on the Docklands Light Railway (DLR). Newborns clustered around the
Star Lane were predicted to live, on average, for 75.3 years in contrast to 96.4
years for those near Oxford Circus (BBC News, 2012b). Undermining often
simplistic perceptions of a ‘rich’ Global North and a ‘poor’ Global South, one of
Cheshire’s UCL colleagues commented:

If you want to see a difference in life expectancy between countries of

11 years, you can fy from London to Guatemala … But if you are worried
about your carbon footprint, you could just catch the Tube east. The dif-
ference between Hackney and the West End is the same as the difference
between England and Guatemala in terms of life expectancy.
(BBC News, 2012b)

Economic disparities within the U.K. capital, again profoundly racialised, were
subsequently apparent in debates following the catastrophic Grenfell Tower fre
fve years later (Chakrabortty, 2017). Switching to the United States and refer-
ring to one road in Chicago, a medical doctor similarly notes how a ‘twenty-
minute commute exposes a near twenty-year life expectancy gap because of
gross economic inequalities’ (Ansell, 2017: vii). He concludes that where

you live dictates when you die. This is not just true in Chicago … Travel
Third Avenue in New York thirty blocks from Upper East Side to Harlem,
and lose ten years of life. Take a short cruise along the 405 in Los Angeles,
and sixteen years of life expectancy vanish.
(Ansell, 2017: xiii)
140 Critical scholarship & neoliberal penality

Writing, three years before the outbreak of COVID-19, Ansell (2017: vii) asserts
that inequality ‘triggers so many causes of premature death that we need to treat
inequality as a disease and eradicate it, just as we would seek to halt an epidemic’.
Another way to conceptualise such ‘premature’ deaths is by having recourse to
Engels’ concept of ‘social murder’. Engels (1999 [1845]: 38) claims that when an
individual ‘inficts bodily injury upon another, such injury that death results, we
call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury
would be fatal, we call his deed murder’. The causes and perpetrators of such
killings are clear for all to see, yet there are also ‘disguised’ murders; ‘murder
against which none can defend’ themselves. This is partly because it ‘does not
seem what it is’ because nobody actually ‘sees the murderer, because the death of
the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of
commission. But murder it remains’ (Engels (1999 [1845]: 107)).
Fifth, Wacquant’s investigation of the ‘neoliberal penality’ is important in ena-
bling social workers to consider how contemporary imprisonment, and its expan-
sion, can be situated within a more embracing and larger explanatory paradigm.
Whilst mostly concerned with developments in the United States, his analysis can
inform dissenting practitioners and educators’ understanding of the expansion
in the penal estate (Garrett, 2016a). Since about the year 2000 the world prison
population total has grown by almost 20 percent, which is slightly above the esti-
mated 18 percent increase in the world’s general population over the same period.
The female prison population total has increased by a remarkable 50 percent
since about 2000, whilst the equivalent fgure for the male prison population
is 18 percent (Walmsley, 2017: 3). The recorded total of prisoners is 10.35 mil-
lion, but the actual number may be in ‘excess of 11 million’ (Walmsley, 2017:
3). Resonating with the current Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrations and
related dissenting activism, Black people comprised 10 percent of U.K. prison
population in 2014 whilst making up only 3.5 percent of the total population.
Indeed, there is an even greater disparity between the proportion of Black people
in prison and the general population than in the United States (McVeigh, 2016).
The gargantuan size of the U.S. prison population comfortably outstrips the
national population size of a number of European States including Estonia (1.31
million), Latvia (1.99 million), Kosovo (1.81 million), Macedonia (2.07 million)
and Slovenia (2.06 million) (extrapolated from Walmsley, 2017). In March 2020,
it was reported that the American criminal justice system holds almost 2.3 mil-
lion people in 1,833 state prisons, 110 federal prisons, 1,772 juvenile correctional
facilities, 3,134 local jails, 218 immigration detention facilities, and eighty Indian
Country jails as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centres, state psy-
chiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories (Prison Policy Initiative
(PPI), 2020: 1).
On account of the sheer weight of numbers, overcrowding and fre-
quently poor hygienic and sanitary conditions, the situation of prisoners has
been exacerbated by the COVID-19 viral pandemic (Human Rights Watch,
 Critical scholarship & neoliberal penality 141

2020; Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research, 2020a; 2020b; United
Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or
Degrading Treatment or Punishment, 2020). In the United States, ‘most pris-
ons are overcrowded, so millions of Americans spend their lives in extremely
close quarters, sharing the same air, and without proper access to hand washing
facilities, let alone hand sanitiser’ (Friedersdorf, 2020). Refecting some of the
issues highlighted in Chapter 4, U.S. prisoner releases from the federal system
are decided using a discriminatory algorithm notable for a demonstrable racial
and class bias (Human Rights Watch, 2020). Given the neoliberal-generated
public housing crisis, there are also diffculties in fnding accommodation for
those released (Friedersdorf, 2020).
Globally, ‘riots’ have been widespread: in Colombia and Italy, armed police
and assorted personnel ‘stormed’ prisons with many, yet to be explained, deaths
resulting. The crisis in prisons has also prompted calls to implement early, provi-
sional and temporary release policies. This has occurred in some countries, but the
problems are countless. England and Wales are ‘leagues behind other European
states in reducing the prison population to manage COVID-19’ (Institute for
Crime and Justice Policy Research, 2020b). The Johnson government appears to
be relying on temporary measures, such as makeshift single-occupancy cells and
a cessation in some judicial activity to halt the spread of the virus.

Conclusion
For social workers, at least three signifcant factors fow from issues related to
prisoners. First, the increase in the recourse to imprisonment across various
jurisdictions directly impacts on a range of interventions in social work with
children and families (Cnaan et al., 2008; Sheehan, 2011). Second, the infa-
tion in prisoner numbers and the tonality of policy making associated with this
development may infuse the modalities of social work: for example, an increased
emphasis on the surveillance of clients and the initiation of patterns of quasi-
confnement (Garrett, 2007b). Three, the value base of social work with its
commitment to the promotion of social justice might prompt us to become more
intent on campaigning for a less frequent use of prison and better conditions for
prisoners. Mindful of these three considerations, social work practice and educa-
tion should, therefore, critically engage with Wacquant’s work and his theorisa-
tion of the prison and, more broadly, the trajectory of welfare. In this context,
for example, dissenting social workers might embark on a mapping of the penal
estate within their own national location (see, for example, Garrett, 2016a).
More generally, Wacquant’s range of themes, outlined in the frst part of the
chapter, provide useful coordinates enabling us to get a better sense of key issues
within social work. Our next chapter will turn to explore aspects of the work of
Hannah Arendt in order to examine how she may advance or impede the DSW
project.
142 Critical scholarship & neoliberal penality

REFLECTION AND TALK BOX 6

Resorting to somewhat florid prose, Wacquant (2007: 67) asserts that, rather
than being

disseminated throughout working-class areas, advanced marginality tends

to concentrate in isolated and bounded territories increasingly perceived
by both outsiders and insiders as social purgatories, leprous badlands at
the heart of the postindustrial metropolis where only the refuse of society
would accept to dwell.

How does the related questions of ‘territorial stigmatisation’ and ‘advanced

marginality’ impact on your work in terms of the neighbourhoods that you
visit and how they may be perceived?

In his analysis of the transformation occurring to ‘welfare’, Wacquant sug-

gests the ways of relating to claimants appear, in many instances, to mirror
the ways that prison regimes treat those who are confined. Can we identify a
similar ambience in social work, particularly in areas such as child protection?
Alternatively, recalling our discussion in Chapter 3, is the vibe more imbued
with ideas around ‘empowerment’, ‘choice’ and ‘personal development’?

What are your views on Wacquant’s conceptualisation of the state?

Can we relate to Wacquant’s notion of ‘territorial stigmatization’ to some of

the issues flowing from the ‘lockdown’ measures resorted to by governments
seeking to combat the COVID-19 virus?

Does Wacquant sufficiently recognise the resistance to ‘neoliberal penality’?

7
DISSENTING WITH THE
ARCH-CONTRARIAN:
HANNAH ARENDT

Introduction
Hannah Arendt is popular once again with academic commentators identify-
ing a ‘renaissance in Arendt studies’ (Klausen, 2010: 395; see also Stonebridge,
2020). Her purported contemporary relevance is highlighted in the mainstream
media with, for example, The Guardian featuring Arendt on the front cover of
its G2 section in early 2017 (Williams, 2017). It is, therefore, unsurprising that
this political theorist is becoming somewhat more prominent in the literature
of social work (Bay, 2014; Smeeton, 2017). Chiming with the tone of Dissenting
social work, her comments from 1953 certainly reverberate into the Trump era
given the mantra ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) and the crackdown on
progressive currents of dissent:

the limitations of dissent lie in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights
and nowhere else. If you try to ‘make America more American’ … you
can only destroy it. Your methods, fnally, are the justifed methods of the
police, and only of the police.
(Arendt, 1994 [1953])

A professor in the New School for Social Research, in New York, Arendt was
also visiting professor at a number of other universities. From 1959, until her
death in 1975, she lived on Riverside Drive in the prosperous Upper West Side
of Manhattan. King (2015) suggests that she was at the intellectual centre of vari-
ous intellectual circles in New York and something of the tonality of her life and
the milieu in which she moved may have been captured in the biographical flm
drama Hannah Arendt directed by Margarethe von Trotta and released in 2012.
Born in Hanover in 1906, Arendt obtained her doctorate in philosophy in
1929. During her period of study, she had a brief affair with Martin Heidegger
144 Dissenting with the arch-contrarian

(1889–1976). Ongoing correspondence and occasional meetings with the Nazi-

supporting philosopher continued throughout the rest of her life (Ettinger, 1995).
A German Jew, she fed to Paris in 1933 and worked for an organisation locating
‘Jewish youngsters in Palestine’; it was, she explained to an interviewer thirty
years later, ‘regular social work, educational work’ (Arendt, 2000a [1964]: 10).
More emphatically, Bowring (2011: 8) claims that the new immigrant ‘threw
herself into Zionist social work’. In 1940, Arendt married her second husband,
Heinrich Blucher (1989–1970). The following year, she moved to the United
States. Ten years later, in 1951, her frst major work, The Origins of Totalitarianism,
was published and she passed her U.S citizenship examination (Arendt, 2017
[1951]). On Revolution (Arendt, 1963) was published in 1963 as an ‘act of grati-
tude’ to the United States (King, 2015: 87).
‘America’ [that is to say, the United States] has, she avows, a ‘basically sound
political structure’ (Arendt, 2000 [1946]: 26). It was as though, she notes approv-
ingly, the ‘American Revolution was achieved in a kind of ivory tower into
which the fearful spectacle of human misery, the haunting voices of abject
poverty, never penetrated’ (Arendt, 2000b [1963]: 272). Arendt (1963: 219)
acknowledges that ‘American power and prestige were used and misused to sup-
port obsolete and corrupt political regimes that long since had become objects
of hatred and contempt among their own citizens’. However, during the period
of Kennedy’s escalation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, some have not unrea-
sonably argued that Arendt’s assertion that the ‘American Republic’ resisted the
temptation to ‘play the game of imperialist politics’ entirely disregards imperial-
ist interventions in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Cuba and Haiti (Arendt, 1994
[1948/9]: 223–4). In this context, her highly problematic perspective on colo-
nialism is fascinating and beyond the scope of this chapter, but there is abundant
literature on these themes (King and Stone, 2007). Maintaining that it was ‘as
though a bunch of con men … had succeeded in appropriating to themselves
the government of “the mightiest country on earth”’, Arendt appears to be have
become much more critical of mainstream U.S. political life towards the end of
her life (Arendt, 2003 [1975]: 267).
The brief, critical appraisal in this chapter only focuses on certain aspects
of her corpus which relate to dissenting social work (DSW). However, Baeher
(2000) has edited a good anthology – and introduction to Arendt’s work – and
this includes the controversial and dismally ill-judged essay on ‘race’ and civil
rights, ‘Refections on Little Rock’ (Arendt, 2000 [1959]). Arendt can be ‘dif-
fcult’ because what she has to say is ‘subtle and complex’ (Canovan, 1974: 4).
Perhaps also, she unreasonably assumes a familiarity with classical philosophy
on the part of her readers. Contemporary readers may also be distracted by her
incessant use of male pronouns and sarcastic (if often amusing) asides. Still, she is
mostly accessible on account of the ‘conversational quality’ to her writings: even
with her more ‘specifcally philosophical’ contributions there is an open ‘invita-
tion to think with her’ (Hansen, 1993: 218). At times, she writes lucidly, even
 Dissenting with the arch-contrarian 145

poetically and her ruminations on, for example, the importance of ‘forgiving’
and maintaining ‘promises’ is evocative and compelling. Forgiving unchains us
from the deeds of the past and creates possibilities for new beginnings, whilst
‘binding oneself through promises’ seeks to establish lives which are lived on
‘islands of security’ in the ‘ocean of future uncertainty’ (Arendt, 2000b [1964]:
181).
Seeking to provide a critical and partial insight in relation to some of Arendt’s
main themes, the chapter is divided into four sections. Whilst recognising she
is an important theorist and that a number of her main preoccupations can be
connected to the concerns of DSW, the chapter expresses wariness about the risk
of uncritically importing her writings into the social work literature. First, we
look at Arendt and dissent. The second part hones in on one of the foundations
of her conceptual architecture: her ideas on what constitutes the ‘public’, the ‘pri-
vate’ and, relatedly, the threat posed by the ‘social’ (Arendt, 1998 [1958]). The
third section of the chapter critically appraises key aspects of Arendt’s thinking
that rest very uneasily alongside DSW: the views she expresses in relation to, for
example, the private sphere and questions circulating around gender. Finally, it is
maintained that Arendt, unlike Marx, seems incapable of providing practitioners
and educators with a satisfactory assessment of capitalist ‘crises’ and ‘breakdown’
occurring within, what she terms, a ‘mass society’ (see also Chapter 2).1

Seven dimensions of dissent

Perhaps the new receptivity to Arendt’s work might be attributable to the fact
that it coalesces with our unease, our Zeitgeist? Here, seven dimensions might
particularly attract a readership interested in ideas associated with DSW. First,
Arendt is scrupulously attentive to the use of words, questions of etymology and
how words change over time (Garrett, 2018a). One of her ‘main quarrels’ with
academics, particularly social scientists, is that they lack a ‘sensitivity to words’
and are content to replace a ‘rich language, full of precise shades of meaning,
with a narrow jargon’ (Canovan, 1974: 10). Relatedly, Arendt has a propensity
to overturn the commonplace understanding of particular words; for instance,
‘natural’ is not something which is unequivocally laudable within her lexicon
and conceptual framework. Instead, ‘artifcial’ is valorised in that it exalts the
‘specifcally human capacity of artifce, which enables us to build a human world
to live in instead of merely inhabiting the given world of nature like an animal’
(Canovan, 1974: 8). Great dangers exist in ‘being taken in by every catchword’
given this is likely to generate an ‘inability to think or else the unwillingness to
see phenomena … without applying categories to them’ (Arendt, 1972: 210).
Arendt is also alert to how the various ‘language rules’, deployed by the Nazis
to ‘deceive and to camoufage’ their murderous practices are relevant to today’s
world (Arendt, 2006 [1963]: 108). Perhaps in a way similar to Jacques Rancière,
she implicitly chides us for unrefexively having categories and classifcations
146 Dissenting with the arch-contrarian

incarcerate our thinking (see also Chapter 5). Arendt’s work can also be stretched
to help us better understand how certain troublesome populations – often
‘wrapped up’ in pejorative words and labels – become identifed, enclaved and,
not infrequently, subject to abusive practices.
Second, Arendt’s (1972) contributions on ‘lying in politics’ are topically sig-
nifcant. In the era of Trump and a wider degeneration of the political sphere,
refected in the frequent recourse to disinformation (so-called ‘fake news’), her
views have fresh salience (Williams, 2017; Bowring, 2017). However, Arendt
is not solely concerned with the power of individuals in that she focuses on
structural and cultural shifts enabling lies to proliferate. Writing before the
creation of the internet, she points to the signifcance of PR [public relations]
managers in government who – to use a more contemporary word – are able
to ‘spin’ the truth. Indeed, even in the late-1940s, she condemned ‘Madison
Avenue’ tactics and ‘public relations’ for being ‘permitted to invade our politi-
cal life’ (Arendt, 1994 [1948/49]: 263). Additionally, Arendt emphasises the
role played by so-called solution-focused, ‘problem solvers’ associated with
governments (Arendt, 1972). Located within bureaucracies, ‘intellectuals’ – of
the type Wacquant would prefer to dub ‘academics’ – fulfl an important func-
tion in furnishing ‘risk assessments’ and mooting ‘solutions’ in relation to cer-
tain ‘social problems’ (see also Chapter 6). Their focus is not on judging, but on
forms of calculation relying on the evidence of ‘mathematical, purely rational
truth’ (Arendt, 1972: 37). This insight into the production of, what we might
term, partial or incomplete truths, also has enormous contemporary resonance
if we consider the current prominence of algorithms in many areas of life (see
also Chapter 4).
Third, facets of Arendt’s work have new signifcance given, as we saw in
Chapter 1, the disinterring of fascism and the installation of those with fascist
affliations in many governments. Arendt reported on the trial, in Israel, of the
Nazi Adolf Eichmann and refers to the ‘rather uncomfortable but hardly deni-
able possibility that similar crimes may be committed in the future’ (Arendt,
2006 [1963]: 273). Indeed, once a ‘specifc crime has appeared for the frst time,
its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been’
(Arendt, 2006 [1963]: 273). Arendt speculates that ‘repetition of the crimes com-
mitted by the Nazis’ could become even more ‘plausible’ in an evolving world
in which large numbers of people are regarded as ‘superfuous’ or ambiguously
dispensable. The ‘road to total domination’ leads, she cautions, ‘through many
intermediary stages’ which might be viewed as ‘relatively normal and quite com-
prehensible’ (Arendt, 1994 [1950]: 233). In this sense, Arendt’s comments oper-
ate as red lights fashing into the frst half of our twenty-frst century.
Fourth, the state of Israel and the treatment of the Palestinian population
remains a source of concern in and beyond DSW (Lavalette et al., 2020; see also
Safadi et al., 2020). Arendt herself has an ambivalent position in relation to Israel,
but she criticises key foundational assumptions underlying the Zionist project
 Dissenting with the arch-contrarian 147

(Arendt, 2000a [1963]; 2007 [1944]; 2007 [1948]). In our contemporary world,
in which criticisms of the conduct of the state of Israel are often crassly and inac-
curately confated with ‘anti-Semitism’, Arendt’s interventions are, therefore,
immensely important (International Federation of Social Workers, 2018; see also
Chapter 8).
As we saw in Chapter 1, displacement prompted by forced migration is a core
issue relating to ‘frontline’ social work and the ffth dimension is Arendt’s con-
cern about the plight of the ‘refugee’ and the ‘stateless’ (Arendt, 2007 [1943]).
Such displaced individuals and groups frequently seem to be expelled from
‘humanity altogether’ (Arendt, 2000 [1951]: 38). Relating to this to her other
concerns, she contends that if issues such as ‘homelessness’ and ‘rootlessness’ do
not ‘directly produce totalitarianism, they at least produce all of the elements that
eventually go into its formation’ (Arendt, 1994 [Circa 1950]).
Sixth, in many countries, those seeking to furnish political alternatives to
capitalism and aspiring to generate forms of dissenting and ‘popular social work’
can be subject to charges of professional divisiveness and even become the targets
of ‘red-baiting’ (Lavalette and Ioakimidis, 2011). The same occurred in Arendt’s
life during the period of McCarthyism and the ‘witch-hunt’ against those alleged
to be communists in the United States in the 1950s. Signifcantly, Arendt remains
steadfastly opposed to these governmental actions. Although she is not a ‘left-
ist or “progressive”’ (Hansen, 1993: 5), but rather something of a conservative
thinker, she is scathing in her condemnation of those former communists who
were creating new careers – and being awarded lucrative book deals – as promi-
nent ‘Ex-Communists’ (Arendt, 1994 [1953]). Put more succinctly, Arendt can
be described as a vocal ‘anti-anti-communist’ and this orientation is, perhaps,
especially timely given Trump’s diatribes against ‘Marxists’ (Luscombe, 2020).
Seventh, Arendt’s thoughts on ‘natality’, the appearance of the ‘new’ and fresh
possibilities, are fascinating and marinated in a sense of hope for a brighter future
and a better world. This ‘message’ is, of course, particularly important during the
COVID-19 pandemic. According to Arendt (1972: 4), a ‘characteristic of human
action is that it always begins something new … We are free to change the world
to start something new’. For example, in her highly problematic perspective on
the radical student movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, she was still able to
maintain that the ‘frst thing’ that struck her was its ‘determination to act, its
joy in action, the assurance of being able to change things by its own efforts’
(Arendt, 1972: 202). Arguably, this existential emphasis on new possibilities can
be read as failing to appreciate the weight of structural constraints and to insuf-
fciently acknowledge how the practices produced by, and within, ‘habitus’ are
always tending to ‘reproduce the objective structures of which they are a product’
(Bourdieu, 2003: 72). Nevertheless, her recognition of our capacity to trigger
change is an important conceptual counterweight to contemporary, conservative
discourses within social work that risk locking people in their pasts by laying too
much emphasis on overly deterministic understandings of ‘attachment’ and the
148 Dissenting with the arch-contrarian

impact of damaging early life experiences (Cross-Party Manifesto, 2014; see also
Garrett, 2018a).

The ‘private’, the ‘public’ and the ‘social’

Arendt’s model of human interactions and society is founded on the identifca-
tion of three realms: the ‘private’, the ‘public’ and the ‘social’. Mostly using her
own words, these three domains will be outlined. Table 7.1 also aims to furnish
an accessible overview of her paradigm.2
According to Arendt’s conceptualisation, the ‘private’ is the apolitical domain
of biological necessity. It is associated with the maintenance of the household, a
centre of the ‘strictest inequality’ (p. 32). In classical thought and practice, this
‘private’ place is governed in a hierarchical manner by its head. Private property
also fulfls a vital role because a privately owned home provides a hinterland, a
place of retreat from the rigours of the public and political world (p. 71). Familial
relations and interactions within the ‘four walls’ of the household are, she avows,
vital and it is essential to maintain the ‘security of darkness’ associated with this
domain. A characteristic of contemporary life, however, is that the ‘merciless
glare of the public realm … foods everything in the private lives … so that the
children no longer have a place of security where they can grow’ (Arendt, 1961:
186). However, Arendt perceives a life entirely confned to the ‘private’ sphere as
existentially impoverished and denuded of wholeness.
TABLE 7.1 Hannah Arendt’s Description of the ‘Public’, the ‘Private’ and the ‘Social’

The domain or The ‘Private’ The ‘Public’ The ‘Social’

sphere

Period Greek City State Greek City State The ‘Modern Age’/
Western Modernity
Main The Family/ The Polis The Bureaucracy
organisational Household (e.g. State Social
form Private Property Work)
Function Sphere of necessity Space of Administration of
(biological, social appearances ‘Mass Society’
reproduction, and human (e.g. State Social Work)
replenishment) fourishing Consumption (disposal
Furnishes a zone and waste)
of ‘darkness’ and Erosion of the ‘Private’
‘security’ and the ‘Public’
Social relations Patriarchal Equality Society of ‘labourers’
governance of (amongst those and ‘jobholders’
women, children and men permitted Normalisation and
slaves participative deadening conformism
parity) ‘World Alienation’,
atomisation, loneliness,
loss of individuality
 Dissenting with the arch-contrarian 149

Arendt maintains that, according to classical thought and practice, the ‘public’
sphere is where politics occurs. Emerging from the ‘private’, men are able to have a
‘second life’ forming relationships of equality and debating the affairs of the day with
citizens bestowed with equal status’ (p. 24). She concedes that this ‘equality’ is only
afforded to an elite minority since this political realm has ‘very little in common’
with our more contemporary understandings of the concept (p. 32; see, for example,
Callinicos, 2000). It means to ‘live among and to have to deal only with one’s peers,
and it presupposed the existence of “unequals” who … were always the majority of
the population in a city-state’ (p. 32). The ‘good life’, as Aristotle refers to the life
of a citizen, is not, therefore, ‘merely better, more carefree or nobler than ordinary
life, but of an altogether different quality’ than that of the rest of the population (pp.
36–7). In short, although Arendt is insuffciently explicit on the point, it is a life
parasitic on the activity and labour of power of an array of subordinate others, par-
ticularly women and slaves.The public sphere is, therefore, the place where a select
coterie of individuals, speaking amongst their peers, perform and reveal themselves
as persons of distinction, fulgent talent and unbridled excellence.The polis houses a
‘sheer inexhaustible fow of arguments’ and this enables the Greeks ‘to look upon the
same world from one another’s standpoint, to see the same in very different and fre-
quently opposing aspects’ (Arendt, 2000 [1958]: 286).The public or political domain
nurtures, therefore, agonistic arenas in which ‘everything’ is ‘decided through words’,
talk and artful persuasion, not through ‘force and violence’ (p. 26).
Within the classical Greek world, forcing people to act by violence, dictating
rather than persuading, are ‘prepolitical ways’ to manage and regulate the slaves
and barbarians residing outside the polis (p. 27). However, such forms of authori-
tarian command are also exercised within the ‘private’ sphere of home and fam-
ily life where the household head rules with uncontested, despotic powers. As
Arendt comments, not only in Greece and the polis but

throughout the whole of occidental antiquity, it would indeed have been

self-evident that even the power of the tyrant was less great, less ‘perfect’
than the power with which the paterfamilias, the dominus, ruled over his
household of slaves and family.
(p. 27)

By looking at through a Rancièrian lens, therefore, we can perceive the entire

social and economic system as an air-tight ‘police order’ (see also Chapter 5).
The ‘public’ or political sphere is where freedom is exercised and, to express
it more colloquially, it is possible to ‘make things happen’. In contrast, to live
an ‘entirely private life’ means to be ‘deprived’ of ‘being seen and heard by oth-
ers’ (p. 58). As ever intent on excavating the older meaning of words, Arendt
reminds her readers that ‘private’ formerly referred to a state of being deprived
of the ‘highest and most human of man’s capacities’ in that a man who lived only
a ‘private life, who like the slave was not permitted to enter the public realm …
was not fully human’ (p. 38).
150 Dissenting with the arch-contrarian

Arendt asserts that the distinction between a ‘private’ and a ‘public’ sphere of
life corresponds to the ‘household and the political realms’ which have ‘existed
as distinct, separate entities at least since the rise of the ancient city-state’ (p. 28).
According to ‘all ancient political thought’, this is ‘self-evident and axiomatic’
(p. 28). However, when she was writing – in the late-1950s in the United States
– this ‘dividing line’ has become blurred given the incursion of, what she dubs,
the ‘social’ (p. 28). As a result, ‘everyday affairs’ are ‘taken care of by a gigantic,
nation-wide administration of housekeeping’ (p. 28). Arendt suggests that the
‘social’ is, in some senses, modelled on the role of the family which it caricatures,
and even entirely displaces. Hence, the ‘social’ is a form of administration which
might be perceived as a ‘facsimile of one super-human family’ called ‘society’
(p. 29). The emblematic mechanism of the ‘social’ is the modern bureaucracy,
the ‘rule of nobody’ (p. 45) which, ‘under certain circumstances’, conjures up
the ‘most tyrannical’ forms of rule (p. 40). Chronologically, it comes into exist-
ence during the ‘modern age’ and Arendt is clearly very hostile to its arrival. For
her, the ‘social’ is deeply problematic, because it blurs, even eradicates, the tidy
differentiation between the ‘private’ and ‘public’. People are, in fact, apt to now
perceive as ‘private’ concerns in the ‘public’ realm.
Arendt strongly implies that the situation in the past was preferable and can
even be interpreted as an ideal. That is to say, before the ‘modern disintegration
of the family’ when the ‘common interest and single opinion was represented
by the [male] household head who ruled in accordance with it and prevented
possible disunity among the family members’ (pp. 39–40). To be clear, she is
not explicitly calling for the restoration of a pre-modern world in which the
partition between the ‘private’ and ‘public’ is so marked. Nevertheless, she still
conveys a sense of loss when she bemoans developments in the late 1950s. Years
later, she confdes that the ‘great virtue of all aristocracies’ seems to be that
people always knew who they were and hence did not compare themselves to
others. This constant comparing is, for Arendt, the ‘the quintessence of vulgar-
ity’ (Arendt in Arendt and McCarthy, 1995: 167). She also stresses her belief that
private property – which provides a ‘tangible, worldly place of one’s own’ – is
under threat (p. 70). More fundamentally, in what Arendt vaguely describes as
the ‘modern world’ or ‘mass society’, the ‘private’ and the ‘public’ spheres are no
longer discrete and separable spheres in that they constantly fow ‘into each other
like waves in [a] never-resting stream’ (p. 33).
Arendt argues that the Marxist concept of a ‘class society’ is historically obso-
lete in that Marx’s anachronistic formulations only illuminate economic and
social life in the bygone nineteenth century (see also Chapter 2). Given the
rise of a ‘mass society’ all the ‘various social groups’ suffer the same ‘absorption
into one society’ with the ‘realm of the social’ encompassing and controlling all
members with ‘equal strength’ (p. 41). Society has, in short, ‘conquered the pub-
lic realm’ and everyone, it seems, is subject to the same pernicious impact (p. 41).
Relatedly, the new ‘social’ realm has, in a ‘relatively short time’, transformed ‘all
modem communities into societies of labourers and jobholders’ (p. 46).
 Dissenting with the arch-contrarian 151

This new confguration generates a dull, deadening conformism because it

is a world in which people are ‘like atoms, within a mass whose movements are
predictable’ (Canovan, 1974: 13). All that remains is the imperative to ‘produce,
consume and pass away like animals’ (Canovan, 1974: 13), in short, a careless and
disposable world. Hence, chimes Arendt – in rather patrician, if not Foucauldian
terms – society ‘on all its levels’ expects from everyone, a ‘certain kind of behav-
iour’ leading to the imposition of ‘innumerable and various rules’, all of which
tend to normalise ‘its members, to make them behave, to exclude spontaneous
action or outstanding achievement’ (p. 40). Conformism only allows for ‘one
interest and one opinion’ (p. 46). This ‘modern equality’, she charges, is anti-
thetical, in ‘every respect’ to ‘equality in antiquity, and notably in the Greek
city-states’ (p. 41). As we have seen, the polis was accessible by an elite group
of men who ruled their households with a rod of iron, but it was a realm still
‘permeated by a fercely agonal spirit’ in which ‘everybody had constantly to dis-
tinguish himself from all others, to show through unique deeds or achievements
that he was the best of all’ (p. 41).
This new order of the ‘social’ is underpinned by newer forms of knowledge
production and, in this context, she views the social sciences as best understood as
an ‘abominable discipline from every point of view, educating “social engineers”’
(Arendt in Arendt and McCarthy, 1995: 231). Perhaps partly illuminating the dis-
position of some of the key players in today’s Silicon Valley, Arendt charges that the
‘all-comprehensive pretension of the social sciences’ particularly the ‘behavioural
sciences’, aspires to ‘reduce man as a whole … to the level of a conditioned and
behaving animal’ (p. 45; see also Chapter 4). Moreover, this ‘modern age’ is one in
which there is a detectable and ‘growing world alienation’ (Arendt, 1961: 89–90).
In brief, a ‘society of men’ who either live in ‘desperate lonely separation’ or are
‘pressed together into a mass’ (Arendt, 1961, pp. 89–90). ‘Mass-society’ is nothing
more than a kind of ‘organised living’, ‘automatically’ established amongst human
beings who have ‘lost the world once common to all of them’ (Arendt, 1961: 90).
So far, our brief outline of Arendt’s core themes has revealed a good deal of
complex and contentious material. In the discussion that follows, we will focus
on two main lines of critique; the frst is that Arendt’s conceptual trinity fails to
convince because ‘private’, ‘public’ and ‘social’ cannot be as tidily separated as
she suggests. What is more, her conceptualisation presents particular problems
for those committed to crafting more progressive and dissenting forms of social
work. The second criticism is that Arendt’s stress on the threat posed by the
‘social’ fails to adequately diagnose what is occurring around her because she
lacks interest in theorising how capitalism is evolving (see also Chapter 2).

A conceptual architecture unaligned

with dissenting social work
Arendt’s conceptual architecture, based on her foundational articulation of the
‘private’, ‘public’ and ‘social’, is laden with problems. Pointedly, she may have
152 Dissenting with the arch-contrarian

been tempted to view contemporary state-based social work as a symptom of the

‘social’ contaminating the ‘private’ (see also Table 7.1). Furthermore, Arendt’s
model seems to be implicitly constructed on gendered lines with women allo-
cated roles within the ‘private’ and men – or at least some men – freed to fourish
and excel within the ‘public’ arena. The year following the publication of Betty
Friedan’s (2010 [1963]) The Feminist Mystique, when ‘second wave’ feminism was
on the horizon, Arendt concedes that she holds ‘rather old-fashioned’ views in
relation to women’s emancipation and that she considers ‘certain occupations
… improper for women’ (Arendt (2000a [1964]: 4). It does not ‘look good’, for
example, when a woman gives ‘orders’ and she should ‘try not to get into such
a situation’ if she wants to ‘remain feminine’ (Arendt, 2000a [1964]: 4). The
feminist Germaine Greer (1993 [1970]), the author of The Female Eunuch, is ridi-
culed as the ‘current Women’s Lib idol, an absurd Australian giantess’ (Arendt
and McCarthy, 1995: 275). In typical Arendtian fashion, she maintains that the
question of female emancipation has ‘played no role’ for her personally given
that she has ‘always done what [she] liked to do’ (Arendt, 2000a [1964]: 4).
Her perceptions of children and the ‘private’ sphere, although not the subject of
this chapter, are also starkly at odds with more contemporary understandings of
childhood within social work. This is particularly apparent in Arendt’s (1961:
185) characterisation of the child as a ‘human being in process of becoming, just
as a kitten is a cat in process of becoming’ (see also the decades-old critiques of
such perspectives in James et al., 1998).
Arendt’s theoretical perception of the ‘social’ might be interpreted as compa-
rable with other theorists whose contributions have been explored in the social
work literature. For example, her views can be partly understood as presag-
ing Foucault’s (2003) ideas on the emergence of biopolitics and the evolution
of technologies fxated with regulating and managing populations (see also
Chapters 3 and 4). Perhaps also, her concern about the encroachment of the
‘social’ resembles the preoccupations of Habermas about the ‘system’ colonising
the ‘lifeworld’ (Garrett, 2018b: Ch. 8). Habermas (2006: 157) appears to have
a further affnity with Arendt given his assertion that the contemporary family
retains only ‘the illusion of an inner space of pseudo-privacy’. In evoking these
worrisome developments, the two German theorists even have recourse to simi-
lar metaphors, with Arendt frequently referring to the ‘private’ sphere becoming
‘fooded’ and Habermas deploring the ‘foodlit privacy’ of the modern family
(Habermas, 2006: 157; 159).
Arendt’s perspective on the role of the ‘private’, and relatedly the material
space of the home, is culturally insular because her depiction is starkly at odds
with the experience of millions of people across the globe. In India, for example,
the living space for a

vast majority of working masses comprises of small, 8×8 ft. one-room tene-
ments in crowded slums, where sleeping, eating and cooking areas cannot
be segregated. Many urban slum dwellers are in fact confned to a living
 Dissenting with the arch-contrarian 153

space which is even less than the recommended space of 96 square ft. for
a prisoner in jail. Moreover, slum dwellers are denied a regular supply of
water and are often forced to crowd around designated spots of water supply.
( John, 2020)

In Ireland, a report produced by the Irish Refugee Council (2020: 9) examin-

ing the plight of asylum seekers in hotel-type ‘direct provision’ accommodation
found that 50 percent of respondents were unable to socially distance themselves
from other residents during the pandemic; 42 percent shared a room with a non-
family member and 46 percent of respondents shared a bathroom with a non-
family member (Irish Refugee Council, 2020: 9).
Relatedly, Arendt fails to interrogate how the evolution of the private ‘home’
can be conceptually articulated in terms of the shaping of a specifc zone of con-
sumption wedded to particular forms of capital accumulation. Furthermore, her
implied valorisation of the sensual fabric within the ‘four walls’ of the ‘private’
sphere needs to be critically unpacked because – as social workers recognise – the
home can be an abusive space that shields abusers from the light of social account-
ability (McKay, 1998). This dimension has, of course, prompted concerns on
account of the constraints practitioners face in being unable to visit vulnerable chil-
dren since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the UK, in April 2020,
Refuge reported a 25 percent increase in calls to its National Domestic Abuse
helpline since the beginning of ‘lockdown’. Between 23 March and 12 April, the
project Counting Dead Women identifed 16 domestic abuse killings (the average
for the same period over the last ten years is fve) (Rose, 2020). These ghastly con-
temporary accounts of violence within the home are not easily assimilated within
Arendt’s conceptual framework. That said, as Camille Barbagallo (2019) observes,
the home can also be a sustaining place and a site engendering and maintaining
familial resistance to racism and White supremacy encountered in public locations.
Despite the criticisms we can make of Arendt’s evocation of the home, she
may still encourage us to refect more deeply on what may be occurring to the
space of the ‘private’ during the COVID-19 pandemic. As observed in Chapter 4,
the heightened incursion of the ‘virtual’ and meetings taking place using a range
of ‘online platforms’, challenges the very idea of the home as an enclosed, private
space relatively beyond the reach of capital (Manji, 2020). Indeed, according
to Arendt’s reasoning, this development can, perhaps, be perceived as a fur-
ther intrusion of the dreaded ‘social’ signaling a fundamental erosion of – what
Goffman terms – the ‘backstage’ where the self can retreat from the performative
demands of social life.

Eliding the cause of capitalist ‘crises’ and

racialising a fear of the ‘mob’
Within the feld of social work, there is a vital need to critically interrogate
the ‘social problems’ underlying the predicament of those having recourse to
154 Dissenting with the arch-contrarian

services. As we have stressed throughout Dissenting Social Work, it is important to

try and arrive at some understanding about how the ‘macro’ is impacting on and
shaping the ‘micro’. However, Arendt’s analytical approach fails to satisfactorily
interrogate the exploitative economic system in which she is embedded and, as
a result, her aetiology of social crises and breakdown is irredeemably impaired.
Her concerns about the ‘social’ and the ‘mass society’ – and the ‘desperate lonely’
lives it creates – do, however, echo some of the preoccupations of U.S. sociology
in the 1950s (Riesman et al., 1950).
Although of a very different political and philosophical cast, Arendt’s theori-
sation on the erosion of human individuality can be compared to that of Adorno
(2000) – whom she detested – and the displaced Frankfurt School (Horkheimer
and Adorno, 1972). Hannah Pitkin (1998), in her wittily titled commentary
The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt’s Concept of the Social, alludes to the fact
that Arendt’s evocation of the ‘social’ also shares culturally specifc ‘cold war’
concerns found in 1950s science fction movies. Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body
Snatchers (1958), for example, has Americans taken over by aliens as they drift
off to sleep. Once the alien creatures inhabit their minds and bodies, they look
the same, yet they behave like automatons and – just as Arendt’s denigrated ‘job-
holders’ and ‘labourers’ – they are deprived of the capacity to act independently.
Again within the sphere of popular culture, a critique of this purported societal
hollowing can be connected to the rise of the Beat Poets with Ginsberg’s (1956)
Howl and Kerouac’s (1957) On the Road also published in the late-1950s.
Arendt has a tendency to treat the United States as a cypher for the whole
industrialised West. In the late 1940s, and only having arrived in the country
relatively recently, she criticises ‘American intellectuals’ for harbouring the ‘dan-
gerous delusion’ that conditions existing ‘nowhere else in the world’ are ‘normal’
and universal (Arendt, 1994 [1948/49]: 226). It ought, therefore, to be the ‘task
of intellectuals to rescue other Americans from their involuntary isolation, rather
than to strengthen it by complacently thinking of the whole world as abnormal
and of America as the norm’ (Arendt, 1994 [1948/49]: 227). However, this ‘delu-
sion’ charge can clearly be directed at a good deal of her own work. In a generally
favourable review of Arendt’s Between Past and Future, Raymond Williams (1961:
701) suggests that her book, with its ‘inner-group tones’, might best be viewed
as ‘cultural product’ associated with the ‘particular tensions of American soci-
ety’. Moreover, argues Williams (1961: 701), the ‘mass society’ concept is more
accurately described as a ‘particular stage of capitalism’ which might be ‘beaten
back’. The problem is that ‘many Americans’ refuse to ‘look at capitalism with
any sense that it is transient and replaceable’ (Williams, 1961: 701).
Pursuing this line of critique a little further, Arendt’s articulation of the
‘social’ is defcient on account of her apparent inability to comprehend and
describe the unravelling of a social patterning wedded to a particular regime of
capital accumulation. This regime, as discussed in this book’s frst two chapters,
has variously been described as ‘Fordism’, ‘welfare capitalism’ or ‘embedded lib-
eralism’ (see Harvey, 2005). Writing on the ‘social’ in the United States between
 Dissenting with the arch-contrarian 155

the 1950s and the late 1970s, Arendt is unable to relate her conceptualisations to
these changing forms of capitalism and she is unattuned to how her ‘mass society’
would very soon be superseded by a new form of ‘society’ and a new regime of
capital accumulation – neoliberal capitalism – beginning to evolve around the
time of her death in 1975 (see also Chapter 1).
Although a good deal of her later writings unknowingly chart the decline
of Fordism, Arendt displays an excessive and ill-founded confdence that what
protects the ‘so-called “capitalist” countries of the West’ is a legal system that
prevents the ‘daydreams of big-business management’ from ‘trespassing into the
private sphere of its employees’ (Arendt, 1972: 213). She contends that, in the
West, ‘governmental and economic power’ are separate and the ‘state and its
constitution’ are not merely part of the ‘superstructures’ as Marxist accounts
propose (Arendt, 1972: 213). Nevertheless, there are some hints in her later work
that indicate Arendt does detect the arrival of, what she terms, the ‘runaway
economy’ (Arendt, 2003 [1975]: 263). This phrase foreshadows Giddens’ (1994:
3) reference to our living in a dislocated, uncertain ‘runaway world’. More gen-
erally, it is arguably possible to identify in Arendt’s fnal years the evolution of
a pre-fgurative ‘third way’ politics and this may be implicit in her remark that
capitalism and socialism are simply ‘twins, each wearing a different hat’, and that
in ‘essence, socialism has simply continued, and driven to its extreme, what capi-
talism’ began (Arendt, 1972: 215). For her, socialism is ‘no remedy for capitalism’
and capitalism could not be a ‘remedy or an alternative for socialism’ (Arendt,
1972: 220).
What is striking is the fact that Arendt’s work – especially the work com-
pleted in the late 1960s and early 1970s – is marinated in a quite profound
sense of social breakdown and exhaustion (Arendt, 2003 [1975]). Here, we fnd
something of a commentary on the degeneration and decline of the American
Empire which is refected in her contributions on Vietnam and the Watergate
affair (Arendt, 1972). Her letters to her friend, the novelist and essayist Mary
McCarthy, are typical in this regard. In 1968, she condemns the ‘defance of
laws’ by trade unions and the ‘crime in the streets’ that an ‘absolutely incom-
petent’ police are ‘unwilling’ to do anything about (Arendt in Arendt and
McCarthy, 1995: 212). She witnesses a ‘steadily decreasing effciency’ within
all ‘parts of the system – schools, police, mail, transportation, currency, garbage
etc’ (Arendt in Arendt and McCarthy, 1995: 212). From the comfortable heights
of Riverside Drive, Arendt writes despairingly of the ‘demoralisation of the
whole population in matters of work, reliability, workmanship, etc.’ (Arendt in
Arendt and McCarthy, 1995: 233). In 1972, she adds, ‘Things get worse from
day to day, crime in the street [has] reached alarming proportions; people don’t
dare come home by bus late in the evening hours because the bus station is
entirely unsafe etc.’ (Arendt in Arendt and McCarthy, 1995: 322). Clearly, such
comments not only highlight her own jadedness, they also convey something
about the fragmentation of the capitalist social and economic order in which
she is situated.
156 Dissenting with the arch-contrarian

Reading her in the twenty-frst century and noting the resurgence of the
Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, Arendt’s criticism of the emerging move-
ments opposing White supremacy and promoting school integration are disturb-
ing and deeply unsettling. Referring to a litany of social woes, in one of her
letters to McCarthy, she mentions ‘our speciality – the Negro question’. More
specifcally, ‘normal standards of admission’ to universities are being undermined
on account of the civil rights movement’s ‘enthusiasm’ for ‘integrating larger
numbers of Negroes who were not qualifed’ (Arendt in Arendt and McCarthy,
1995: 229–30). Such views are not infrequent in Arendt’s work (Arendt, 2000
[1959]). She also maintains, in an interview, that in the ‘big cities’ the public-
school system has collapsed ‘under the weight of a very numerous, almost exclu-
sively Black lumpenproletariat’ (Arendt, 1972: 225–6). If a ‘section of the city’
becomes Black as a ‘result of the policy of integration, then the streets run to
seed, the schools are neglected, the children run wild – in short the neighbour-
hood very quickly becomes a slum’ (Arendt, 1972: 225–6). These remarks also
illustrate the patrician side of Arendt’s character and her contempt for the ‘mob’:
indeed, in the late-1960s, she asserts, ‘everywhere’ there is ‘some inarticulate fear
of mob rule’ (Arendt in Arendt and McCarthy, 1995: 212). Relatedly, Margaret
Canovan (1974: 14) rightly identifes a ‘Nietzschean’ strain in Arendt’s thinking.
This attitude is arguably refective of more pervasive facets of republican theo-
risation hinting at a concern about the untimely and unwarranted appearance
of the ‘pleb’ who may have a different perspective on what actually constitutes
real and meaningful ‘politics’ (see also Chapter 5). However, as is apparent in
Arendt’s earlier comments, she has a deeply problematic tendency to racialise her
fear of the masses.

Conclusion
This chapter has noted the recent, revitalised engagement with Arendt and a
more generalised resurgence of interest in her writings. At least seven dimen-
sions to her work appear to have relevance for DSW and the wider world. Each
of these might prompt future research and commentary within social work.
However, having outlined her ideas circulating around the ‘private’, the ‘pub-
lic’ and the ‘social’, it was also argued that Arendt’s theorisation is riddled with
major problems and that her work jars, in very fundamental ways, with more
dissenting forms of social work theory and practice. Furthermore, this discussion
has detailed Arendt’s failure to provide any convincing account of the capitalist
system in which the ‘social problems’ commanding practitioners’ attention and
intervention are constituted. In short, despite the Arendt ‘brand’ appearing to be
fashionable once again, her occasionally troubling theoretical corpus should not
be uncritically imported into social work.
As mentioned earlier, Arendt herself has an ambivalent and often critical posi-
tion on Israel. Following her journalistic pieces which developed into Eichmann
in Jerusalem (Arendt, 2006 [1963]), she was subject to criticism and attack from
 Dissenting with the arch-contrarian 157

uncritical supporters of the state. Emmanuel Levinas was a much more adamant
supporter of Israel and recently it has been suggested he might provide a new
opening for a different and more relationally benign social work to emerge. In
the next chapter, therefore, we will dwell on this contention and explore what
he may have to contribute to DSW.

REFLECTION AND TALK BOX 7

How helpful is Arendt on aiding our thinking about dissent in social work?

What are your views on Arendt’s conceptual architecture and her ideas circu-
lating around the ‘private’, the ‘public’ and the ‘social’?

How might social work be located within Arendt’s framework?

Shortly after the ‘lockdowns’ began to be installed across the globe, in March
2020, a statement from the UN maintained:

Violence against women is already an epidemic in all societies, without

exception. Every day, on average, 137 women are killed by a member of
their own family. We also know that levels of domestic violence and sexual
exploitation spike when households are placed under the increased strains
that come from security, health and money worries, and cramped and con-
fined living conditions.
(Mlambo-Ngcuka, 2020)

How does this comment relate to Arendt’s perspective on the ‘private’ sphere
of the home?

What are your perceptions of Arendt’s views on the connected themes of capi-
talist crisis and ‘race’? Can we relate her views to the more recent perceptions
of the BLM movement?

Notes
1 An earlier and different version of this chapter was published in Qualitative Social
Work. I am grateful to SAGE for permitting me to draw on some of this material
(Garrett, 2020b).
2 All the page references are to The Human Condition (Arendt, 1958 [1998]) unless oth-
erwise indicated.
8
REMEMBERING THAT AFRICAN,
ASIAN AND PALESTINIAN LIVES
MATTER: EMMANUEL LEVINAS

Introduction
Shortly after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jo (2020), a social worker
in the United Kingdom, maintained that the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas,
particularly his emphasis on ‘face-to-face interactions’, might help practitioners
grapple with some of the issues related to how to make the best use of video-con-
ferencing with families. Such questions are prompted, of course, because of the
diminution of ‘in-person’ interactions because of various ‘lockdowns’ and social
distancing measures that are in place. More pervasively, the widespread use of
‘face mask’ protection is providing a context for a range of exchanges relating to
the impact of face-covering on the arts, culture, politics and relationships (BBC
News, 2020d; Bullock, 2020; Subramanian, 2020, Mohammadi, 2020, Sealy,
2020). Given these developments, it might appear, therefore, that Levinas, the
‘theorist of the face’ (Alford, 2014: 250), has a good deal to offer dissenting social
work (DSW) and social work more generally. However, this chapter expresses
a deep unease about how Levinas could become uncritically incorporated within
the social work literature. Here, one of the concerns is that an array of substantial
issues central to Levinas’s philosophy and politics are currently omitted in the
amplifcation of his work to a social work readership. We are, in fact, presented
with a sort of Levinas lite, a sanitised rendering of his work that expunges its
unsettling aspects. This is somewhat odd, given that the troubling facets attached
to Levinas are far from hidden and have been extensively discussed within the
literature of philosophy. As stated in Chapter 1, there is a need, if we are to nur-
ture more dissenting types of social work, to critically interrogate ‘false trails’
and to try and furnish more rounded portrayals of canonical or vogueish theorists
and philosophers. Certainly, this applies to Levinas, given that some of his views
should be an anathema for progressive and critical social work.
 African, Asian & Palestinian lives matter 159

The frst part of the chapter looks at how Levinas may have frst come to
the attention of social work educators and practitioners because of Zygmunt
Bauman. Clearly far from exhaustive, the second section highlights some of the
key themes and concerns of Levinas: engaging with the ‘Other’, the centrality
of the face and the complications resulting with the appearance of the ‘third’ [le
tiers] within the sphere of one-to-one interactions.
Beginning to dwell on the conceptual and political problems with Levinas,
the next part of the chapter examines his views on the role of the state, charity
and welfare. As we will see, he has only a cautious and tepid enthusiasm for the
state’s role in alleviating hardship and material need and this is, of course, prob-
lematic given that most social workers operate within welfare states providing
a range of services to a multitude of people relying on such support. Moreover,
within his discourse on charity, Levinas’s evocation of the ‘Other’ connotes a
timeless, abject and passive fgure. Rarely do we have the sense of the ‘Other’ as
a potentially vibrant and resisting fgure. Levinas’s perceptions on this issue also
hint at a certain affnity with neoliberal thinkers keen to restrict and limit the
role of welfare states.
The fourth part of the chapter examines Levinas’s self-proclaimed Eurocentrism
and racist condescension towards those beyond Europe. Relatedly, the ffth sec-
tion concentrates on his ethnic nationalism which is manifested in his Zionism
and the unequivocal support that he lends to the state of Israel. Inseparable from
his Eurocentrism, it is recognised that this topic is politically fraught, but discuss-
ing Levinas and not referring to Zionism and Israel is rather akin to trying to
discuss Marx and omitting to mention capital and labour. Here is it argued that
Levinas seeks to conceptually erase the dignity and worth of Palestinians in a
way that appears to counter his ethical commitment to the ‘Other’.1

Levinas and his introduction to a social work audience

Even Levinas’s supporters concede that his prose is challenging and that he often
presumes his readers’ familiarity with the history of philosophy and canonical
fgures such as Husserl and Heidegger. On occasions, his style of writing is acces-
sible and lucid shimmering into beautiful and evocative clarity. Nevertheless, he
frequently seems more intent on devising ‘captious textual games that keep the
reader disoriented’ (Hutchens, 2004: 3). Davis (1996: 5), a far from unsympa-
thetic commentator, refers to the ‘enigmatic nature of Levinas’s textual prac-
tice’ and ‘notoriously diffcult texts’. The same author compares his prose to the
movement of the sea, perpetually lapping against the same shore with Levinas’s
prose seeming ‘at once both tediously repetitive and intriguingly or irritatingly
elusive’ (Davis, 1996: 37). In contrast, in interviews, his conceptualisations and
views – even when perturbing – are relatively accessible and his political orienta-
tion more transparent.
Certainly, this century, Levinas has attained a new prominence within the lit-
erature of philosophy with an ‘explosion of interest’ from the ‘relative obscurity
160 African, Asian & Palestinian lives matter

in which his work languished until the mid-1980s’ (Critchley, 2004: 172). As
suggested earlier, the contributions of Levinas are also becoming a little more
prominent in the literature of social work with his allure may be attributable to
the fact that a range of his abstract intellectual concerns and signature themes
gel with attempts to rekindle the relational aspect of practice. Arguably, it is the
Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman who is chiefy responsible for initially trans-
porting Levinasian philosophy into social work (Bauman, 1989; 1997). More
specifcally, his presentation at the hundredth anniversary of the Amsterdam
School of Social Work, subsequently published in the European Journal of Social
Work, frmly situated Levinas within the orbit of the profession’s academic com-
munity (Bauman, 2000). This paper, published at the century’s commencement,
remains important because it furnishes a succinct account of some of Levinas’s
main ideas, whilst also carefully omitting facets of the late philosopher’s work
which, as we shall see, a social work audience may view as contentious and trou-
bling. Importantly, however, Bauman’s article was to become the template for
other writers uncritically promoting Levinas within social work.
According to Bauman (2000: 5), Levinas is without doubt the ‘greatest ethi-
cal philosopher of our century’ (Bauman, 2000: 5). The late French philosopher
is, he tells us, convinced that the ‘life world is not a world of measurements’ (p.
159). Bauman, therefore, builds on this perspective to stress that awareness of
the work of Levinas might result in deeper refection on how to challenge the
evolution of arid proceduralisation distracting practitioners from their ‘original
ethical impulse’ (Bauman, 2000: 9). Articulating his analysis in more detail,
Bauman (2000: 10) asserts that social work, ‘whatever else it may be, is also the
ethical gesture of taking responsibility for the fate and well-being of the Other’.
Levinas can, therefore, potentially fulfl a signifcant role in helping to forestall
this undue emphasis on what Bauman (2000: 10) calls ‘procedural execution’
(see Chapter 4).
Following the publication of Bauman’s paper, a number of contributions
have argued that social work should become more Levinasian (Tascón, 2010).
In Canada, Amy Rossiter maintains that Levinas can even bolster dissenting
and ‘critical social work’ given that the ‘foundational social work value of the
dignity and worth of the individual can be seen through the lens of Levinasian
ethics’ (Rossiter, 2011: 993). In Israel, Adital Ben-Ari and Roni Strier assert that
Levinas ‘creates a new framework for working across differences’ (Ben-Ari and
Strier, 2010: 2159). Writers, situated in kindred disciplines, such as psychother-
apy, likewise assert that Levinas’s ethics can benefcially impact on encounters
with those having recourse to the helping professions (Worsley: 2006).
The contributions of Levinas are complex and multifaceted and the next
part of the chapter merely concentrates on his chief philosophical preoccupation
– engaging with the ‘Other’. This core concern also gives rise to ruminations on
the centrality of the ‘face’ and the implications of inhabiting a world where we
are surrounded by multiple ‘Others’. In this context, he introduces the idea of
the ‘third’ [le tiers].
 African, Asian & Palestinian lives matter 161

Signature themes: ‘Other’, ‘face’, ‘third’

As we saw from Bauman’s articulation of Levinas’s work, interaction with the
‘Other’ is vital with Levinas stating that those ‘patronising slogans “being good”,
“being nice”, which one smiles about, I take seriously. They must be thought to
the limit, with rigor and acuity’ (Levinas in Robbins, 2001: 55).2 The ‘Other’
takes priority and renders one’s own concerns and interests secondary. To be
human is unequivocally relational and this means to accept responsibility for the
‘Other’: ‘I am responsible for the other man’ (p. 66). Indeed, with Levinas it is
invariably a man and – although not to be explored further in this chapter – it has
been maintained that his philosophy of self and ‘Other’ amounts to an ‘assertion
of male privilege’ (de Beauvoir, 1997 [1949]: 16).
Steeped in the rich tradition of Jewish and Christian thought, Levinas argues
that engagement with the ‘Other’ is ‘older than any other deliberation we can
remember and … is constitutive of the human’ (p. 175). According to Levinas’s
framing, the response to the ‘Other’ spans a continuum stretching from the
politely mundane to a preparedness to sacrifce one’s life: ‘I am the hostage’ of
the ‘Other’ (p. 132). Hence, the requirement to yield to the ‘Other’ the ‘frst
place in everything, from the après vous [after you] before an open door right up
to the disposition … to die for them’ (p. 47). This obligation stems, he argues,
from the biblical exhortation, featured in the book of Deuteronomy, to ‘love the
stranger’ (p. 134). Indeed, there is ‘something divine in this appearance of the
human capable of thinking of another before thinking of himself ’ (p. 183). As
Bauman explains, the interaction with the ‘Other’ is not symmetric nor rooted
in reciprocal relations because accepting responsibility for the ‘Other’ is not a
form of conduct discharged with the explicit or implicit understanding that a
similar response will be forthcoming. It does not, in short, imbue the ‘Other’
with any sense of obligation or indebtedness within the moment of the encoun-
ter or into the future. Indeed, Levinas contrasts his thinking with that of Martin
Buber (2004) who lays particular emphasis on the need for reciprocal exchanges
within all relationships.
This ethic of responsibility is founded on the idea that difference, a key trope
within social work and related spheres in recent years, must be respected. The
difference of the ‘Other’, their alterity, cannot be collapsed or encased within
known and pre-existing categories. Neither can there be, in relation to the
‘Other’, any fusion. As Rossiter (2011: 285) cogently summarises, the encoun-
ter with the ‘Other’ is invariably an ‘encounter with utter uniqueness’ and I
‘must refrain from treating the other person as an extension of my categories, my
theories, my habitual or learned ways of perceiving others’. Many contemporary
‘moralists emphasise the need to draw the human circle wider and tighter, so
that nobody is left out’, but Levinas purportedly chooses to ‘respect with awe the
terrible distance between us’ (Alford, 2014: 260).
As we mentioned earlier, within this scheme of thinking the ‘face’ is
immensely signifcant and, perhaps, it constitutes the very ‘hallmark of
162 African, Asian & Palestinian lives matter

Levinasian philosophy’ (Rossiter, 2011: 983; see also Ponet, 1985). Confusion,
however, surrounds his use of the word because his usage reaches beyond our
everyday, or common sense, understanding. Despite the interpretation of a num-
ber of commentators, it seems that Levinas is not referring to the visible coun-
tenance of another individual and he makes this plain in books, articles and
interviews (p. 144). The ‘face’, is ‘not the order of the seen, it is not an object’
(p. 48). As Levinas (p. 191) elliptically concedes, it represents a name for what
cannot be named. Still, on occasions, he edges towards implying that the ‘face’ is,
indeed, the actual face (p. 191). Ordinarily, however, Levinas defnes the ‘face’
by ‘traits’ which lie ‘beyond vision’ (p. 48). It connotes how the ‘Other’ enters
into my ambit of responsibility in all its ‘strangeness’, ‘misery’ and existential and
abject vulnerability (p. 48). In the ‘face’, a human life is ‘most naked’, exposed,
elemental and helpless. It demands, therefore, unqualifed compassion (p. 127).
Moreover, God ‘comes to me, when I encounter the face’ (p. 135).
Importantly, Levinas’s perspective is alert to how the dyadic relationship with
the ‘Other’ becomes complicated by the appearance of the ‘third’: if there were
only two of us in the world, you and I, then there would be no question, then
my system would work perfectly. I am responsible to the other in everything
… But we are not only two, we are at least three. Now we are a threesome; we
are a humanity (p. 133). The appearance of the ‘third’ destabilises, distracts and
prompts shifts to the dyadic relationship simply founded on the ‘Other’ and I.
That is to say, the arrival of the ‘third’ results in reorientation and modifcation
because choices need to be made about where my prime allegiance and responsi-
bility should lie. As Herzog (2002: 209) maintains, the ‘third’ tends to ‘trouble’
in that s/he introduces and superimposes a comparison, a calculation. Thus,
we are, so this reasoning goes, prompted to sift and weigh competing pleas and
claims. In approaching

in charity the frst one to come along, the I runs the risk of being unchari-
table toward the third party, who is also his neighbour. Judgment, compar-
ison, are necessary. One must consent to comparing incomparable beings:
the I’s, all of them unique. One must be able to classify their uniqueness
without chaining them to it.
(p. 230)

Levinas further explains this as follows:

I don’t only live in a world in which there is but one single ‘frst comer’;
there is always a third party in the world: he or she is also my other, my
neighbour. Hence, it is important for me to know which of the two takes
precedence … . Must not human beings, who are incomparable, be com-
pared? … Every other is unique [yet] at a certain moment, there is a neces-
sity for a ‘weighing’, a comparison.
(p. 166)
 African, Asian & Palestinian lives matter 163

As we will see later, the ‘third’ also becomes especially important when the
more manifestly political Levinas refers to those who lie beyond his sphere of
responsibility.
A number of criticisms can be made of Levinas’s theorisation and the second
half of the chapter is devoted to the three substantial issues: his perceptions of
the state and social provision; his Eurocentrism and his ethnic nationalism.
However, even at this stage, two preliminary criticisms can be made of these
core philosophical conceptualisations. First, there is a lack of detail in terms
of how the concern for the ‘Other’ might shape one’s behaviour. Following
his death, a small area located within Paris’s left bank was renamed ‘Place
Emmanuel-Levinas’. Every summer, for a number of years, the same homeless
man slept on the pavement adjacent to this location. If Levinas were still alive,
how might he, led by his philosophy relating to responsibility for the ‘Other’,
react to the man? Would he be proactive and approach him to inquire about his
needs and seek to assist him? This question seems fair because a good deal of
Levinas’s work suggests that the presence of the ‘Other’ is interruptive in that it
is they who make the initial approach and overture. However, if the man is not
proactive and fails to approach Levinas, would he fall outside the parameters of
the philosopher’s ethic of responsibility? Such questions seem pertinent because
we fnd little in Levinas’s work illuminating how abstract philosophising might
impact on practical conduct and strategies, in particular situations and instances,
in relation to the ‘Other’. Without seeking a reductive blueprint or series of arid
examples, is there not a need for a little more guidance if, as his social work
promoters assert, Levinas is to be of relevance? Moreover, what form of collec-
tive social organisation and political structures should this ethic produce and
nurture? Who judges and assesses if ethical responsibility has been adequately
discharged, I or ‘Other’? On account of gaps in exposition, a harsh critic might
conclude that Levinas’s perspective can, in fact, appear merely whimsical and
banally platitudinous.
Second, the encounter with the ‘Other’ seems to occur in a de-materialised
or empty space, cut free from historical, economic and sociological moorings.
Levinas furnishes no overarching context for the encounter with the ‘Other’
appearing to imply that interactions transcend the historic, social and economic
situations in which they occur. Moreover, returning to the Rossiter quote men-
tioned previously, can any human encounter be truly free from categorisation
and ‘habitual or learned ways of perceiving others’? Perhaps to assume so risks
being perceived as philosophically and politically naïve because what Rancière
calls ‘police orders’ and institutional ways of seeing and perceiving inescapably
impinge on and help shape individual responses (see also Chapter 5).

Levinas and the state: Politics, charity and welfare

Who the prime ‘Other’ is is not always readily and immediately discernible in a
world where there are multiple and conficting demands and desires. Hence, the
164 African, Asian & Palestinian lives matter

state can help the ethical actor in arriving at an appropriate assessment or judge-
ment as to where responsibility should lie. For example, if this understanding is
attached to social work with children and families, practitioners are often con-
fronted by a plethora of often competing perspectives on how to resolve a par-
ticular diffculty. Although it does not tidily resolve ethically complex matters,
the state seeks to structure and hierarchise the nature of engagements by laying
down that practitioners should be guided by the understanding that the welfare
of the child is ‘paramount’. If matters are placed before the courts, judges decide
what is in the best interests of the child because the law dictates, in effect, that
the child is the prime fgure, the key ‘Other’. More mundanely, ‘case’ alloca-
tion and ‘case’ weighting systems are administrative devices informed by risk
and rationing discourses, but they can also be interpreted as on-the-spot ethical
exercises partly driven by the need to ascertain who is the prime ‘Other’ from
amongst a cluster of competing claims. As we saw in Chapter 4, however, such
forms of deliberation are presently at risk because the encroachment of algo-
rithms and machine learning risks ‘screening’ out the human and deliberative
dimensions.
However, the problem with Levinas’s understanding, as it relates to such ques-
tions, is that he offers us a very thin, ahistorical understanding of the state and
state practices. In short, the state is not merely a technical and neutral apparatus
which becomes operative to simply resolve ethical quandaries. Rather its form
and its governing imperatives are attributable to the historical context in which
it is located and the interests which it serves (Bourdieu, 2014). In the current
period, for example, states in most parts of the world act as mechanisms to main-
tain the interests of the ruling class (see also Chapter 2). States and their agents
can also be powerful forces of discrimination which delineate and structure rela-
tionships in relation to a plethora of ‘Others’; for example, determining how
those in the category ‘asylum seekers’ will be responded to and dealt with. Ten
years before the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic and the encouragement that
citizens should wear face masks, the French state, for example, banned the cov-
ering of the face in public space. This legislation specifcally restricted, as it was
intended to, the cultural and religious choices of some female followers of Islam
(Mondon, 2015; see also Bullock, 2020; Sealy, 2020).
In order to probe Levinas’s views on the state in more depth, there is a need to
begin to explore the dimension entirely omitted by his supporters within social
work – his politics. Unlike a number of philosophers located in France in the
post-war period, Levinas ‘abjured revolutionary activism’ (Hutchens, 2004: 2).
For example, Rancière and Badiou, both recently beginning to feature within
social work’s academic literature, were involved in the events of 1968 and con-
tinue to be theoretically and politically inspired by the ‘spirit’ of those times (see
also Chapter 5). Levinas, in contrast, kept his distance from the upheavals of the
period viewing the dissent and activism of students and workers with a certain
conservative contempt. In his early sixties then, and of a somewhat older genera-
tion than those embroiled in the ‘events’ of ’68, he would later refect that this
 African, Asian & Palestinian lives matter 165

time did not provide his ‘happiest memories’ and he was especially concerned
that French universities, ‘institutions with a great and sacred, even consecrated
steadiness’, came under attack (p. 196). Sounding a little like Hannah Arendt
at her mostly emphatically patrician, he contends that the movement seeking
to destabilise the elitism in these institutions ‘seemed rather ordinary … [with]
not much nobility or great ideas’ (p. 196). The ‘young people who had devoted
themselves to all sorts of amusements and disorders went at the end of the day
to visit the striking workers at Renault as though they were going to prayer’
(p. 225). Leaving aside, for the moment, his Zionism, it appears that Levinas’s
political ideas coalesce around two interrelated themes: opposition to Marxism
and the belief, in keeping with the neoliberal thinking emerging in the fnal two
decades of his life, that there should be minimal state provision with, implicitly,
more reliance on charitable aid by those in need.
Writing in the 1930s, Levinas asserts that Marxism stands ‘in opposition
to European culture’ and ruptures the ‘harmonious curve of its development’
(Levinas and Hand, 1990: 67). Elsewhere, he argues that the Marxism which
transmogrifed into Stalinism was the ‘greatest offense to the cause of humanity,
for Marxism carried a hope for humanity; this was perhaps one of the greatest
psychological shocks of the twentieth century’ (p. 217). His dominant tendency,
however, is to crudely equate Marxism with Stalinism and the degenerated
workers’ states of Eastern Europe that imploded before his death (p. 81). Levinas
draws on Vasily Grossman’s novel Life and Fate (Grossman, 2011 [1985]), to com-
ment on the problems which result, for him, if the state – any state – intervenes
in the ‘lifeworld’ (Hayes and Houston, 2007). That is to say, he shares what he
views as Grossman’s understanding that the

little act of goodness (la petite bonté) from one person to his neighbour is lost
and deformed as soon as it seeks organisation and universality and system,
as soon as it opts for doctrine, a treatise of politics and theology, a party, a
state, and even a church.
(pp. 206–7)

Stalinism, he remarks oddly, ‘starts out with excellent intentions and drowns
itself in administration … the violence of administration’ (p. 51). This dynamic
results, therefore, in his being ‘very cautious about ideological socialism’ (p.
136). When an interviewer suggests that the ‘rule of money and the extension
of business values’ might serve to contaminate the relationship with the ‘Other’,
Levinas merely retorts that there is an ‘ethical signifcance to money and … it
can contribute to a humanisation of the world’ (p. 184). Although, he is far from
enthusiastic, his preferred form of society appears to be a capitalist ‘liberal soci-
ety’ of that typed rhetorically aspired to those opposing ‘totalitarianism’ during
the period of the Cold War (p. 185).
Levinas ‘recognizes the necessity of the state’ but his ‘endorsement is hardly
wholehearted’ (Alford, 2014: 260). In terms of social policy, it often seems that
166 African, Asian & Palestinian lives matter

his predilection is for ‘charity’ rather than a ‘welfare state’. Chronologically,

charity precedes the state:

Charity is a Christian term, but is also a general biblical term: the word
hesed signifes precisely charity or mercy. There is this appeal to mercy
behind justice: this is how the necessity of the State is not able to exclude
charity.
(p. 69)

For Levinas, individual charity promotes a superior form of human interaction

which is better than any generated by the social democratic state in the form of
social or welfare provision. The latter is, therefore, a ‘supplement’ to forms of
engagement sparked by acts of ‘interpersonal responsibility’ (p. 67). This form
of reasoning appears, in fact, to echo that of the German ordoliberals who, as we
saw in Chapter 3, attempted to defne limits for the role of the state in the period
following the Second World War Two. We can also see how, with Levinas, the
‘Other’ who is the recipient of charity is frequently and retrogressively depicted
as a desolate, needy and abject fgure and, in this context, he often refers to,
archetypal fgures, such as the ‘widow, the orphan, the stranger and the beggar’,
featured in charity discourses over centuries (Levinas in Hand, 1989: 251). What
tends to be entirely absent in his evocation is the ‘Other’ who expresses dissent,
resistance and insubordination. The ‘Other’ always seems, in fact, to be passive
and pitiful, bereft, lacking rights and entitlements.

Dancing beyond Europe: Eurocentrism

For those committed to DSW, anti-racist, de-colonialising forms of education
and practice are vital and a disturbing aspect of Levinas’s thinking emerges when
we interrogate his perceptions on what lies beyond Europe. Indeed, here we dis-
cover a philosophy tainted by a racist condescension which radically undermines
the case of his social work champions. ‘European man’ is central to the philoso-
phy of Levinas and he speaks plainly on this point. Hinting that his comments
may appear somewhat provocative, he states:

I don’t know if it is very popular to say this, but for me European man is
central, in spite of everything that has happened to us during this century
… man is Europe and the Bible, and all the rest can be translated from
there.
(pp. 64–5)

Animated by the ‘European spirit’, he has ‘no nostalgia for the exotic’ (p. 112; p.
137). ‘Europe’ is the world because when ‘I speak about Europe, I speak about
the gathering of humanity. Only in the European sense can the world be gath-
ered together’ (p. 138). Such opinions were far from hidden and reappear in
 African, Asian & Palestinian lives matter 167

countless articles and interviews. The idea that he is confding something slightly
outrageous is also a constant tactic and mode of presenting his ideas; he is not
being racist, he implies, but merely chipping away at ‘political correctness’ and
voicing what we all think, but fear to say. In an interview in 1989, for example,
he returns to the theme: ‘I always say – but under my breath – that the Bible and
the Greeks present the only serious issues in human life; everything else is danc-
ing. I think the texts are open to the whole world. There is no racism intended’
(p. 149).
As McGettigan (2006: 23) charges, Levinas’s philosophy ‘evinces the easy,
armchair belief in superiority which is constitutive of prejudice and discrimina-
tion’. More emphatically, his perceptions are not only racist but also extraordi-
narily ill-informed. He confdes to an interviewer, in 1989, that television ‘shows
the horrible things occurring in South Africa [where] they bury people [and]
they dance. Have you seen this? That is really some way to express mourning’ (p.
149). Here, he seems to be wilfully ignorant about the funeral practices of Black
people in South Africa; more specifcally, those funerals taking place during
the period of the township revolts and the ‘state of emergency’ (1988–89) insti-
tuted by the apartheid regime. Then, funerals became communal demonstra-
tions expressing joyful defance, anguished resistance and affrmations that the
struggle would continue. More fundamentally, Levinas’s patronising comments
imply that Africans lack ‘spiritual seriousness’ and are ‘superfcial and frivolous’
(Ma, 2008: 606). Such remarks can, moreover, be situated alongside historically
embedded and colonialist mind-sets rendering those beyond Europe, in ‘darkest
Africa’ (Taylor, 1970), as puzzlingly childlike.
Levinas’s comments on Third World liberation movements are similarly
muddled and troubling. Europe, he advises, ‘alongside its numerous atroci-
ties, invented the idea of “de-Europeanization” and this represents a victory of
European generosity’ (p. 164). Such a perception fails to recognise and acknowl-
edge indigenous anti-colonial struggles conducted in African countries, such
as Algeria, and the lengths to which European powers – such as France – went
to retain and hold onto these insurgent territories. Indeed, we will explore this
topic in greater detail in our next chapter examining Frantz Fanon.
Levinas issues a call for Judaism and Christianity to unite and to forge a united
bloc to combat the threats, as he perceives it, posed by the encroachment of
Asia. In a piece, initially published in the late 1960s, he asserts that ‘Judaism and
Christianity are part of the same drama, and not different enough to challenge
one another’ (Levinas, 1999: 86). Hence, it was vital that minor differences are
set aside:

I am not thinking exclusively of our kinship in the face of Nazism. But

behold, upon the world’s stage, innumerable masses advancing out of Asia.
In the eyes of these crowds who do not take sacred history as their frame of
reference, are we Jews and Christians anything but sects quarrelling over
the meaning of a few obscure texts? Through the two billion eyes that
168 African, Asian & Palestinian lives matter

watch us, History itself stares us down, shredding our subjective certain-
ties, uniting us in one common destiny, inviting us to show ourselves able
to measure up to that human wave, inviting us to bring it something other
than distinctions and anathema.
(Levinas, 1999: 83)

As Caygill (2002: 183) observes, this ‘violent dehumanising of the peoples of Asia
is as striking’ as Levinas’s ‘devaluation of the non-European other’. However,
similar thematic preoccupations are prominent throughout the philosopher’s life.
In ‘Jewish Thought Today’, initially published in 1961, he warns against:

the rise of countless masses of Asiatic and underdeveloped peoples … peo-

ples and civilisations who no longer refer to our holy history, for whom
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob no longer mean anything … . But under the
greedy eyes of these countless hordes who wish to hope and live, we, the
Jews and Christians, are pushed to the margins of history, and soon no one
will bother any more to differentiate between a Catholic and Protestant or
a Jew and a Christian.
(Levinas, 1990: 165)

The previous year, with Europe still deep in the Cold War, Levinas’s infamous
‘The Russo-Chinese Debate and the Dialectic’ was published. The historical
context for the piece was the tensions within Soviet/Chinese relations and he
appeals to ‘Russia’ to recognise that its cultural affnity and history belongs to
Western civilisation and it should not, therefore, ‘drown itself in an Asiatic civi-
lisation’ (in Caygill, 2002: 184). Levinas elaborates

The yellow peril! It is not racial, it is spiritual. It does not involve inferior
values; it involves radical strangeness, a stranger to the weight of the past,
from where there does not flter any familiar voice or infection, a lunar
or Martian past.
(in Caygill, 2002: 184)

This article must rank as Levinas’s ‘ugliest and most disturbing published work’
(Caygill, 2002: 183; see also Caygill, 2000). Within this formulation, Asians
(‘the yellow peril’) are entirely drained of humanity and depicted as so different
that they may as well be located on the moon or another planet. Clearly, it is dif-
fcult to perceive remarks such as this as anything other than racist, even if these
facets of Levinas are entirely erased in contributions that celebrate Levinas and
unconvincingly point, as we saw earlier, to the signifcance of the philosopher
for ‘critical social work’. Moreover, his position seems, in reality, to pivot on a
refusal to engage with alterity and to welcome the ‘Other’. A similar narrowing
becomes apparent, if we view Levinas’s philosophy in the context of his ethnic
nationalism.
 African, Asian & Palestinian lives matter 169

The ‘noble adventure’: Ethnic nationalism

Levinas refers to the ‘chosenness of the Jewish people’, even if he does not regard
this status as being associated with a ‘pretention of aristocracy’ and the ‘right to
privileges’ (p. 65). Rather, being Jewish brings with it a ‘surfeit of obligations’ (p.
65). Jewish identity is the ‘stiff neck that supports the universe’ (Levinas in Hand,
1989: 264). According to Žižek (2006), such comments illuminate the fact the
Levinas’s entire philosophy might be read as a discourse on the ‘Jewish man’s
(ethical) burden’. However, everyone, for Levinas, is also a ‘little bit Jewish’ (p.
164). This latter comment might be regarded as wryly amusing, yet it could also
be interpreted as seeking to universalise Judaism; an expansionist and colonising
move which might be objected to by those professing another religious faith or
none. In a similar discursive move, he attempts to universalise the Israeli experi-
ence given that all ‘men [sic] are of Israel’ and are ‘all Israeli Jews’ (in Caygill,
2002: 164).
In political terms, Levinas is an ‘avowed Zionist’ and his unqualifed support
for the state of Israel is a crucial aspect of his philosophy and world view (Caro,
2009: 672). Although he asserts that he ‘personally never leaned toward an active
Zionism’ (p. 197), its ideological centrality functions to substantially qualify,
diminish and even entirely eradicate the, seemingly, more pluralistic aspects of
his ethical philosophy. In short, those opposing the colonising practices of the
state of Israel or who occupied the land prior to the arrival of waves of Jewish
immigration – namely the Palestinians – are not accorded the ethical treat-
ment he promotes elsewhere in his work. Hence, Levinas’s ethnic nationalism,
along with, as we have seen, his manifest Eurocentrism and racism unequivo-
cally undermines his utility for DSW. In making this claim, drawing on a more
encompassing and critical literature, we need to explore Levinas’s Zionism in a
little more detail.
According to Levinas (1994: xvi), a ‘millennial history of outrages and tears,
of permanent insecurity and of the shedding of real, warm blood furnishes the
concrete cause and real raison d’être of Zionism’. Moreover, the ‘Zionist idea’ is a

way of putting an end to the arbitrariness which marked the Jewish condi-
tion, and to all the spilt blood which for centuries has fowed with impu-
nity across the world. This solution can be summed up as the existence,
in conditions which are not purely abstract, that is not just anywhere, of
a political unity with a Jewish majority. For me, this is the essence of
Zionism.
(Levinas in Hand, 1989: 292)

An alternative reading is that Zionism is a form of ‘theological-colonial national-

ism’ (Piterberg, 2008: 30). It also produces and generates an ‘uncompromisingly
exclusionary, discriminatory colonial praxis’ (Said, 1979: 23). Edward Said (1979:
11) maintains the ‘entire historical duration of a Jewish state in Palestine prior to
170 African, Asian & Palestinian lives matter

1948 was a sixty-year period two millennia ago’ (Said, 1979: 11). Nevertheless,
the Zionist project is rooted in the focal idea that Jews should ‘return’ to the
lands of Eretz Yisrael. Importantly, in the context of our earlier critical discussion
on the Eurocentrism of Levinas, this project can be interpreted as one seeking
to occupy and Europeanise what is often strategically presented as an ‘empty’
desert wilderness: a ‘barren wasteland, peopled only by the occasional goatherd’
(Retort, 2005: 120). Within this hegemonic narrative, the native inhabitants are
‘believed curiously to be out of touch with history’ and ‘not really present’ (Said,
1979: 31). Historically, therefore, all the ‘constitutive energies of Zionism were
premised on the excluded presence; institutions were built shutting out natives,
laws were drafted when Israel came into being that made sure that natives would
remain in their “non-place”, Jews in theirs, and so on’ (Said, 1979: 29). Relating
this understanding to our exploration of Rancière earlier, the state of Israel might
be theoretically perceived as constituted, maintained and expanded as an ethnic-
nationalist ‘police order’ (see also Chapter 5).
For Jews, the ‘return to the land of our forefathers marks one of the greatest
events of internal history and, indeed, all History’ (Levinas in Hand, 1989: 227).
However, what of the inhabitants of the ‘land’? From the frst wave of Jewish
immigration, in the 1880s, into the territory which was then part of the Turkish
Ottoman Empire, a marginal strand of Zionist commentary was attentive to the
problems which the usurpation of the land would cause its inhabitants (Dowty,
2000; 2001). Such concerns precede the period of the British Mandate, from
the 1920s, and the inauguration of the state of Israel in May 1948. In 1907, for
example, Yitzhak Epstein, charged that the Jewish settlers ‘discuss and debate
everything … but we forget one small detail: that there is in our beloved land an
entire people that has been attached to it for hundreds of years and has never con-
sidered leaving it’ (in Dowty, 2001: 40). Almost 100 years later, the Hollywood
movie star Seth Rogan prompted consternation in some Zionist quarters when,
in reviewing his own formation, he commented on how he had been misled: as a

Jewish person, I was fed a huge amount of lies about Israel my entire life.
They never tell you that oh by the way, there were people there. They
make it seem like it was just sitting there – oh, the fucking door’s open!
(Thier, 2020)

Given the emphasis on the uniqueness of each settler nation and the privileg-
ing of the intentions and consciousness of settlers as sovereign subjects, Gabriel
Piterberg (2008) also articulates how Zionist narratives share core characteris-
tics with other colonising narratives. This becomes evident if we look at set-
tler accounts in the United States, South Africa, Algeria, Australia, Ireland and
Brazil. In short, the Zionist account, despite its undoubted potency and assertion
of uniqueness, is merely a ‘particular case of the general depiction’ (Piterberg,
2008: 62). Relatedly, Said (1979: 21) charts and tracks how historically ‘Zionism
 African, Asian & Palestinian lives matter 171

was legitimated’ and ‘valorised by gentile European thought’. What is more,

for many European public intellectuals supporting the Zionist aspirations, in
the late nineteenth century, the fate of the living, native inhabitants of the land
was a mere ‘troublesome detail’ (Said, 1979: 21). Hence, it is possible to identify
an ‘unmistakeable coincidence between the experiences of Arab Palestinians at
the hands of Zionism’ and the experiences of other colonised people who were
‘described as inferior and sub-human’ by nineteenth-century imperialists and,
indeed, as we have seen, by Levinas (Said, 1979: 22). A depiction of the contem-
porary Arab population as unambiguously ‘pre-modern’ and inferior to Israeli
modernity also continues to leak into social work’s academic literature (see, for
example, Zoabi and Savaya, 2012).
From the mid-thirties onwards, Zionism ‘tacitly presumed clearance of Arabs
from its chosen terrain by forcible eviction, since their presence was incompat-
ible with the homogeneous national state at which it aimed’ (Anderson, 2001:
11) Furthermore, Zionist ‘objectives’ were laid down ‘well before Hitler came to
power, and were not altered by him’ (Anderson, 2001: 12–13). As mentioned in
the previous chapter, Hannah Arendt was critical of core aspects of the Zionist
project, as were a number of other prominent Jewish intellectuals of her genera-
tion – including Albert Einstein, Martin Buber and Judah Leon Magnes (see also
Chapter 7).
For the Palestinians, the creation of the state of Israel was the Nakbah or
catastrophe. During two waves of fghting between November 1947 and March
1949, over half the Arab population, some 700,000 people, were driven out of
Palestine (Anderson, 2001). This has been described by the Israeli scholar Benny
Morris (2004) as a project intent on deliberate ethnic cleansing. In early 1947,
Jews owned 7 percent of the land of Palestine, but by the end of 1950, they had
appropriated 92 percent of land within the new state. A ‘rump of 160,000 Arabs
were left, as internal refugees within Israel’ (Anderson, 2001: 12). Anderson
(2001: 13–14) concludes

Israel became a republic based on blood and faith – confessional and bio-
logical criteria combining to defne actual or potential citizens in full right
as those individuals either born of a Jewish mother, or of attested Mosaic
persuasion, regardless of geographical location. The Law of Return guar-
anteed residence in Israel to anyone complying with these theologico-eth-
nic requirements, while any return of Palestinian refugees to their homes
was blocked.

Early in our present century, almost 20 percent of the Jewish population in Israel
traced its roots to the massive infux of immigrants from the former Soviet Union
after 1990 (Falah, 2005).
In a number of respects, albeit partly attributable to massive U.S. fnancial,
diplomatic and military support, the Zionist state has achieved remarkable
172 African, Asian & Palestinian lives matter

successes. However, the consequences for its victims were, and remain, pro-
foundly adverse (Said, 1979). In the various territories it controls

it has established a form of apartheid … whose condition of existence is the

confnement of the populations under its domination, control over their
material resources and the gradual destruction of their health and educa-
tional institutions, murderous violence against even non-violent resistance
activity and their autonomous political leadership.
(Balibar and Lévy-Leblond, 2006: 3–4)

Nehami Baum (2007: 876) painstakingly collates and summarises, for a social
work readership, the discrimination encountered by Palestinians in contempo-
rary Israel. In ‘virtually every sphere, Palestinian Israelis are a badly discrimi-
nated against group, on both the individual and community levels’. Hence, school
provision for Palestinian children is more crowded than that for their Jewish
counterparts and expenditure per pupil is markedly lower. Unemployment and
poverty rates are also higher, wages are lower for Palestinians and health, social
and welfare services are sparser. It is important for DSW to highlight such fnd-
ings; perhaps particularly given the BLM demonstrations globally re-energised
struggles for social justice in the summer of 2020 (Abunimah, 2020). Indeed, a
few days after the killing of George Floyd, although not garnering such global
attention, much smaller demonstrations resulted after the Israeli occupation
forces killed Iyad el-Hallak who worked in and attended a special needs school
in Jerusalem.
As Angela Davis succinctly observes, Palestine is ‘the South Africa of our con-
temporary period’ (in Davis et al., 2019). Moreover, in the context of the inter-
national turmoil prompted by the global pandemic and the ‘cover’ it provides,
Israel is – at the time of writing – committed to unlawfully annexing substantial
parts of the Occupied Territory. Entirely at odds with international law, but sup-
ported by the U.S. government, it aims to extend its sovereignty over most of
the Jordan Valley and all of the more than 235 illegal Israeli settlements in the
West Bank. This would amount to approximately 30 percent of the West Bank.
What would be left of the ‘West Bank would be a Palestinian Bantustan, islands
of disconnected land completely surrounded by Israel and with no territorial
connection to the outside world’ (United Nations Human Rights Offce of the
High Commissioner, 2020).

Defending Israel, diminishing Palestinians

Caro (2009: 673) refers to Levinas’s ‘steadfast exoneration’ of the state of Israel
and his ‘strategic “silences” and circumlocutions on Israeli policies’. Only on a
handful of occasions does Levinas raise concerns, yet these are not in relation to
the state’s treatment of its non-Jewish ‘Others’ either inside Israel or within the
Occupied Territories. Rather, he is fearful about the ‘temptation of assimilation’
 African, Asian & Palestinian lives matter 173

facing Jews in Israel along with the fact that Israeli society risks having its cultural
distinctiveness eroded by consumerism (Levinas in Hand, 1989: 287). Appearing
to harbour a nostalgia for the pioneer stage of settlement and usurpation, Levinas
bemoans, with a certain misogynistic and elitist tinge, the fact that the Zionist
‘dream’ is becoming jaded and ‘substituted by the seduction of tourism’ with
glossy brochures feeding their ‘readers an implausible and invariable visual diet
of athletic young girls striding joyfully towards the sun’ (Levinas, 1990: 222).
This criticism is pointedly attuned to the propagandistic ‘pastiche of image-ele-
ments assembled by the Israeli state apparatus … aimed directly at the post-war
west’ (Retort, 2005: 120). However, what is strikingly absent is any criticism, by
Levinas, of the role of the Israeli state in colonising and dominating Palestinians
and other Arabs.
Indeed, Levinas appears entirely unable and unwilling to condemn the vio-
lence of the Israeli state. He argues, for example, that Israel was ‘forced to win’ the
Six-Day War in June 1967 (Levinas, 1994: 3). During this ‘pre-emptive six-day
blitz’, Israel obliterated the Egyptian air-force, seized Sinai and the Golan heights,
annexed East Jerusalem and occupied the West Bank and Gaza (Anderson, 2001:
16). Immediately after the 1967 war, the military ‘imposed curfews, deported
leaders, demolished homes, carried out arrests, tortured detainees and restricted
movement’ (Gordon, 2008: 32). Levinas, however, dismissively and blandly
refers to the ‘painful necessities’ of the occupation (Levinas in Hand, 1989: 276).
Such ‘necessities’, condemned by the international community, resulted in forced
displacements and the setting up of new illegal settlements. These developments
have been analysed and theorised by powerful internal critics of Israel, such as
Neve Gordon, a former Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) paratrooper and Professor
of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Gordon,
2008). The aim of the state, both inside of Israel and in the Occupied Territories,
is to ‘dismember the space of the remaining Palestinian population’ (Falah, 2005:
1343). Such an unrelenting strategy, materially and symbolically represented by
the construction of the 440-mile ‘security fence’ begun in 2001, pivots on the
military aspiration to confne the Palestinian population to non-contiguous
‘enclaves’ (Falah, 2005: 1345). At the same time, Palestinians are endowed with
‘at best to a kind of “mock” sovereignty over an archipelago of truncated spaces’
(Falah, 2005: 1351). A policy which resembles how the United States acquired
territory ‘across the expanse of North America, as indigenous populations were
surrounded, boxed in and suffocated and subjugated’ (Falah, 2005: 1345).
For Levinas, now paradoxically being deployed as a valuable resource for ‘crit-
ical social work’ (Rossiter, 2011: 993) and the provider of a template for ‘working
across differences’ (Ben-Ari and Strier, 2010: 2159), the oppressive practices of
the state of Israel, rooted in Zionist aspirations, cannot, it would seem, be sub-
ject to criticism. As for Levinas himself, anti-Semitism simply continues ‘in the
form of anti-Zionism’ (Levinas, 1994: 6). During the Cold War, in chiding the
countries of the Eastern Bloc for being critical of Israel at the UN, he attributes
their criticism to the anti-Semitism which ‘sixty years of applied Marxism’ had
174 African, Asian & Palestinian lives matter

‘not uprooted from the Slavic soul’. Even worse, gullible ‘Third World’ UN
delegates are entirely misguided and share the same anti-Semitic perceptions
(Levinas, 1994: 191).
Clearly, anti-Semitism has to be rooted out and extinguished wherever it
occurs, but this intellectually lazy, but strategic confation of anti-Zionism
and anti-Semitism binds two, possibly overlapping, but distinctive phenomena
(Said, 1979; Caygill, 2002: Ch. 5). Levinas (and others aiming to perform this
manoeuvre) knowingly and mischievously seek to erase from history the notable
opponents of Zionism located within Judaism (Piterberg, 2007). Simply equat-
ing anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism also risks equating Jewish and Israeli iden-
tity and deleting the

experience of non-Jewish Israelis – who historically have constituted

between 12 and 20 per cent of the population of the State of Israel – as well
as that of Jews who are not citizens of Israel, over two-thirds of the world’s
Jewish population.
(Caygill, 2002: 174)

Christians and Muslims located within Israel are similarly absent in Levinas’s
discussion on the state of Israel and Israeli identity (Caygill, 2002: 211).
According to Levinas, the ‘thing that is special about the state of Israel’ is
that it ‘offers the opportunity to carry out the social law of Judaism’ (Levinas in
Hands, 1989: 261). This understanding would seem to have discriminatory and
adverse consequences for those residing in the state having no religious or cul-
tural attachment to Judaism. However, Levinas (1994: xvii) is adamant on this
point and stresses that the ‘fundamental’ and ‘inalienable idea of Zionism is the
necessity for the Jewish people’ not to be a ‘minority in its political structure’.
An anti-democratic perspective which can be interpreted as a recurring call for
a form of state in which one ethnic-cultural group – that of the colonising or
settler community – must retain numerical, political and cultural supremacy.

Eliminating the Palestinian ‘Other’ in three moves:

the land was ‘empty’, it was populated by so-called
‘Palestinians’, they are implicated in the Holocaust
In contrast with liberal colonisers, such as Yitzhak Epstein, Levinas’s frst move
adheres to a pervasive colonist trope, mentioned earlier, that the ‘land’ occupied
by Jewish settlers was ‘empty’. This notion is summed up in the maxim – and
myth – of Israel Zangwill (1864 –1926), a British author and prominent force
within cultural Zionism: a ‘land without a people for a people without a land’ (in
Dowty, 2012: 42). Another pervasive and related assertion is that the ‘land’ was
left ‘arid’ partly because of the incompetence and indolence of the native inhab-
itants. As Said (1979: 27) observes, in his exploration of Zionism’s ‘victims’, a
‘civilized man’ could ‘cultivate the land because it meant something to him … he
 African, Asian & Palestinian lives matter 175

accomplished, he built. For an uncivilized people, land was either farmed badly
(i.e. ineffciently by Western standards) or it was left to rot’. Levinas (1994: 188)
echoes this perspective in his assertion that the state of Israel was inaugurated on
a mere ‘piece of arid land’ that was only able to fourish and bloom because of the
energy and tenacity of the settlers.
A second move Levinas (1994: 188) makes aims to erode the status and iden-
tity of the indigenous dwellers on the ‘land’ in that the ‘Palestinians’ become
merely those who ‘call themselves Palestinians’. Moreover, their being driven
from the land is not so truly catastrophic because they are ‘surrounded on all
parts and over vast expanses by the great Arab people of which they are a part’
(Levinas, 1994: 188). In reality, simply ‘Arabs’, the identifcation ‘Palestinian’
becomes merely a peculiar or ‘idiosyncratic designation’ (Caro, 2009: 678).
Levinas’s ploy replicates that of Golda Meir (1898–1978), the former prime min-
ister of Israel, who was similarly keen to assert that the ‘Palestinians don’t exist’.
A later prime minister, General Yitzhak Rabin (1922–1995), assassinated by a
right-wing Orthodox Jew, also preferred the formulation ‘so-called Palestinians’
(in Said, 1979: 14).
A third tactic deployed by Levinas implies, albeit as an act of abstract philo-
sophical speculation, that the Palestinians are partly responsible for the Shoah or
Holocaust. His rhetorical hinge for planting this thought is Dostoevsky: ‘We are
all guilty in everything in respect of all others, and I more than all the others’
(p. 133). Aiming to ease Arabs into the frame of complicity, Levinas concedes
that ‘it is the West, not the Arab world, which bears responsibility for Auschwitz.
Unless one accepts that the responsibility of men cannot be divided and that
all men are responsible for all others’ (Levinas, 1994: xvi, emphasis added).
More pointedly: ‘Can anyone amongst mankind wash his hands of all this fesh
gone up in smoke?’ (Levinas, 1994: xvi). This would seem to suggest that this
‘Arab world’ shared something of a global and universal ‘responsibility’ for the
Holocaust despite, historically, Jewish minorities generally faring better ‘among
Arab populations than in most European states’ (Dowty, 2012: 3).
Although some commentators detect a more complex orientation (Caygill,
2001, Loumanksky, 2005), Levinas appears to afford total and unequivocal sup-
port to the state of Israel and its pursuance of ‘its noble adventure’, despite it
being at the cost of Palestinians and often in defance of international law (p.
82). In 1968, he triumphantly proclaims that Israel is a ‘great modern State’ and
that it ‘serves humanity’ (Levinas, 1990: 264). Although a heavily militarised
nuclear-armed state, it remains the ‘most fragile, the most vulnerable thing in
the world’ (Levinas, 1994: 193). Writing in 1979, he argues that the ‘struggle
for the state of Israel’ ‘would always be ‘the struggle of the Warsaw ghetto up
in arms but with no ground to which one can withdraw’ (Levinas, 1994: 194).
Once again, Levinas is simply articulating how defenders of the most troubling
actions of Israel tend to respond to criticism, with every confict – be it with
neighbours, with insurgents within its own borders or with those situated in the
illegally Occupied Territories – presented as a matter of ‘life and death’. Hence,
176 African, Asian & Palestinian lives matter

the gradual instrumentalisation of the ‘memory of the Shoah’ is ‘used to cement

national unity, to silence criticisms from Jewish communities all over the world,
and to claim to have special rights in international relations’ (Balibar and Lévy-
Leblond, 2006: 3).

Ethics v ethnic nationalism

Clearly, the question needing to be posed is, how can Levinas justify all of this?
Just how comfortably does his unbridled ethnic-nationalist attachment to the
state of Israel sit alongside his ethical philosophy? Framed in more Levinasian
terms, if his uniqueness lies in the responsibility he displays for the ‘Other’ and
he cannot fail in his duty towards him [sic], how can he so manifestly fail to
meaningfully recognise and benignly respond to the Palestinian and, as we saw
earlier, the African and the Asian? Levinas is able to conjure his escape from
this philosophical predicament by emphasising the need to balance competing
claims and here the ‘third’, referred to earlier in the chapter, fulfls a strategically
important function in that it provides Levinas with the conceptual wriggle room
to erase any responsibility towards those not categorised as the prime ‘Other’.
Engaging with the ‘Other’, accepting responsibility and nurturing ‘holiness’ is
only ever ‘a possibility’ (p. 55, emphasis added). Indeed, assessing who one is pri-
marily responsible for enables Levinas to gauge who are enemies and here the
key questions to be ‘carefully’ investigated are ‘Who is closest to me? Who is the
Other?’ (Levinas in Hand, 1989: 247).
Levinas maintains it

should not be forgotten that my family and my people, despite their pos-
sessive pronouns, are my ‘others’, like strangers, and demand justice and
protection. The love of the other – the love of one’s neighbour. Those
nearest to me are also my neighbours.
(Levinas, 1994: xvii, original emphases)

He who threatens ‘those nearest’ – and here Levinas refers to the fgure of
the ‘executioner’ – no longer has a face’ (p. 167, emphasis added). According to
Campbell (1999: 39), Levinas’s ‘notion of the Other is restricted to the neighbour
in such a way as to keep the Palestinian out of the reach of those to whom the “I”
is responsible’. Indeed, the slippage from ‘neighbour to enemy brings particular
advantages to the Levinasian. All that I owed to another as the neighbour I no
longer owe to him as the enemy. A terrible ethical weight is thereby lifted off
one’s shoulders’ (Caro, 2009: 675).
How this framing works is typifed by an infamous radio interview given
by Levinas in September 1982. The context for the exchange was the occu-
pation of West Beirut in Lebanon, that same month, by the Israel Defense
Forces (IDF). The invasion was ‘supposedly made to protect the Muslims from
the revenge of the Phalangists’ following the assassination of the President of
 African, Asian & Palestinian lives matter 177

Lebanon. However, the IDF introduced Phalangists [essentially right-wing mili-

tia steeped in fascism] into the Palestinian camps with the intention of ‘clearing
out suspected Fedayeen, or Arab infltrators, who were carrying out hit-and-run
raids inside of Israel’ (Hand, 1989: 289). Under the glare of IDF foodlights, the
Phalangists went on to massacre between 700 and 3,500 civilians in the refugee
camps of Sabra and Chatila (Stone, 2001). Subsequently, an Israeli commission
of inquiry ruled that the state was complicit in a ‘war crime’ and recommended
the removal of the Minister for Defence along with senior offcers. However,
asked to comment if Israel shared responsibility for the killings, Levinas blandly
responded that the atrocity was ‘Everyone’s responsibility’ (Levinas in Hand,
1989: 293). However, he also elaborated on this comment in the context of his
overarching philosophical perspective:

My self, I repeat, is never absolved from responsibility towards the Other.

But I think we should also say that all those who attack us with such
venom have no right to do so, and that consequently, along with this feel-
ing of unbounded responsibility, there is a certain place for defence, for it
is not always a question of ‘me’, but of those close to me, who are also my
neighbours. I’d call such a defence a politics, but a politics that’s ethically
necessary.
(Levinas in Hand, 1989: 191–2)

Pushed further by his interviewer, Levinas baldly asserted, ‘When you defend
the Jewish people, you defend your neighbour’ (Levinas in Hand, 1989: 292).
This prompted the interviewer to press further and to pose the rather obvious,
but still vital, question: ‘you are the philosopher of the “Other”, isn’t history,
isn’t politics the very site of the encounter with the “Other”, and for the Israeli,
isn’t the “Other” above all the Palestinian?’. Levinas provided a ‘chilling’ reply
(Caygill, 2002: 192):

My defnition of the other is completely different. The other is the neigh-

bour, who is not necessarily kin, but who can be. And in that sense, if
you’re for the other, you’re for the neighbour. But if your neighbour attacks
another neighbour or treats him unjustly, what can I do? Then alterity
takes on another character, in alterity we can fnd an enemy, or at least then
we are faced with the problem of knowing who is right and who is wrong,
who is just and who is unjust. There are people who are wrong.
(Levinas in Hand, 1989: 294, emphases added)

What appears clear, therefore, is that Levinas is fundamentally a committed

ethnic nationalist and he is merely seeking to politically further ‘partisan aims
instead of the obligations inescapably owed to the Other’ (Caro, 2009: 678).
However, it might also be suggested that his philosophical edifce is actually
constructed in a way that essentially provides him with a way to better identify
178 African, Asian & Palestinian lives matter

the ‘enemy’. Moreover, for Levinas the category of ‘enemy’ is constituted by

Palestinians and other Arabs, Africans and Asians.

Conclusion
Having initially drawn attention to Bauman’s work in illuminating the philoso-
phy of Levinas, the chapter focused on the latter’s conceptual apparatus, pivoting
on responsibility for the ‘Other’ and associated ideas concerning the ‘face’ and
the ‘third’. We then moved on to commenting on Levinas’s problematic percep-
tions of the role of the state as it relates to welfare and social provision. Next,
we unpacked facets of Levinas omitted by those furnishing entirely benign and
airbrushed rendering of him to a social work readership. In this context, we
explored his Eurocentrism and racist contempt for those living beyond European
shores, highlighting how these pernicious views run entirely counter to the
commitments of DSW. It was also maintained that this dimension of Levinas’s
thinking is inseparable from his allegiance to Zionism and willed (mis)recogni-
tion of Palestinians.
Having referred to Eurocentrism and colonialism, in the next chapter we will
examine the contribution of Frantz Fanon who is very much concerned with
combating many of the views that Levinas is so evidently keen to espouse.
 African, Asian & Palestinian lives matter 179

REFLECTION AND TALK BOX 8

What is your opinion of the abstract observations of Levinas on the ‘face’? How
might his writings relate to our current situation relating to ‘online’ working in
social work and elsewhere?

How can we assess the comments of Levinas on the role of the welfare state
and of charity?

Because of his racism, Eurocentrism and ethnic nationalism, is the work of

Levinas redeemable? Can we ‘decolonise’ Levinas?

Why might the supporters of Levinas, within social work, fail to refer to the
toxic elements present in his contributions?

In November 2019, the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW)

(2019) issued the following statement:

Solidarity for human rights and self-determination is at the core of the

social work profession and today IFSW reaffirms its commitment in support
of Palestinian people to live with their full range of rights and freedoms.

Palestinian rights cannot be fulfilled under occupation. The Israeli control of

access to needed medical care, roadways, water, electricity, and the ongo-
ing military presence, the excessive use of force and imprisonment denies
Palestinians lives of dignity and cannot lead to equal rights or peace. The
expansion of illegal settlements and forced evictions and the demolition of
Palestinian homes only fuels further tensions, violence and retaliation.

Successful peace strategies can begin from civil society actions and IFSW
has called for the Israeli Union of Social Workers to recognise the rights of
Palestinians and act as a voice within Israel for human rights. Through the
recognition of all people’s equal rights and commitment to a shared and
peaceful future, civil society organisations can set an example for politicians
and others to follow.

Together, in Israel, Palestine and in every country we must recognise the human-
ity in all people and their rights for self-determination, freedom and peace.

How can we relate this statement to the comments of Levinas? How can we
make connections between the statement and DSW?

Notes
1 Material featured in the chapter is partly derived from previously published articles
and so I am grateful to the Policy Press and SAGE for permitting me to have recourse
to my earlier work (Garrett, 2016b; 2017).
2 Many of Levinas’s views and opinions featured in this chapter are derived from the fasci-
nating and troubling interviews, spanning decades, collected by Robbins (2001). For ease
of reference, only the page numbers are provided when I cite from the Robbins’ volume.
9
IT IS BECOMING ‘IMPOSSIBLE
TO BREATHE’: FRANTZ FANON

Introduction
The psychiatrist, philosopher and public intellectual Frantz Fanon rarely features
in the academic literature of social work, yet his books warrant scrutiny by those
aiming to investigate and support dissenting social work (DSW) (Cummins,
2017; Zeilig, 2017; McKeown and Wainwright, 2019). Unlike a number of
other theorists fnding their way into the profession’s academic literature, Fanon
was not a tenured academic. Involved in the fght against fascism in the Second
World War, he subsequently evolved into an activist and propagandist intent
on defeating colonialism and racism. In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon argues
that, for many Black and colonialised people, it is becoming ‘impossible … to
breathe’ (Fanon, 1986 [1952]: 226). In our contemporary world, the phrase took
on a contemporary and fatal resonance in 2014, when ‘I can’t breathe’ was the
fnal, desperate cry of Eric Garner who, on Staten Island in New York, died
when held fast in a ‘chokehold’ by a police offcer (see also Baker et al., 2020).
Indeed, Fanon’s line of political reasoning and analysis can be directly related
to this event and to the more recent police killing – essentially a slow-motion,
nine-minute, street execution – of George Floyd in Minneapolis and to the
global resurgence of Black Lives Matter (BLM) (BBC News, 2020e). Breonna
Taylor, Tony McDade and Rayshard Brooks are amongst the many others killed
at the hands of the U.S. police. In Europe also, a number of Black people have
suffocated whilst being ‘restrained’ in the custody of the police or related per-
sonnel. These include Semira Adamu in Belgium in 1998, Mitch Henriquez in
the Netherlands and Sheku Bayoh in Scotland in 2015, Adama Traoré in France
in 2016, Rashan Charles in London in 2017 and William Tonou-Mbobda in
Germany in 2019 (O’Leary, 2020). Furthermore, there are many more other
unexplained police custody-related deaths, such as that of Oury Jalloh in
 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’ 181

Germany in 2005 (Bruce-Jones, 2017). Even children from Black and minority
ethnic communities appear to encounter more aggressive forms of police behav-
iour given that, in the United Kingdom, they are three times more likely than
their White peers to have Tasers used on them (Busby, 2020).
Fanon’s contributions prompt us to reconsider the day-to-day discriminatory
dynamics illuminated by contemporary research highlighting the racial (de)val-
uation of Black people within, and in contact with, institutions. The core theme
linking the contemporary BLM and Fanon is the struggle to ensure that the lives
of people who are Black are not cheapened and rendered of less worth than the
lives of others. Indeed, BLM might be interpreted as ‘an anti-eugenics movement’
because the aim is not merely to ‘stop premature deaths that result from police
violence but to foster economic, social and political power and resources that will
sustain Black life more broadly’ (Benjamin, 2019: original emphasis).
More expansively, at our current and volatile conjuncture, a return to Fanon
is timely for, at least, two related reasons. First, Fanon is an exemplary anti-fascist
writer and activist and, even though our world is not his world, we can witness
again the rise of fascism (see also Chapter 1). Second, endeavours to ‘decolonise
the university’, and its various ‘disciplines’, might fruitfully engage with one of
the prime fgures who, after the Second World War, wholly committed himself –
mainly in Algeria, but also across a more wide-ranging geo-political terrain – to
decolonisation struggles (Gray et al., 2013; Bhambra et al., 2018; see also Batty,
2020, Wall, 2020). Crucially, people’s right to self-determination remains as
fundamental as it was in Fanon’s time (de Sousa Santos, 2014). These dimensions
to Fanon are also signifcant for social work in so far as we can relate them to
the defning characteristics of the profession’s explicit commitment to help bring
about the ‘liberation of people’ and to promote ‘social justice’ (International
Federation of Social Workers, 2014).
Fanon was born, in July 1925, into a middle-class family on the island of
Martinique, a French ‘department’ in the eastern Caribbean Sea. In the Second
World War, as mentioned earlier, he enlisted in the Free French Armed Forces
and participated in fghting. Although castigating the racism he encountered in
the army, Fanon was decorated for bravery. In 1946, he enrolled as a psychiatry
student at the University of Lyon’s medical school. Whilst in Lyon, in 1952 he
met and married Marie-Joseph (‘Josie’) Dublé. During the same year, he took up
an internship position at a psychiatric hospital of Saint-Alban under the mentor-
ship of the founding fgure of ‘institutional psychiatry’ (IP), François Tosquelles
(1912–1994) (Menozzi, 2015: 362). In what must have been a tumultuous year,
Black Skin, White Mask was also published. In November 1953 and speaking no
Arabic, he became employed as a psychiatrist at Blida-Joinville in Algeria, a short
distance from Algiers, where he tried to initiate some of Tosquelles’ experiments
in ‘institutional psychotherapy’. Whilst there, Fanon sheltered political dissidents
and provided psychological assistance to both the tortured and the torturers. In
1956, whilst war raged, he resigned his clinical post because it was ‘ethically as
well as practically untenable to continue’ given the ‘brutal, “dirty” war being
182 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’

waged by the French’ against Algerians struggling for political independence

(Burman, 2016). In 1957, Fanon moved to Tunis, in Tunisia, where he continued
to practice as a psychiatrist and to deepen his political activism as a spokesperson
for the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN). Diagnosed with terminal leu-
kaemia, he died in December 1961 in the United States where he had been sent
for treatment (Macey, 2012). The Wretched of the Earth was published just weeks
before he died.
The chapter begins with an exposition and close reading of the three books
published whilst Fanon was alive: Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon, 1986 [1952]);
Studies in a Dying Colonialism (Fanon, 1989 [1959]) and, published shortly before
his death, The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon, 2004 [1961]).1 A more recently pub-
lished edited collection, Alienation and Freedom (Khalfa and Young, 2018), is also
signifcant in that it brings together, in English translation, a number of articles
previously only available in dispersed form in the original French. This volume is
important because it illuminates Fanon’s efforts to create more progressive forms
of practice within the feld of psychiatry (Khalfa, 2018). Having explored his
writing, the chapter discusses Fanon’s contribution to DSW. Here, we begin by
briefy criticising aspects of his thinking, but then will move on to examine the
contemporary validity and utility of some of his ideas.

‘Walled in’ by reductive and racist categorisation:

Black Skin, White Masks
Viewed as an ‘extended self-analysis’ and simultaneously a ‘major anti-racist trea-
tise’, in recent years BSWM has been the most well known of Fanon’s books
(Zeilig, 2017: 108; 94). From the 1980s, the book’s popularity might be related
to the fact that Fanon’s interest in ambiguous and dispersed questions circu-
lating around ‘identity’ then preoccupied Western academic institutions and
particularly the corridors of ‘cultural studies’ departments (Bhabha, 2004; see
also Haddour, 2019). Nevertheless, as recognised by Wallerstein (2009: 118),
although BSWM would have a ‘second life as a central text in the postmodern
canon, thirty years after it was published, the book was in no way a call to iden-
tity politics’.
BSWM was not written – as such – but dictated in the form of a battery of
speeches or urgent verbal communiques and transcribed by Josie (Macey, 2012).
Fanon did not, in fact, ‘write’ any of his books and, as Zeilig (2017: 108) remarks,
this should not be overlooked since his ‘entire oeuvre could be considered an oral
body of work’. BSWM covers an expansive terrain and encompasses canonical
fgures in Western philosophy, such as Hegel, but Fanon also provides critical
commentaries on contemporary movies and novels. Rejected as a PhD thesis, the
often-staccato style is a jagged and sustained exercise in controlled anger and, not
infrequently, bursts of sarcastic humour.
Within the book’s pages, the young Fanon commits himself to helping to
forge a ‘new humanism’ (Fanon, 1986 [1952]: 9).2 Hence, his project aims to
 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’ 183

contest ‘Black’ and ‘White’ people being, seemingly, ‘sealed’ into entirely sepa-
rable and racialised forms of classifcation and categorisation (see also how this
relates to Chapter 5 and Rancière’s philosophy). Such practices are ‘primarily’
economically generated and sustained, intensely hierarchical and result in Black
people internalising a sense of inferiority (p. 13). Such internalisation is referred
to by Fanon as one of ‘epidermalisation’ and to counteract the social toxicity of
this process, the Black person has to recognise what is occurring so as to bring
about their ‘disalienation’ (p. 13).
Referring to ‘colonised people’, Fanon avows that language fulfls an impor-
tant role in entrenching their position (p. 17). Such people tend to develop an
‘inferiority complex’ deep within their souls on account of the ‘death and burial’
of their ‘local cultural originality’ (p. 18). Indeed, the colonised individual is
‘elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother
country’s cultural standards’ (p. 18). Fanon aims, therefore, to holistically assess
the situation of Black and other colonised people and to ‘make sense of the interior
life of racism’ as it operates within actual, embodied individuals (Hudis, 2015:
23, original emphasis). Racism distorts the psychology of its victims and it stulti-
fes their development as human beings. Aspiring to describe the psychological
impact of racism, he remains intent on arriving at a historically grounded, social
assessment of its undoubted potency. His key line of interrogation is focused
on how social and economic structures, produced by embedded processes,
shape particular forms of racialised subjectivity. Marx also furnishes theoreti-
cal frameworks to enable him to consider such questions, but Fanon quips that,
when a Black person speaks of Marx, the ‘frst reaction is always the same: “We
have brought you up to our level and now you turn against your benefactors.
Ingrates!”’ (p. 35). Despite such racialised chastisement, Fanon is never dissuaded
from engaging with Marx because he, just like the German Jew, recognises that
‘social structures’ are the ‘real source’ of what might merely appear to be simply
personal and interior psychological conficts (p. 100) (see also Chapter 2).
Fanon’s lens is primarily directed at France and its colonies, but his analy-
sis has more general applicability. Josie Fanon explains that, in growing up in
Martinique, her husband ‘fully absorbed the cultural values of France’ (Filostrat,
1978). Recognition of his Blackness – and racism – are also a consequence of
the presence of the French navy on the island during the Second World War,
his time spent in the French Army and his experience as a migrant in Lyon and
Paris. Famously, having arrived in France, Fanon relates his being identifed by a
child with the phrase ‘Look, a Negro’ (p. 109). As Burman (2016) observes, this
occurrence functions as an ‘epistemological moment in the violent imposition
and constitution’ of Fanon’s racialised subjectivity. He fnds himself sealed into
‘crushing objecthood’ (p. 109). In having ‘discovered’ his ‘Blackness’ and his
‘ethnic characteristics’, Fanon is ‘battered down’ by a constellation of culturally
rooted racist tropes, by ‘tom-toms, cannibalism, intellectual defciency, fetish-
ism, racial defects [and] slave-ships’ (p. 112). He dramatically evokes this process
as a catastrophic epiphany in which all his universal and humanistic aspirations
184 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’

are dashed: ‘All I wanted was to be a man among other men. I wanted to come
lithe and young into a world that was ours and to help to build it together’ (pp.
112–3). He contrasts his situation with that of the Jew who could pass unno-
ticed whilst the Black person is ‘overdetermined from without’ (p. 116). Even a
middle-class health professional, such as Fanon, who possesses ‘refned manners’
and a ‘knowledge of literature’, is still unfairly ‘walled in’ by reductive and racist
categorisation.
According to Fanon’s interpretation, all forms of racial classifcation and rac-
ism are, as we have observed, the ‘creation of historically conditioned social
relations’ that have ‘taken on a life of their own’ (Hudis, 2015: 4). Although not
framed as such by Fanon, BSWM can be associated with – if not entirely aligned
with – what would later be referred to, within social work and elsewhere, as
‘identity politics’ and a bundle of keywords such as ‘diversity’, ‘difference’ and
‘recognition’. However, Fanon’s key question is this: how does the Black person
assess and respond to the racism which shackles them? In this context, he exam-
ines two strategies he deems unsatisfactory and running counter to his wider
liberation project.
First, seeking to ‘turn white or disappear’ is dismissed because of the psy-
chologically damaging consequences that it produces for the Black person (p.
100; see also Greenslade, 1992). This is partly because they will continue to be
interpellated as Black. Fanon tries to help his patients, psychologically investing
in this approach and survival strategy, to abandon attempts at achieving ‘hal-
lucinatory whitening’ (p. 100). Donning a ‘White mask is equated with a false
self ’ (Gibson, 2003: 16). A second tactic is to promote ‘negritude’ by affrming
Blackness. Such a strategy was culturally important at the time Fanon was writing
and a key individual in the ‘negritude movement’ was his former teacher Aimé
Césaire (1913–2001) and a cluster of other fgures including Leopold Senghor
and Leon Damas. The term ‘negritude’ was coined in Paris in the mid-1930s
and Fanon’s relationship to it is ‘complicated’, even distrustful (Gibson (2003:
78; 80). According to Fanon, the Martiniquean was a ‘Frenchman’ and wants to
remain ‘part of the French Union’ (p. 202). He only asks for ‘one thing’ and this
is that the ‘idiots and the exploiters’ provide him with the chance to merely ‘live
like a human being’ (p. 202). He wants nothing more than to be ‘lost, submerged
in a white food composed of men like Sartre or Aragon’ (p. 202). More funda-
mentally, Fanon interprets negritude as a political cul-de-sac and as a discourse
of the elite, not the masses.
Elsewhere, Fanon’s comments on this form of Black identity politics are satu-
rated in withering sarcasm. In a speech in Rome, in the late 1950s, he refers to
the ‘bards of negritude’ (in Fanon, 2004 [1961]: 151). Contrary to the supporters
of negritude, he asserts that to ‘believe one can create a Black culture is to forget
oddly enough that “Negroes” are in the process of disappearing, since those who
created them are witnessing the demise of their economic and cultural suprem-
acy’ (Fanon, 2004 [1961]: 169). This viewpoint gels with Fanon’s understanding
‘that “Blackness” is a creation of colonialism and that embracing any ontology of
 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’ 185

“Blackness” buys into the very logic of racism’ (Hudis, 2015: 98). What Fanon,
ever sensitive to class, fnds especially irksome is that the negritude movement
fails to address the material exploitation encountered on a day-to-day basis by
many colonial subjects:

Let us be clearly understood. I am convinced that it would be of the great-

est interest to be able to have contact with a Negro literature or architec-
ture of the third century before Christ. I should be very happy to know
that a correspondence had fourished between some Negro philosopher
and Plato. But I can absolutely not see how this fact would change any-
thing in the lives of the eight-year-old children who labour in the cane
felds of Martinique or Guadeloupe.
(p. 230)

Underpinning his critique of ‘negritude’ is, therefore, a sense that, as a move-

ment, it is intensely backward looking and, as a committed modernist, he doubts
its utility. In ‘no way’ can he, therefore, ‘dedicate’ himself to the ‘revival of an
unjustly unrecognised Negro civilization’ (p. 226). He cannot remake himself as
a ‘man of any past’ and neither does he wish to ‘exalt the past at the expense’ of
his ‘present’ and ‘future’ (p. 226).
Fanon’s alternative to these two strategies – trying to ‘turn white’ and to
unequivocally support the negritude movement – is to call for ‘anticolonial and
non-racial universalism’ (Gilroy, 2000: 71). He is fundamentally opposed to,
what we might term ‘identity politics’ because it is a form of essentialist think-
ing diluting the integral wholeness of humanity. This opposition is one of the
main planks of his political commitment to ending colonisation. As Paul Gilroy
(2000: 71) observes, Fanon’s ‘charge against Europe’ is not simply that ‘European
imperial powers wrongfully deprived colonial subjects of their humanity’, but
that Europe has ‘perpetrated the still greater crime of despoiling humanity of its
fundamental unity as a species’. Subject to the destructive imperatives of colonial
domination a ‘breakdown’ is, therefore, occurring in the ‘structure of mutual
recognition’ amongst human subjects (Hudis, 2015: 33).
In a compelling chapter in BSWM, Fanon turns his attention to the potency
of experts who perform ‘defnitional labour’ to furnish a rationale for colonial-
ism (Goffman, 1971 [1959]). Indeed, this notion of ‘labour’ is signifcant because
it highlights the systematic work undertaken to maintain and bolster a particular
‘structure of feeling’ helping to sustain colonial power (Williams, 1977: Ch. 9).
Moreover, it is important to recognise that these so-called ‘expert’ perceptions
are rooted in, and refective of, ‘Western ethnographies and philosophies of his-
tory that dominated the second half of the nineteenth century’ (Mbembe, 2017:
42). Their views were based on the core and unquestioned understanding that
‘two forms of human society existed: primitive societies, which were governed
by the “savage mentality”, and civilized societies governed by reason’ (Mbembe,
2017: 42). As Mbembe (2017: 42) observes, within these governing intellectual
186 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’

paradigms and epistemologies, the Black ‘race’ had ‘neither life, nor will, nor
energy of its own. Consumed by ancient ancestral hatreds and unending internal
struggles, it turned endlessly in circles. It was nothing but inert matter, waiting
to be moulded in the hands of a superior race’.
Dwelling on his own ‘feld’ of psychiatry, Fanon focuses on the infuential
work of the philosopher and ethnologist Octave Mannoni (1899–1989) and
his Prospero and Caliban: Psychology of Colonisation (Mannoni, 1956). This book,
which can be interpreted as providing part of the ideological foundation for colo-
nisation, maintains that the colonised in Madagascar have a dependency complex
entirely conducive to their becoming subject to the will of the coloniser. As
Fanon quips, it, therefore, becomes ‘obvious’ that the White man acts in ‘obedi-
ence to an authority complex, a leadership complex’, whilst the Malagasy merely
obeys a ‘dependency complex’. ‘Everyone’, according to Mannoni’s perceptions,
is ‘satisfed’ (pp. 98–9). Fanon condemns this politically convenient and shal-
low (mis)interpretation of the ‘psychology of colonisation’. Mannoni entirely
fails to acknowledge that the island and its people need to be properly situated
within the context of exploitative European colonisation. With the ‘arrival of the
white man’, in the 1880s, the lives and psychological dispositions of the inhabit-
ants were ‘shattered’ and people’s sense of their place in the world was entirely
undermined (p. 97). In a fascinating section of the book, Fanon also subjects
Mannoni’s analysis of Malagasy dreams to a penetrating counter-reading which
takes into account how the violence of colonisation bleeds into visions occurring
during sleep.
In WE, Fanon returns to examine the role of experts when he lambasts fgures
such as the founder of the Algiers School of Psychiatry, Antoine Porot and fellow
psychiatrist, John Colin Carothers. The latter argues that the ‘normal African’ is,
on account of their brain structure, akin to a lobotomised European. According
to this ‘expert’ medical assessment, this results in the manifest indolence, animal
impulsiveness and social ineptitude of the ‘the native’ in Africa (Fanon, 2004
[1961]: 227). Despite the sheer nonsense of such views, Carothers’ theorisation
came, however, to ‘dominate Britain’s African colonies’ (Gibson, 2003: 85).

Countering colonialism and creating a revolutionary

culture: Studies in a Dying Colonialism
Published seven years after BSWM, DC is a very different book to its predeces-
sor. The war for Algerian independence was underway and, living in Tunis,
Fanon was wholly committed to the cause. His main concern, in a book much
more optimistic than BSWM, is how to construct a form of sustainable coun-
ter-hegemony in order to achieve victory. Although they are not mentioned,
Fanon’s main intellectual and political themes establish something of an affnity
with theorists such as Gramsci (‘hegemony’ and ‘common sense’) and Bourdieu
(‘habitus’) (see also Garrett, 2018b: Ch. 6 and Ch. 7). Relatedly, some of Fanon’s
recurrent concerns in DC are the everyday aspects of daily life, community and
 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’ 187

culture in Algeria. Hence, he devotes whole sections of the book to analysing

how radio might be put to use in the struggle for independence. Fanon also
explores complex issues related to the use of the veil in Algerian society and his
chapter on the topic remains ‘one of the most widely discussed among his body
of work, and as is the case with much of his legacy, his words are often taken out
of context’ (Hudis, 2015: 101).
In engaging with the veil issue, Fanon is alert to how colonial powers, such as
France, claim that imperialist incursions are prompted by a benign and ‘progres-
sive’ aspiration to liberate women from the forces of anachronistic, patriarchal
power. According to this form of ideological reasoning, the mission of Western
powers is to free women and to deliver more ‘modern’ forms of life. In the case
of Algeria in the 1950s, the veil – and its removal from the faces of Arab women
– was to become a powerful signifer within the discursive armour of the occu-
pying French forces. More recently, of course, the question of the veil – and more
broadly, ‘female emancipation’ – has been strategically and cynically deployed by
the United States and a ‘coalition’ of willing, invasive powers in the Middle East
(Koffman and Gill, 2013).
The French occupiers always insisted that women remove the veil when
cartes d’identité photographs were taken (see the fascinating discussion on such
photographs in Eileraas, 2003). In May 1956, however, the occupying forces
launched a sustained campaign to have Algerian women permanently remove
their veils (Haddour, 2010). As a result, female servants, wearing the veil
within the households of the Pieds-Noirs [French in Algeria], came ‘under
the threat of being fred’ by their employers and some women were literally
‘dragged from their homes’ and taken to the ‘public square and symbolically
unveiled’ to the cries of ‘Long Love French Algeria!’ (Fanon, 1989 [1959]:
62). 3 Moreover, concerted attempts to dissuade and coerce women from wear-
ing the veil entailed ‘droves of social workers’ descending into the Arab quar-
ters of Algiers (p. 38).
Some commentators maintain that Fanon’s observations on the veil amount
to a defence of ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ (in Hudis, 2015, p. 102). However, this
is a somewhat bizarre charge to make against a writer who adamantly opposes
any form of religious sectarianism. Fanon is not crudely ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ the veil.
Rather, he aspires to situate his discussion within a political and cultural frame-
work intent on illustrating the ‘historic dynamism’ of the garment (p. 63). He
describes the way that women, wearing the veil, are depicted by the occupying
administration as reductively ‘humiliated, sequestered [and] cloistered’ (p. 38).
These ‘inert’ and ‘dehumanised objects’ can, goes the rhetoric of the coloniser,
magically transform should they dispense with the veil (p. 38). Fanon evokes
the brutality and cynicism of the French occupiers in that the ‘indigent and
famished women’ are ‘besieged’ with every ‘kilo of semolina distributed’ being
‘accompanied by a dose of indignation against the veil and the cloister’ (p. 38).
Nevertheless, the women directly concerned are not always as compliant as the
occupier wishes because the ‘dominant psychological feature’ of the colonised is
188 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’

often to ‘withdraw before any invitation of the conqueror’s’ (p. 63). Their deci-
sion to refuse to remove the veil is not attributable to ‘religious, magical, fanatical
behaviour’; rather this refusal is grounded in an ‘assertion of a distinct identity’
and the tenacious will to keep ‘intact a few shreds of national existence’ (p. 41).
The plans of the occupying French, in relation to getting rid of the veil and
other forms of intervention in the lives of the Algerians, determines the centres
of resistance around which the ‘people’s will to survive’ becomes organised and
expressed (p. 47). A woman’s attitude towards the veil, argues Fanon, cannot be
viewed in isolation, but needs to be interpreted in relation to her ‘overall attitude
with respect to the foreign occupation’ (p. 47). Not infrequently, the colonised,
in the face of the emphasis given by the colonialist to this or that aspect of tradi-
tion, reacts in a way not envisaged. Indeed, the time and effort that colonising
forces devote to ‘modifying’ behaviour and to ‘pedagogical work’ can generate
a ‘whole universe of resistances’ around particular elements of life and culture
(p. 47). At the time Fanon was writing – in the late 1950s – the ‘tenacity’ of the
occupier in seeking to unveil the Algerian woman merely prompted a ‘strength-
ening’ of the ‘traditional patterns’ of behaviour (p. 49). However, perhaps rather
unconvincingly, Fanon is of the opinion that use of the veil would be extin-
guished or rendered a marginal issue post-revolution (pp. 47–8).
Some of Fanon’s preoccupations with the veil in DC are also related to his
comments on the evolution of the Algerian family. He persuasively depicts the
efforts of the French to fragment and atomise the Algerian population to prevent
any sense of combative cohesion (p. 118). This is because the maintenance of
any form of collective consciousness and solidarity might impede the plans of
the ruling administration. However, given the turbulence prompted by the war
and the struggle for national liberation, changes at the level of Algerian family
life are inevitable. Here, his perceptions – although not conceptually framed
as such – can be interpreted as refecting some of the perceptions of Bourdieu
(2002) on the impact of unforeseen circumstances leading to a person’s ‘habi-
tus’ becoming disrupted resulting in a re-calibration of their expectations and
understandings of the wider world. Fanon explains to his readers that, far from
‘being homogeneous and virtually monolithic’, the family has ‘broken up into
separate elements’ with each member having ‘gained in individuality’ (p. 99).
Individuals have ‘found themselves facing new choices, new decisions’ and the
‘customary and highly structured patterns of behaviour that were the crystallisa-
tion of traditional ideas’ have ‘suddenly proved ineffective and were abandoned’
(pp. 99–100).
Writing in the early 1990s, McClintock (1995: 353) argues that ‘with the
notable exception of Frantz Fanon, male theorists have seldom felt moved to
explore how nationalism is implicated in gender power’. In DC, he argues that
one of the major consequences of the changes underway is that patriarchal power
is gradually being eroded. He maintains, for instance, that the ‘old stultify-
ing attachment to the father’ is melting in the ‘sun of the Revolution’ (p. 101).
During the ‘multiple episodes of the war, the people come to realise that if they
 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’ 189

wish to bring a new world to birth’ they will have to create a new Algerian soci-
ety from ‘top to bottom’ and this will mean questioning dominant values within
the family. Associated with this development, gender relations are likely to be
altered. For example, previously a ‘woman’s life in the home’, constituted by
‘centuries-old customs’, afforded little room for ‘innovation’ (p. 106). As a result,
the ‘girl’ adopts ‘automatically the behaviour and the values’ of her own mother,
and the wider society, and thus she learns the ‘higher value of the man’ and not to
‘aggravate’ him (p. 106). All of this, declares Fanon, is now in fux because such
culturally constraining and limiting perceptions have been ‘knocked over and
challenged by the national liberation struggle’ (p. 107). Hence, Algerian society
is witnessing the progressive disappearance of the ‘woman-for-marriage’ and its
replacement with the more agentic ‘woman-for-action’ (p. 108). In WE, Fanon
maintains that post-independence, the political aspiration must be one of ensur-
ing that women will have ‘equal importance to men’ in ‘daily life, at the factory,
in the schools, and in assemblies’ (Fanon, 2004 [1961]: 142).
However, Fanon still concedes that no revolution can with ‘fnality and
without repercussions, make a clean sweep of well-nigh instinctive modes of
behaviour’ (p. 113). Certainly, developments in the ‘postcolonial era cannot be
reconciled’ with his evocation of a ‘disciplined and progressively unifed popu-
lation coming closer and closer to self-knowledge as the struggle against the
French colonial forces intensifed’ (Lazarus, 2011: 176). Perhaps also Fanon’s
encompassing vision of a secular, socialist future for Algeria can be perceived,
even at the time his book was published, as overly optimistic. Indeed, by the time
of the appearance of his next book, published shortly before his death, Fanon’s
optimism about revolutionary change had considerably dimmed.

Defending armed struggle and castigating the duplicity of

the post-colonial bourgeoisie: The Wretched of the Earth
Fanon is often, and erroneously, depicted by ill-informed and infuential fg-
ures – such as Hannah Arendt – as an unambiguous champion of violence (see
Chapter 7 and the discussion in Macey, 2012). In DC, he addresses the topic
and condemns the duplicity of colonising nations that, whilst they deploy ‘new
means of terror’ to try and subdue wars of liberation, see no contradiction in
castigating the ‘barbarity’ of so-called ‘underdeveloped people’ for resorting to
similar means (Fanon, 2004 [1961]: 24).4 Fanon is no supporter of such methods
because they risk contaminating the struggle for a ‘democratic and a renovated
Algeria’ (p. 25). He also acknowledges that the FLN has occasionally used ter-
roristic methods and with ‘pain’ in his heart he criticises those who had ‘fung
themselves into revolutionary action with the almost physiological brutality that
centuries of oppression give rise to and feed’ (p. 25). On account of his political
and psychological understanding of the causes and impact of violence, he recog-
nises that it would be a propagandistic lie to maintain that the FLN was blameless
in this regard.
190 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’

Fanon also discusses violence in WE in a chapter he had initially delivered as a

speech at the All African People’s Congress taking place in Accra in 1958. Some
charge that here his comments eulogise ‘violence as an end-in-itself ’ (Hudis,
2015: 118). However, it is vital for contemporary readers to try to understand
the conjuncture in which he was focusing on this theme. From the end of the
Second World War, various colonial powers endeavoured to violently extinguish
nationalist rebellions. The British government orchestrated the brutal suppres-
sion of the Mau Mau rising for eight years stretching from 1952–60. In 1954,
in the Sétif area of Algeria, the French colonial authorities, aided by Pied-noir
fascist militias, are estimated to have massacred 45,000 civilians. Two years later,
in Madagascar, the French tried to defeat a nationalist uprising, and by the mid-
1950s, it has been estimated that 100,000 were killed. Alert to these events,
beyond the European metropolitan centres and beyond the vision of those in
France, Fanon asserts ‘at the level of the individual and human rights what is
fascism, but colonialism at the very heart of traditionally colonialist countries?’
(p. 48). The question is entirely apt because the French government, whilst cel-
ebrating the defeat of the Hitler regime and the end of the occupation, spent
the following years wading in blood violently crushing nationalist insurgency
(Mbembe, 2017).
The colonised world is, declares Fanon, a ‘world divided in two’ with the
world of the coloniser being symbolically and materially represented by its
repressive barracks and police stations (p. 3). This is the ‘bare reality’ and con-
sequently a ‘decisive confrontation between the two protagonists’ is manifestly
inescapable (p. 3). No space exists in which to generate relations of ‘recognition’
or ‘respect’ between the two adversarial parties (Hallward, 2011: 107). Fanon
compares the situation in places, such as Algeria, with the urban centres in ‘capi-
talist countries’ where this dividing line between the ruling class and those it
exploits is less clear and ideologically obscured by an unwholesome ‘multitude of
sermonizers, counsellors, and confusion-mongers’ who intervene ‘between the
exploited and the authorities’ (p. 4). In colonial regions, however, the ‘proxim-
ity and frequent, direct intervention by the police and the military’, often aided
by ‘rife butts and napalm’, ensures that the colonised are, unsurprisingly, much
better able to detect and identify their exploiters and adversaries.
The problem for the coloniser is that the colonised are now resorting to his
methods. The ‘very same people who had it constantly drummed into them that
the only language they understood was that of force’ have resolved to ‘express
themselves with force’ (p. 42). The entire colonial regime owes its ‘legitimacy
to force’ and at ‘no time’ has it ever endeavoured to ‘cover up this nature of
things’ (p. 42). The colonist has, in fact, always shown, the colonised the ‘path
they should follow to liberation’ (p. 42). Indeed, Fanon stretches this analysis
further by arguing that individual acts of violence committed against colonisers
serve to collectively bind together insurgent rebels. Here, his reasoning appears
to have been founded on that of the Mau Mau and their struggle for independ-
ence against the British in Kenya (Elkins, 2005). In this brutal struggle, Fanon
 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’ 191

states that every militant has to ‘strike’ and be responsible for the death of a
coloniser. In this way, each rebel is ‘personally responsible for the death of the
victim’ (p. 44). Only then, can they be truly trusted by the rest of their group
because, on account of this ‘irreversible act’, they would face the death penality
if they returned to the ‘colonial system’ (p. 44). According to Fanon, this is not a
capricious and callous form of bonding because it is rendered entirely explicable
by the sheer ‘violence of the colonial regime’ which has to be responded to with
violence of the same intensity (p. 44). Both types of violence evince an ‘extraor-
dinary reciprocal homogeneity’ (p. 44).
The violence of the colonised is, however, ‘invested with positive, forma-
tive features’ (p. 50). Controversially, Fanon perceives violence as ‘a cleansing
force’ in that its discharge potentially helps rid the colonised of their ‘inferiority
complex, of their passive and despairing attitude’ (p. 51). Seemingly therapeutic,
this violence might, therefore, embolden and help restore the ‘self-confdence’
of the oppressed (p. 51). This is a ‘violent praxis’ which is ‘totalising’ since each
individual constitutes a ‘violent link in the great chain, in the almighty body
of violence rearing up in reaction to the primary violence’ of the coloniser’ (p.
50). Partly on account of this cohesive solidarity, the ‘future nation’ has already
become ‘indivisible’. Given it is the collaborative action of the masses, revolu-
tionary violence also has a democratising tendency since it dilutes the specialness
of the ‘leader’, the notion of a ‘living god’ and associated personality cults (p. 52).
Gilroy (2000: 248) maintains that Fanon’s ‘overly stern liberationist per-
spective’ is an entirely comprehensible and ‘an organic product of wars against
Nazism and colonialism’ and that it can also be linked to militarised life in the
colonial city. Moreover, despite Fanon’s recognition that revolutionary violence
is likely to be unavoidable, there are ambiguities, complexities and nuances
which many of his critics fail to recognise or neglect to fully consider. He avows
that the colonised liberate themselves ‘in and through violence’ (p. 44), but many
times he prefers to use the term ‘armed struggle’ to characterise the specifc type
of violence that the colonised must invariably deploy (e.g. p. 47; p. 50). He also
notes that the outcome of violent struggle is likely to be ‘profoundly unequal,
for machine-gunning by planes or bombardments from naval vessels outweigh
in horror and scope the response from the colonised’ (p. 47). This comment,
appears to concede, therefore, that the ‘counter violence’ of the oppressed is
ultimately often somewhat forlorn in that the coloniser, better able to make use
of technological weapons of mass destruction, can always resort to substantially
more violent methods to prompt the extinction of his adversary. It also suggests
that Fanon is of the opinion that additional, more politically strategic ingredi-
ents, need to be added in order for an anti-colonial war to be successful.
Fanon explicitly argues that racism, ‘resentment’ and the desire for revenge
cannot ‘nurture a war of liberation’ and neither can ‘hatred’ contribute to a
productive ‘agenda’ (p. 89). As his clinical work recognises, violence is psycho-
logically damaging for both victim and perpetrator and this is refected in his
decision to conclude WE with a number of harrowing case studies derived from
192 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’

his work as a clinician in Blida-Joinville. By choosing to end the book with

depictions and assessments of severely mentally distressed patients, Fanon appears
to be signalling to his readers that violence occurring within the context of (de)
colonisation inevitably results in profound individual pathologies. Underpinning
these mental disturbances is, however, the fact of colonialism: an economic and
social system constructed around a ‘systematized negation of the other, a frenzied
determination to deny the other any attribute of humanity’ (p. 182). It is dif-
fcult, Fanon maintains, to grasp the ‘scope and depth of the wounds inficted on
the colonised during a single day under a colonial regime’ (p. 182). Even when
the system remained unchallenged, in the ‘calm’ of ‘triumphant’ colonisation, a
constant and considerable stream of mental symptoms are ‘direct sequels of this
oppression’ (p. 182).
Unlike some of the authors associated with many of the post-colonial theory
texts, WE is not a book chockful of ‘esoteric – but ultimately futile – jargon’
(Sardar, 2008: xviii). Rather, it is brimming with ‘passion, argument, analysis
and anecdotes’ with Fanon committed to conveying the idea that ‘action does
not follow automatically’ from theorisation (Sardar, 2008: xviii). Fanon’s books
are ‘impregnated with Marxist premises and vocabulary’ (Wallerstein, 2009:
124). Nevertheless, in conceptualising his perspective on the ‘Manichaean’ colo-
nial world, Fanon argues that Marxism has to be ‘slightly stretched’ (pp. 5–6).
This is because it is not the ownership of ‘the factories, the estates, or the bank
account’ which primarily defnes the ‘ruling class’; rather it is the fact that they
are ‘frst and foremost the outsider from elsewhere, different from the indig-
enous population, “the others”’ (p. 5). Due to the ‘totalitarian nature’ of colonial
exploitation, the colonist tries to turn these ‘others’ into a ‘kind of quintessence
of evil’ (p. 6). This means that the colonised subject is reduced to ‘the state of an
animal’ (p. 7). Every effort is, therefore, made to make the colonised ‘confess the
inferiority of their culture … to admit the disorganized, half-fnished nature of
their own biological makeup’ (p. 171). Consequently, when the colonist refers
to the colonised, he resorts to a ‘bestiary’ discourse and ‘zoological terms’ with
associated allusions to ‘slithery movements of the yellow race, the odours from
the “native” quarters, to the hordes, the stink, the swarming, the seething, and
the gesticulations’ (p. 7), loathsome terms which are, in fact, not unlike those, as
we noted in Chapter 8, used by Levinas.
Fanon’s exposition ensures the patterns of exploitation, domination and
humiliation generated by colonialism are theoretically married to an under-
standing of how capitalism operates (see also Chapter 2). Following the analysis
of Marx, he observes that in its early ‘expansionist phase’, capitalists perceive the
colonies as ‘a source of raw materials which once processed could be unloaded
on the European market’ (p. 27). He also recognises, because of a growing mid-
dle class, that colonies have also become a ‘consumer market’ for capital (p.
27). Notwithstanding, exploitation remains the key driver of the process as is
apparent in the behaviour of the ‘barons of international capitalism’ based in
the United States. As Fanon lucidly argues, the ‘almighty power of the dollar’
 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’ 193

can only be ‘guaranteed by the slaves of this world, toiling in the oil wells of the
Middle East, the mines of Peru and the Congo, and the United Fruit or Firestone
plantations’ (p. 54).
As now maintained by the BLM movement and those seeking to de-colonise
social work, the ‘scandal’ of ‘European opulence’ was ‘built on the backs of slaves,
it fed on the blood of slaves’ and owes ‘its very existence to the soil and subsoil
of the underdeveloped world. Europe’s well-being and progress is built with the
sweat and corpses’ of Blacks, Arabs, Indians and Asians (p. 53). Consequently,
the ‘wealth of the imperialist nations’ has to be seen as the wealth of those who
have been colonised. Europe has ‘been bloated out of all proportions by the gold
and raw materials’ from the colonialised world (p. 58). More fundamentally,
Fanon charges that Europe can be perceived as the ‘creation of the Third World’
given that its ‘riches’ were ‘plundered’. What is more, the ‘ports of Holland, the
docks in Bordeaux and Liverpool’ owe their importance to the ‘trade and depor-
tation of millions of slaves’ (pp. 58–9). Although not expanding on the point and
moving his discussion into the discourse circulating around reparations, Fanon
maintains that the capitalist powers ‘must pay up’ (p. 59).
Composed just when many African nations had fnally won their freedom
from colonialism, WE ‘eschews any celebratory mode’ and ‘issues a dire prog-
nosis of what is to come’ (Hudis, 2015: 212). Importantly, Fanon is also attuned
to how the new elites use racism to fragment and divide and he detects a drift
from ‘nationalism to ultra-nationalism, chauvinism, and racism’ (p. 103). Within
this toxic ferment, progressive ideas founded on ‘African unity’ sink ‘deeper and
deeper into oblivion’ (p. 105). Meanwhile, colonialism ‘shamelessly’ pulls ‘all
these strings’ and is content to see ‘Africans, who were once in league against it,
tear at each other’s throats’ (p. 107). It is not, therefore, ‘surprising’ in a country
which called itself ‘African’ to hear racist remarks ‘bitterly reminiscent of Paris,
Brussels, or London’ (p. 108).

Dismantling obstacles to democracy in both the hospital

and the wider society: Alienation and Freedom
Turning to look at Fanon’s professional orientation as a psychiatrist, it is impor-
tant to try to grasp the political and disciplinary context in which he attempted
to introduce innovations. Here, practices associated with IP and, as mentioned
earlier, the role of Tosquelles are signifcant. IP is not dissimilar to strands of
thinking within the ‘anti-psychiatry’ movement in that its proponents question
key tenets of mainstream psychiatric practice (Crossley, 1998). However, sup-
porters of IP dismiss the idea that mental illness is merely a social construct
or ‘myth’. Importantly also, IP still encompasses a role for narco-therapy and
even the ‘Bini method’ (electroshock treatment) (Tosquelles and Fanon, (2018a
[1953]; 2018b [1953]). It would, therefore, be misleading to perceive the IP
advocates as seeking, in their clinical work, to have a ‘social model’ trump a
‘medical model’. Rather, in their day-to-day work with patients, they attempt
194 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’

to put into practice a more hybrid approach. Occasionally referred to as ‘social

therapy’ (Fanon and Azoulay, 2018 [1954]), what primarily characterises IP is the
ideological and practical project to ‘shake-up’ and democratise social relations
within the psychiatric hospital. Integral to such endeavours is the aim to dimin-
ish, yet not entirely extinguish, the hierarchical relations so central to engage-
ments involving doctors, nurses and patients. This involves a constant struggle
to combat partition, segregation and – in the language of the IP clinicians –
‘concentrationist’ structures. According to IP thinking, the aspiration should be
to systematically destabilise any structure that has the potential to become ‘rei-
fed, stagnant, and sedimented’ (Robcis, 2016: 213). Fanon echoes this thinking
whilst at Blida when he avows that one of the ‘diffculties encountered in the
exercise of a profession’ is ‘habit’ and ‘gestures’ following ‘other gestures without
novelty’ (Fanon, 2018 [1953–56]: 338).
A little more needs to be added on Tosquelles because he was an impor-
tant fgure in his own right. Originally from Catalonia, he fought in the
Spanish Civil War (1937–8) and was one of the founders of the Partido Obrero de
Unifcacion Marxista (POUM), an anti-Stalinist communist party founded on its
members’ opposition to Franco’s fascism and the degeneration of worker democ-
racy in the USSR. Infuenced by anarchism, he became committed to promot-
ing anti-authoritarian forms of solidarity rooted in democracy, decentralisation
and worker self-management. Entirely in tune with the impetus for Dissenting
Social Work, such views also informed and guided Tosquelles’ strategies aiming
to reform psychiatric practices. Having fed to France and becoming active in
the French resistance to the Nazis, Tosquelles committed himself to producing
the ‘disalienation’ of the hospital (Robcis, 2016: 218). The hospital ‘could no
longer be treated as a passive instrument or a stable geographical sight’ and such
a perception prompted radical changes in the physical structure of the building:
for example, he ordered the demolishing of the walls surrounding the Saint-
Alban hospital and the walls separating each cell. Within this new paradigm,
a new emphasis was given to ‘groupwork’ (Macey, 2012: 148). In addition and
replicating democratic politics that led to the elimination of ranks in the POUM
militias combatting Franco’s fascist armed forces, uniforms for doctors and nurses
were abandoned as were medical blouses for patients. Within the novel setting,
the aim was to render everyone ‘indistinguishable from one another’ (Robcis,
2016: 216). Meetings were also re-confgured to try to ensure that they were less
authoritarian and more open to patients. Fanon, certainly initially, appears to
have been entirely won over by Tosquelles and his colleagues at Saint-Alban and
he contributes, for example, a number of editorials to the newspaper produced
by patients and staff at the hospital (Fanon, 2018 [1952–3]). This was some-
thing Fanon continued to do during his period at the Blida-Joinville Psychiatric
Hospital (Fanon, 2018 [1953–56]). In both instances, the clinical – and political
– aim is to activate the ‘boarders’ and to transform communal relations.
In December 1953, on beginning to work at Blida-Joinville, Fanon found
himself in an ‘immense hospital’ with 2,500 beds, when it was constructed to
 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’ 195

house 1,200. He was charged with responsibility for over 160 European women
in a ward of long-term ‘chronic and senile patients’ and, some 1.2 kilometres
away, but within the same grounds, a ward of 225 Muslim men (Fanon, 2018
[1954]). With these patients, he and his more progressive junior colleagues
(including Jacques Azoulay, Charles Geronimi and Sliman Asselah) attempted
to translate some of the IP principles into practice (Fanon and Azoulay, 2018
[1954]). However, the ferocity of the war that commenced, within a year of
Fanon’s arrival in Algeria, constituted a profound obstacle to developing more
benign forms of practice. Still, innovations included meetings where doctors
and patients discussed the running of the institution, and new social and cul-
tural activities: screening flms, for instance, and having discussions afterwards,
performing music etc. As Hudis (2015: 58) comments, such approaches may not
seem that ‘revolutionary today, but they were virtually unprecedented in Fanon’s
time – especially in hospitals in North Africa’.
A sense of what Fanon and his associates were attempting to achieve is con-
veyed by the weekly Our Journal that he wrote for over the three years stretching
from December 1953–December 1956. These short pieces evoke the attempts
made to confront the ‘inertia and indifference’ that characterised life within the
institution (Fanon, 2018 [1953–56]: 319). They also reveal his criticisms of the
treatment of patients who, located hundreds of kilometres from their homes,
were left feeling like they had been ‘interned’. According to Fanon, patients
‘ought not to endure hospitalisation as a kind of imprisonment, but instead as
the only possible way to receive the maximum amount of treatment in a mini-
mum amount of time’ (Fanon, 2018 [1953–56]: 320). If care was not taken, he
states, the hospital establishment, above all else a ‘curative establishment’ and a
‘therapeutic establishment’, risks being ‘transformed into a barracks in which the
children-boarders’ tremble ‘before the parent-orderlies’ (Fanon, 2018 [1953–56]:
346). A fxation with ‘formulating disciplinary rules and regulations at a psy-
chiatric hospital was a therapeutic absurdity’ and such an approach had to be
‘abandoned once and for all’ (Fanon, 2018 [1953–56]: 348).
One major barrier to innovation lay in the apparent solidity – as a form of
corrosive, professional ‘common sense’ – of colonial psychiatry (Crehan, 2016).
Islam was viewed as a ‘pathogenic agent’ with associated ‘symptoms’ that alleg-
edly included ‘fatalism, an obsession with words (the repeated “Allah, Allah”),
delusional sadness, the perversion of the sexual instinct (masturbation and ped-
erasty) and auditory hallucinations’ that provoked sudden ‘outbursts of violence’
(Macey, 2012: 218–9). Unsurprisingly, this ‘science’ adversely impacted on the
perceptions of European doctors presented with followers of Islam who were ill.
The new methods used by Fanon and his colleagues had some success with the
European women (Fanon and Azoulay, 2018 [1954]: 354). Nonetheless, the case
of Muslim men was very different in that there was a ‘total failure of the same
methods’ (Fanon and Azoulay, (2018 [1954]: 357). For example, the groupwork
activity became merely ‘ceremonial’, ‘devoid of meaning’ and ‘absurd’ (Fanon
and Azoulay, (2018 [1954], p. 358.7). More generally, despite their best efforts,
196 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’

the atmosphere on the ward remained ‘oppressive’ and ‘stifing’ (Fanon and
Azoulay, (2018 [1954]: 361). This resulted in a ‘veritable concentration-camp’
mind-set which was the antithesis of the aspirations of Tosquelles and his col-
leagues at Saint-Alban.
Neither Fanon nor Azouley was able to speak Arabic, and attempts were
made to overcome this considerable obstacle by having Algerian nurses oper-
ate as interpreters. However, this move ‘’fundamentally vitiated doctor-patient
relations’ (Fanon and Azoulay, (2018 [1954]: 367). In a colonised society, the
interpretation problem was magnifed, moreover, because it was conceivable
that a patient might previously have encountered an interpreter in his ‘relations
with the administration or justice system’ and so would be wary of such medi-
ated exchanges (Fanon and Azoulay, 2018 [1954]: 367). Fanon initially failed to
lend signifcant weight to enveloping cultural factors when working with these
patients. Indeed, it might be suggested that, given he was new to Algeria, he was
palpably ill-equipped to truly assess and get a deep sense of its complex culture.
He was a middle-class male and his ‘habitus’ was constituted in the Caribbean
and within intellectual circles in France (Bourdieu, 2002). The fact that he was
an outsider was also impressed upon him by ‘seasoned’ staff in Blida who were
keen to maintain the ‘punitive structure’ along with its leaden inertia (Fanon and
Azoulay, 2018 [1954]: 361–2).
Importantly, Fanon concedes that his lack of cultural awareness was respon-
sible for his having taken the ‘wrong course’ (Fanon and Azoulay, 2018 [1954]:
361–2). It was foolish to have merely tried to adapt, to a primarily Muslim soci-
ety, the ‘frames of a particular Western society’ (Fanon and Azoulay, 2018 [1954]:
362). Fanon and Azoulay, 2018 [1954]: 362) concede that their approach and
‘behaviour’ was ‘completely unsuited’ and so they began to view it as ‘necessary
to go from a position in which the supremacy of Western culture was evident, to
one of cultural relativism’ (Fanon and Azoulay, 2018 [1954]: 361–2). French and
more generally ‘Western’ approaches were incompatible with indigenous reality
and the assimilationist approach to clinical innovation had to be jettisoned. For
meaningful socio-therapy to be possible, it would need to take into considera-
tion the ‘social morphology and forms of sociability’ of the particular society in
which it was to be adopted (Fanon and Azoulay, 2018 [1954]: 364).
Fanon and Azoulay lacked, what might be termed in the not unproblem-
atic language of contemporary social work, a sense of ‘cultural competence’
(Marovatsanga, 2020). The new approach they began to articulate, much more
attentive to the local cultural frames, might be compared to the sociologi-
cal studies that Pierre Bourdieu was to develop during his period in Algeria
(1955–60) (Bourdieu, 1962; 2003 [1977]; 2008: 3–31). Because of his analysis
of how deeply entrenched ‘habitus’ is, Bourdieu was less optimistic than Fanon
about people’s ability to spark and sustain revolutionary change. Nonetheless,
their preoccupations were circulating around some of the same core questions
(see also Lane, 2000: Ch. 1; Bourdieu, 2008: 3–31). What were the ‘bio-
logical, moral, aesthetic, cognitive and religious values of Muslim society?’
 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’ 197

asked Fanon and Azoulay (2018 [1954]: 364). There was also a need to take
into account the ethnic heterogeneity of Algerian society in that out of the
220 male patients, 148 might be described as Arab, sixty-six were Kabyles
from the mountainous regions and the remaining six were Chaouis, Moroccan
and Mozabites (Fanon and Azoulay, 2018 [1954]: 365). None of these dynam-
ics could, however, be abstracted from the dynamics of capitalism and colo-
nialism. Most of the patients in the ward were ‘torn from’ the land and had
‘managed to fnd some labour in the city’ (Fanon and Azoulay, 2018 [1954]:
366). Indeed, in the nineteenth century, Marx (1990 [1867]): 784) had written
about a similar category of workers constituting a ‘disposable industrial reserve
army’, a ‘mass of human material always ready for exploitation’. In Algeria after
the Second World War, this ‘surplus population of workers’ was sourced from
the countryside (see also Chapter 2).
Fanon and Azoulay embarked, therefore, on a much closer investigation of
Algerian society and its dominant ‘mental conceptions’ (Marx (1990 [1867]):
493). Such an endeavour led to a better understanding as to why their group-
work activities, whilst achieving a measure of success with the European women,
failed so dismally with the male patients. Some of their discoveries were, albeit
apparently mundane, important in illuminating why their clinical approaches
misfred. For example, Muslim men rarely played games because, by the age of
ten or twelve they had begun to work with their fathers, either as shepherds or in
other work roles. They also had a very different conception of temporality and
their own age than Europeans (Fanon and Azoulay, 2018 [1954 or 1955]: 379).
Furthermore, Maghrebi Muslims had alternative conceptualisations of ‘madness’
(Fanon and Sanchez, 2018 [1956]). The hospital journal idea was fundamentally
problematic because most of the men were unable to read or write in either
Arabic or French. The culture was essentially oral, and teaching was carried
out through speech. In order to try to better cater for the needs of the Muslim
patients, therefore, a Moorish café was established in the hospital, traditional
Muslim feasts began to be regularly celebrated and ‘storytellers’ began to visit
(Fanon and Azoulay, 2018 [1954]: 371).
In 1956, Fanon resigned from the Blida Hospital because the ‘objective condi-
tions’ of psychiatric practice in Algeria were too much of a ‘challenge to com-
mon sense’ (Fanon, 2018 [1953]: 431). It was impossible to render the system less
‘vicious’ because the ‘doctrinal bases stood opposed daily to an authentic human
perspective’ (Fanon, 2018 [1953]: 434). This was because such ‘bases’ – rooted in
colonial psychiatry (Keller, 2007) – were grounded in a ‘hatred’ for those who
were native to Algeria (Fanon, 2018 [1953]: 434). More generally, Arabs were
‘permanently alienated’ in their own country and living in a ‘state of absolute
depersonalisation’ (Fanon, 2018 [1953]: 434). French Algeria was characterised
by a ‘systematic dehumanisation’ nullifying attempts to introduce more progres-
sive practice (Fanon, 2018 [1953]: 434). Fusing his clinical work to his politics,
Fanon concludes that the ‘troubles’ there are merely a ‘logical’ outcome of an
‘abortive attempt to decelebralise a people’ (Fanon, 2018 [1953]: 434).
198 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’

However, there are also indications that Fanon was becoming disenchanted
with the whole PI/socio-therapy approach that he had frst pursued at Saint-
Alban under the tutelage of Tosquelles. Reorganising wards in psychiatric hospi-
tals should not mislead people into thinking that such transformations refected
more substantial changes taking place in society as a whole. Any ‘attempt to
mask reality’ in this way was to be avoided (Fanon and Asselah, 2018 [1957]: 46).
On moving to Tunisia, his entire focus shifts to emphasise day-centre care for
psychiatric patients rather than hospitalisation (Fanon, 2018 [1959]; Fanon and
Geronimi, 2018 [1959]). However, such a clinical move can, perhaps, also be
interpreted as merely extending or projecting the anti-‘concentrationist’ reason-
ing of the IP advocates in an entirely logical direction.

Fanon and dissenting social work

One of the ‘biggest mistakes made by both critics and followers of Fanon is to
take his words out of context by detaching his pronouncements from the lived
experience that produced them’ (Hudis, 2015: 11). In bringing Fanon into con-
versation with DSW, therefore, it is important to recognise and acknowledge the
sharp criticisms levelled at him. These tend to circulate around two particular
issues. His alleged sexism and the stance he is supposed to have adopted in rela-
tion to violence. Certainly, the writing style is robustly and emphatically ‘mascu-
linist’ (Macey, 2012: 171). The way in which he generated his prose (with Fanon
enunciating and Josie – or, in Tunis, Marie-Jeanne Manuellan – typing) conveys
a hierarchical and gendered relation of literary production. Contemporary read-
ers are also likely to be distracted by his focus on the ‘Black man’ and the inces-
sant use of male pronouns. However, it might be suggested that his formation
occurred in an era when such an approach to writing was, of course, far from
unusual. In this regard, he can be compared to Hannah Arendt. Very much at
odds with the perspective of Fanon and enjoying something of a cultural resur-
gence, she also incessantly deployed male pronouns (see also Chapter 7). With
both writers it would be mistaken and reductive to charge that, on account
of this habit, their work should be ignored and judged by today’s standards in
terms of the appropriateness of using gender-neutral pronouns. What is more,
in engaging these writers, it is not diffcult to ‘translate’ their contributions to
nullify this problem.
With Fanon, this line of critique tends to go much further and pivots on the
notion he wholly fails to satisfactorily address the situation of women and this
is often related to a cursory (mis)reading of the position he took in relation to
the veil and dynamics within the Algerian family (see also Bullock, 2020; Sealy,
2020). In contrast, some writers fnd Fanon to be a useful resource and, in many
ways, attuned with analyses informed by feminist and intersectional forms of
analysis (Bohrer, 2015). Nevertheless, there is substance in the criticisms (see
McClintock, 1995). In BSWM, Fanon is scathing (and more than a little sexist)
in his condemnation of, for example, the author Mayotte Capécia because, in
 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’ 199

her I Am a Martinican Woman, she loves a White man to whom she submitted ‘in
everything’. He is her ‘lord’ and she asks nothing, demands nothing, ‘except a
bit of whiteness in her life’ (Fanon, 1986 [1952]: 42). Chiding Fanon, over forty
years after he wrote BSWM, Bergner, (1995: 77) maintains that women tend to
be ‘considered as subjects almost exclusively in terms of their sexual relationships
with men; feminine desire is thus defned as an overly literal and limited (hetero)
sexuality’.
Turning to his treatment of revolutionary violence, and refraining from re-
visiting some of the questions discussed earlier in the chapter, this aspect of
Fanon’s work has frequently been subjected to ‘hasty and sometimes casual read-
ings’ (Mbembe, 2017: 162). Important here is the U.S. reception of WE because
it largely shaped the evocation of Fanon as an apologist for messianic violence. For
example, whilst astonishingly failing to even mention the Algerian War raging
when he was writing, Arendt (1970) chastises Fanon for promoting a ‘metaphys-
ics of violence’ infuencing those disrupting U.S. university campuses in the late-
1960s and early 1970s. In this context, what Judith Butler (2007) terms Arendt’s
‘intemperate criticisms of Fanon’ are likely to have adversely contributed to false
perceptions of his comments on violence. As a doctor, Fanon equates ‘coloni-
alism with disease’ (Ahluwalia, 2003: 348). Hence, revolutionary violence is
akin to surgery and needs to be swift and targeted so that ‘in its aftermath a
process of healing’ can begin (Ahluwalia, 2003: 348). However, legitimate criti-
cisms can clearly be directed at this analysis. In an unpublished manuscript from
1966, Boualem Makouf – a member of the imprisoned Left opposition in post-
independent Algeria – argues that revolutionary violence is ‘gangrenous’ and
produces a ‘sort of dehumanisation’ (in Srivastava, 2017: 30). More recently, in a
thoughtful interrogation of this aspect of Fanon’s work, Aaronette White (2007:
874) asserts that, in contrast to Fanon’s ‘claims about revolutionary violence as a
cleansing force, war is a dirty business and a gendered business’. Instead of func-
tioning as a humanistic and transformative power, violence operated as a degen-
erative force. Just as fundamental, his ‘predictions concerning the transformative
psychological effects of political violence have not been clinically substantiated
by psychological research on women or men’.
Nevertheless, whilst mindful of some of the problems associated with Fanon,
there are certainly facets of his work which can usefully inform DSW. These
connective threads have been alluded to throughout the chapter. However, in
conclusion four themes appear especially signifcant.
First – and perhaps somewhat controversially – there is the issue of Fanon’s
anger. Within the mainstream social work literature anger is constructed as une-
quivocally troublesome and needing to be quelled or subjected to techniques of
‘anger management’. However, drawing on Fanon, it might be suggested that
the social and professional worlds which practitioners move through, although
very different to Fanon’s, might not unreasonably give rise to anger and that
anger, if collectivised and canalised, might generate new and progressive politi-
cal possibilities. Perhaps, as the Argentinian feminist philosopher, Maria Lugones
200 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’

(2003: 105) argues, anger ‘needs to be trained but not necessarily toned down’.
This dimension is very evident, at the time of writing, if we have regard to the
motivations and action of the BLM movement (Wall, 2020).
Second, being willing to engage with Fanon’s contributions may help prac-
titioners and educators to attain a better understanding of some of the main
dynamics associated with historical and contemporary issues associated with
colonisation and decolonisation. Many of the problems that Fanon articulates
are still present, albeit in a different form today, and social work’s complicity
in colonialism continues to have an impact (Kleibl et al., 2019). That is to say,
Fanon’s preoccupations should not be viewed as simply ‘theoretical’, ‘abstract’
or no longer relevant. In a powerful statement, the Canadian Association of
Social Workers (CASW) identifes how the profession has ‘reinforced the
colonial project’ and this has been apparent in its collusion with policies
and practices directed at Indigenous peoples (First Nations, Métis and Inuit)
(CASW: 3–4). The CASW refers to the ‘tremendous damage’ still resulting
from:

the intergenerational trauma from abuses and cultural shame experienced

at residential schools; the creation of addictions as a coping mechanism to
deal with the extreme trauma of being taken from their families, tortured,
ridiculed and forbidden from identifying with their culture and communi-
ties; the internalisation of these extreme injustices as guilt and shame with
a belief that this horrifc treatment was deserved for being Indigenous;
the labelling of Indigenous parents as unft, indifferent, and unable to
care for their children as opposed to a consideration of the systemic fac-
tors contributing to family challenges; the removal of traditional practices
of childbirth, parenting, educating children, and dealing with crimes or
wrongdoing within the community; the prohibition of celebrating lan-
guage and culture and common practices of healing resulting in the loss of
some traditional languages and practices forever. At the root of all of these
acts of discrimination are some of the greatest injustices of all: Canada is
comprised of treaty and stolen land, and Indigenous land rights continue
to be overlooked.
(CASW, 2019: 8)

Geopolitically, vast changes have occurred since the period of decolonisation

occurring after the Second World War. However, the world remains polarised
between a rich north and a relatively impoverished south (Devenny, 2007).
Fanon’s writings also continue to help us better understand how global com-
panies – many of them representatives of the tech sector and ‘cool capitalism’
– continue to exploit the ‘wretched of the earth’ (McGuigan, 2009). In late
2019, for example, progressive human rights lawyers in the United States fled a
class action lawsuit relating to the maiming and deaths of child labourers min-
ing cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The DRC has the
 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’ 201

world’s largest deposits of cobalt which is an essential element in the production

of rechargeable batteries in products manufactured by an array of leading corpo-
rations such as Apple, Alphabet (Google), Dell, Microsoft and Tesla. Children,
paid a dollar or two a day, are compelled to labour in ‘stone age’ working condi-
tions (International Rights Advocates, 2019). Indeed, this is a form of ‘brutal
extractivism’ that links directly to a range of Fanon’s concerns in the middle of
the twentieth century (Fraser in Fraser and Jaeggi, 2018: 93). Relatedly, during
the COVID-19 crisis, the Jubilee Debt Campaign (2020) reveals that sixty-four
states spend more on external debt payments than they are able to devote to
healthcare. Unsurprisingly, this drastically undermines the ability of countries
(such as Gambia, Ghana, Zambia, Laos, Lebanon and Pakistan) to deal ade-
quately with this public health emergency. Moreover, this situation highlights
how the colonial practices of the West continue to exploit parts of the Global
South. Perhaps also, Fanon enables us to better understand why such material
conditions prompt the growth of reactionary, religious fundamentalism (Hansen
and Musa, 2013).
Third, another facet to Fanon’s writings which is potentially important for
DSW is his opposition – in a way oddly similar to Rancière who uses a differ-
ent conceptual optic – to individuals’ being situated in categories which classify,
dominate and demean (see also Chapter 5). As we have seen, this characterises
his vehement rebuttal of racism and colonisation. Fanon is affronted by how,
having moved to France, he was treated on account of being located in a subal-
tern Black category. Such behaviour and treatment are rooted in the prevalent
‘automatic manner of classifying him, imprisoning him, primitivising him [and]
decivilising him’ (Fanon, 1986 [1952]: 32). However, he brilliantly switches ana-
lytical focus and productively uses this insight to refexively criticise his own
disposition and responses, as a practising psychiatrist, towards those now termed
‘service users’. Fanon confdes that he is prone to carelessly ‘slip’ into a particular
mode of relating:

Examining [a] seventy-three-year-old farm woman, whose mind was

never strong and who is now far gone in dementia, I am suddenly aware
of the collapse of the antennae with which I touch and through which I am
touched. The fact that I adopt a language suitable to dementia, to feeble-
mindedness; the fact that I ‘talk down’ to this poor woman of seventy-
three; the fact that I condescend to her in my quest for a diagnosis, are the
stigmata of a dereliction in my relations with other people.
(Fanon, 1986 [1952]: 32–3, original emphasis)

Here, Fanon uses the ‘attennae’, honed to detect racialisation, as a means to

refexively sensitise himself to his own shortcomings as a medical practitioner
engaging with an older woman with a degenerative brain disorder. More gen-
erally, the dangers of encasing people in ‘boxes’ is a theme that Fanon often
returns to comment on. It is wrong to ‘thingify’ individuals, to ‘dissolve’ them
202 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’

and empty them of ‘substance’ by forcing them into reductive categories (Fanon,
1988 [1964]: 14). Constantly, wary of behaviours partly generated by dehuman-
ising ‘classifying’ practices, these extracts make it apparent that Fanon’s concerns,
although circulating around question of ‘race’, recognition and colonialism are
far more expansive than perhaps ordinarily recognised. Here, the issue of cat-
egorisation and the unthinking behaviours this can prompt convey signifcant
messages for DSW.
Fourth, and potentially informing DSW’s engagement with social theory,
Fanon’s project partly pivots on the need to instil democracy and to promote
‘anticolonial and non-racial universalism’ (Gilroy, 2000: 71). As both ‘bene-
fciary and victim of European progress in its blood-stained imperial mode’,
Fanon demands ‘national liberation for colonial peoples’ but he links that ‘project
of revolutionary reconstruction to the deliberate production of a new concep-
tion of humanity’ (Gilroy, 2000: 70). As mentioned at the chapter’s outset, this
‘project’ has particular resonance for social workers committed to the ‘liberation
of people’ (IFSW, 2014). Moreover, a reaffrmation of this statement appears par-
ticularly important at our current conjuncture for, as Mbembe (2017: 161) notes:

In our world of hierarchical division, the idea of a common human condi-

tion is the object of many pious declarations. But it is far from being put
into practice. Old colonial divisions have been replaced with various forms
of apartheid, marginalization, and structural destitution. Global processes
of accumulation and expropriation in an increasingly brutal world eco-
nomic system have created new forms of violence and inequality.

Importantly, Fanon’s ostensibly political commitment to non-racial universalism

seamlessly extends into his practice as a psychiatrist and it is discernible in his
efforts to promote IP and to activate more participatory forms of psychiatry bet-
ter catering for the plurality of patients he encountered. This may be related to his
opposition to the whole notion of ‘negritude’ because it proposes a singular and
reductive lens through which to view social and political interactions. Writing
in the hospital journal at Blida, Fanon maintains that staff and patients should
constantly strive to ‘avoid on all occasions’ the creation of ‘division’ (Fanon,
2018 [1953–56]: 339). This position also illuminates Fanon’s desire to avoid any
political and professional projects swayed by a ‘stock of particularisms’ (Fanon in
Gibson, 2003: 171). The arranging of social life within the hospital needs to be
‘based on the existence of friendly relations between boarders, regardless of their
origin, their religion’ (Fanon, 2018 [1953–56]: 339). He continues:

The day that people attempt to make a big deal out of what separates us
from each other, we will see a myriad of committees and sub-committees
appear: Arabs, Kabyles, Mozabites, Algerian French (with sub-committees
for the regions of Oran, Alger and Constantine), metropolitan French
(with sub-committees per region …). And we ought not to forget the
 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’ 203

group of the non-grouped for those unable to fnd a place in the preceding
groups … The day it comes to this, there will be no need to dissolve all the
current organizations that tend toward the improvement of life in common
– they will have dissolved themselves.
(Fanon, 2018 [1953–56]: 339)

Conclusion
Fanon’s commitment to human liberation was enacted not only in terms of
his anti-racist and anti-colonial politics since it also fnds expression in his less
overtly ‘political’ interventions, in his practice as a clinician (Khalfa, 2018). A
key aspect of his work as psychiatrist, was that he constantly tried to imbue it
with the same values and progressive aspirations that were at the core of his poli-
tics. Professional practice and political practice were dialectically enmeshed and
formed a totality. Conveying an important message for DSW, his engagement
with both ‘felds’ was anchored in a project to dismantle obstacles to democracy. In his
politics, this found direct expression in his enlisting in the Free French Armed
Forces to fght fascism and then, in his support for the struggle of the FLN to free
Algeria from colonial rule. In his psychiatry, it was present in his challenge to
the essentially racist nostrums formulated by fgures, such as Porot and Mannoni,
and in his attempts to introduce less hierarchical forms of engaging with patients.
Vital here are Fanon’s attempts to engage in IP in Saint-Alban and to then exper-
iment in similar ways in Blida. Towards the end of his life, Fanon also began to
recognise the limitations of what could be achieved within the institution of the
hospital and this was refected in his move to establish day care and alternative
forms of hospitalisation in Tunis.
Formerly subjected to an array of imperialist interventions intent on the sub-
jugation and exploitation of its people and resources, China will be the focus of
our next chapter. With 500 social work schools expected to be located there by
2020, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) may tell us a good deal about the
future of social work globally. As Leung and Xu (2015: 157) note, it seems that
‘no other country in the world has such a comprehensive and long term plan for
the development of its social work profession’. What, therefore, might be the
possibilities for DSW in the PRC? What may be the political and social con-
straints facing Chinese social workers?
204 It is becoming ‘impossible to breathe’

REFLECTION AND TALK BOX 9

How might we relate Fanon to current attempts to decolonise the university
and the struggles of the BLM?

How might Fanon’s ideas on anti-colonial and non-racial universalism be

understood alongside, or in conflict with notions of ‘diversity’ and ‘difference’
in social work?

Fanon and Azoulay, (2018 [1954]: 368) observe:

The doctor, especially the psychiatrist, makes a diagnosis through language

… While the face is expressive and the gestures profuse, it is necessary to
wait until the patient has stopped talking in order to grasp the meaning,
at which point the interpreter sums up in two words what the patient has
related in detail in ten minutes … Going through an interpreter is perhaps
valid when it comes to something simple or transmitting an order, but it
no longer is when it is necessary to begin a dialogue, a dialectical exchange
of questions and replies.

When translation becomes an issue in social work practice, how might such
comments aid the reflection of practitioners?

Can Fanon’s comments on how people are tagged with ‘race’-based classifica-
tions be brought into conversation with Jacques Rancière’s thinking on how
people are situated within ‘police’ orders?

How might Fanon’s comments on the ‘collapse of the antennae with which I
touch and through which I am touched’, inform social work practice?

Notes
1 In his chapter, the following abbreviations are used: Black Skin, White Masks (BSWM),
Studies in a Dying Colonialism (DC) and The Wretched of the Earth (WE). This chapter
also draws on Garrett (2020e). I am grateful to Policy Press/Bristol University Press
and Oxford Academic for permitting me to have recourse to this work again.
2 For ease of reference, only the BSWM page numbers are provided in this section.
3 For ease of reference, only the DC page numbers are provided in this section.
4 For ease of reference, only the WE page numbers are provided in this section.
10
SOCIAL WORK’S CHINESE
FUTURE?: ANTONIO GRAMSCI

Introduction
Almost eighty contributions from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) were
listed to appear at the prestigious International Federation of Social Workers
(IFSW) world conference held in Dublin during the summer of 2018. Forty
years after the ‘reform and opening’ (gaige kaifang) of the PRC in 1978, the num-
ber of presentations is indicative of the rapid (re)emergence of Chinese social
work and the frm foothold it has within the global social work community.
More provocatively, Mel Gray (2008: 401) argues that the PRC now presents an
‘ideal opportunity for social work’s territorialising machine’. Such a dynamic is
detectable, for example, in the efforts by U.S.-based social work educators and
practitioners to take ‘New York social work savvy to Beijing’ (Stoelker, 2016).
It was, in fact, an American missionary, John Stewart Burgess, who intro-
duced social work to China at the beginning of the twentieth century (Meng
et al., 2019). In 1917, he set up the Student Social Service Club and, fve years
later whilst teaching at Yenching University, he helped to set up a training pro-
gramme modelled on those prevalent in the United States. In this sense, the
beginning of social work training in China can be viewed as an example of
social ‘policy transfer’ inspired by a foreign power (Dolowitz et al., 2000). Prior
to the inauguration of the PRC in the late-1940s, ‘eight universities in China
provided social work programmes’ (Leung and Xu, 2015: 153). However, both
social work and sociology came to an end in the early 1950s, after being catego-
rised as examples of ‘bourgeois pseudo-science’ (in Meng et al., 2019: 934) (see
also Table 10.1).
In more recent times, the political project to promote social work in the PRC
is analytically inseparable from the ‘big picture of social governance’ (Wang,
2015: 79) and thorough examination cannot, therefore, be solely confned to
TABLE 10.1 Situating Social Work in the PRC

Period Economic context Key fgure Mode of governance/leading discourses Social work

Pre-1949 Feudalism & colonial Various Hegemony (Confucianism/Capitalism) Introduction of social work by U.S. missionaries
exploitation/capitalism Emerging counter hegemonic challenges (beginning of twentieth century)
(International communism) Student Social Service Club (2017)
Yenching University establishes social work
training (1920s)
Eight universities providing social work
programmes (by late 1940s)
Late Communism Mao/Maoism Hegemony (‘Revolutionary Marxism/ Abolition of sociology and social work (1950s)
206 Social work’s Chinese future?

1949–1978 Anti-imperialism)
1970s–early Transition to capitalism Deng Passive Revolution (‘Market reform’ Social science re-stablished (late 1970s)
2000s with Chinese Xiaoping & discourse of ‘Marxism with Chinese (re)creation of social work (1980s)
characteristics Jiang Zemin characteristics’)
2000s Maintenance and Hu Jintao Hegemony (‘Harmonious Society’/market China Association of Social Work founded (1991)
consolidation of ‘reform’ accompanied by discourse of ‘Marxism & China Association for Social Work Education
capitalism with Chinese with Chinese characteristics’) (1994)
characteristics Pivotal year (2006)
Social work licensing system (2008)
Predicted that there would be a need for 2 million
social workers by 2015 and 3 million by 2020.
In 2012, this was revised to 0.5 million and 1.5
million, respectively (2010)
2012/2013 Maintenance and Xi Jinping Hegemony (‘Harmonious Society’/market 500 social work schools planned in the PRC (2020)
consolidation of ‘reform’/’Chinese dream’, nationalism
capitalism with Chinese accompanied by discourse of ‘Marxism with
characteristics Chinese characteristics’)
 Social work’s Chinese future? 207

policies in one discrete feld of social intervention. Within the context of this
book’s overall preoccupation with dissent, the aspiration of this chapter is to
explore interrelated questions regarding the resurgence of social work in the
PRC: in a country in which social work was starkly absent for decades, why has
it been revived since the 1980s and, much more emphatically, since 2006? Why
have policy makers felt the need to develop the profession again? What does this
move reveal about the wider economic and social context in which social work
is situated in the PRC? How much space is afforded for dissent within this new
social work ‘industry’ (Feng, 2013: 101)? In exploring these questions, we will
be aided by the concepts of Antonio Gramsci. His ideas provide the foundation
for the chapter, but I will not dwell on them at length because I have done so
elsewhere (see, for example, Garrett, 2018b: Ch. 6).1
The evolution of social work in the PRC has led some Western social work
academics to question if the country’s dominant political values and practices are
compatible with what is unambiguously considered as the socially progressive and
humanitarian orientation of social work elsewhere. Hutchings and Taylor (2007),
for example, assess the status of social work in the PRC against the requirements
laid out in the IFSW’s defnition of the profession. In terms of promoting prin-
ciples of social justice, the authors loftily conclude that ‘China’s current govern-
ment has made a greater commitment to vulnerable groups than its predecessors’
(Hutchings and Taylor, 2007: 387). Nonetheless, they caution, social workers in
the PRC might struggle to achieve the necessary ethical milestones in seeking to
promote social change because ‘criticism of government policy, may prove dan-
gerous and result in oppression and persecution’ (Hutchings and Taylor, 2007:
386). Unlike in the West, with its valorisation of individual ‘autonomy, choice
and control’, in the PRC the Communist Party of China (CPC) ‘tradition’ is
one of ‘direct instruction, education and guidance, antithetical’ to Western social
work practice theory (Hutchings and Taylor, 2007: 386). Given how Chinese
society is assembled and maintained, seeking to ‘empower’ and ‘liberate’ people
is fraught with diffculties because going ‘against the authorities’, is ‘viewed as
suspicious’ (Hutchings and Taylor, 2007: 386). Most contentiously, there also
exists another Chinese ‘tradition’ grounded in a belief – entirely at odds with
Western notions of ‘empowerment’ – that educators monopolise knowledge to
‘maintain the “upper hand” over students’ (Hutchings and Taylor, 2007: 386–7).
Tinged with Orientalism, this contribution is fawed on a number of counts
(Gray, 2008). Indeed, some of the criticisms directed at the political shackles
placed on social work in the PRC might equally be applied to, say, the United
Kingdom – where Hutchings and Taylor are located – given that dissenting prac-
titioners and educators are also likely to be regarded as ‘suspicious’ by employ-
ers (Rogowski, 2010). Moreover, the charge that educators, in the PRC, are
unwilling to share knowledge is totally baseless ( Jia, 2008). More expansively,
Hutchings and Taylor’s contribution appears to be implicitly underpinned by
a certain Western epistemological arrogance (de Sousa Santos, 2012; see also
Taylor and Hutchings, 2008). In wider contextual and political terms, the PRC
208 Social work’s Chinese future?

was also, of course, the historical target for Western imperialist incursions and
the state continues to be earmarked for U.S. warmongering and aggressive
political diatribes (BBC, 2016). Ramped up since the outbreak of the COVID-
19 pandemic, this antipathy and condescension for the PRC, in many parts of
the Western media, can be related to the prevalence of anti-Chinese racism
(BBC, 2017; see also Chapter 1). As we saw in our discussion on Levinas, fac-
ets of Western philosophy are tainted with this same racist propensity (see also
Chapter 8).
A few preliminary remarks about my own positionality are necessary:
expressed a little more bluntly – ‘what right do I have to “speak” on dissent and
social work in the PRC?’ One of my books has been translated into Chinese
and I was graciously welcomed to the PRC to teach enthusiastic and questioning
postgraduate social work students at the East China University of Science and
Technology in Shanghai. Whilst there, I provided a keynote paper at an All-
China Social Work conference. However, given that I am ordinarily located on
the far edge of Western Europe and have no knowledge of the Chinese language,
my comprehension of some of the themes discussed in this chapter is inescapably
fragmentary and limited. In short, my perceptions are largely formed from the
‘outside’ and they can only provide a subjective glimpse, which inevitably misses
many nuances. Readers need, therefore, to keep in mind these remarks relating
to my palpable limitations and competence. Furthermore, the sheer vastness of
the PRC, with approximately 1.3 billion people and a diverse ethnic profle, can
seem to defy analytical comprehension (Zang, 2015). The pace of development
and associated urbanisation has been so rapid that ‘some commentators claim it
is the equivalent of Europe’s Industrial Revolution, only collapsed into the space
of thirty to forty instead of 150 years’ ( Jeffreys with Yu, 2015: 2). Many cities
have grown exponentially in recent years with the showcase city of Shenzhen
having its population skyrocket from about 310,000 in 1979 to about 12 million
in 2016 (Cho, 2017: 275). Such processes were satirised in Yan Lianke’s (2017)
extraordinary novel The Explosion Chronicles.
The chapter draws on, distils and synthesises an expansive range of literature –
mostly derived from Chinese and South-East Asian scholarship – located within
and outside social work. First, drawing on Gramsci’s concept of the ‘passive revo-
lution’, it charts how capitalism has been incrementally restored to the PRC since
the late 1970s (Morton, 2007; Thomas, 2009). Clearly, this is an immense area
of analysis and comment and relevant dimensions can only be addressed in trun-
cated form. However, if we are to begin to understand the ‘speeding up of the
development of social work’ (Wang, 2015: 79), then it is important to acknowl-
edge the CPC’s decisive turn in 1978. Second, again making use of the theorisa-
tion of Gramsci, it is argued that – in examining developments in the PRC over
the past two decades – the concept of ‘hegemony’ provides a potentially useful
foundation for exploring the notion of the ‘harmonious society’ which began to
be articulated by CPC leadership in 2002 and was presented, in a more rounded
form, in 2006. Third, in the next part of the chapter, it is maintained that it may
 Social work’s Chinese future? 209

be possible to identify the emerging contours of a social work with distinctive

Chinese traits. These relate to the fact that social work in the PRC is a top-down
government-directed project which eliminates the political space for dissent;
social workers are rather marginalised within a particular construct of the ‘com-
munity’; economically precarious social workers appear to be lowly paid and
possess little ‘symbolic capital’ (Bourdieu, 1991).

‘Passive revolution’: the restoration of capitalism in the PRC

In 1949, the Chinese Revolution toppled the ‘three mountains of imperialism,
feudalism, and bureaucrat-capitalism’ (Xi, 2017: 12). Whilst not seeking to
impose a ‘golden age’ narrative on the ensuing years, this was clearly an extraor-
dinary achievement and the Maoist period (1949–78) produced tangible gains for
the people (renmin). In 1950, for example, life expectancy was around thirty-fve,
but by 1982 it had increased to sixty-eight (Leung and Xu, 2015: 20).
The historic Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee of the CPC
convened in December 1978, signalling the beginning of the so-called ‘reform’
era (Sigley, 2009). Although never holding offce as either General Secretary of
the CPC or President of the PRC, Deng Xiaoping, was the fgure largely respon-
sible for steering through a market ‘reform’ agenda. This shift did not imply the
end of planning or state intervention and it was accompanied by the continuing
authoritarian management of civil society as refected in the unevenly enforced
biopolitical ‘one child policy’ which was offcially endorsed in 1980 (Kipnis,
2007: 338). The 1980s also witnessed the state’s elimination of the world’s frst
contemporary ‘Occupy’ movement – the politically ambiguous – Tiananmen
Square protests of 1989.
Developments, since 1978, might be conceptualised as a ‘passive revolution’
(Hui, 2017). Derived from the theorisation of Gramsci, this phrase refers to a
situation in which a ruling group lacks suffcient hegemonic power – both coer-
cive and cultural – to unequivocally impose its political, economic and social
programme. Whilst failing to engage with and win over the majority of the pop-
ulation, it aims to ensure the cooperation and acquiescence of potentially signif-
cant antagonistic groups. This is done by means of incorporating and absorbing
them into the organs of the state, key ideological apparatuses and associated elite
networks. Such a strategy, whilst it not – as with hegemonic power – founded
upon popular and mass support of the people, can still result in substantial and
far-reaching change. Indeed, a ‘passive revolution’ or ‘top-down’ revolution may
result (Hoare and Nowell Smith, 2005). As Gramsci notes, this can also be per-
ceived as a period when the ruling class is no longer able to lead, only to domi-
nate, by ‘exercising coercive force alone’. It may also illuminate the appearance
of a ‘crisis’ in so far as the ‘old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this
interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’ (in Hoare and Nowell
Smith, 2005: 275–6). In the PRC, such ‘symptoms’ have included – as will be
discussed later in the chapter – the suicides of migrant workers (mingong chao)
210 Social work’s Chinese future?

and the plight of the children ‘left-behind’ on account of their parents being
compelled to leave the countryside to fnd work in the cities (China Daily, 2017).
The ‘reforms’ have, in fact, ‘triggered a series of profound social problems,
such as inequality, unemployment and “foating populations” in large cities’
(Ying, 2013: 1591). Migrant workers constitute the bulk of this ‘foating popu-
lation’, and they swell the number of workers in the rapidly expanding cities.
Many such workers have recently found themselves stranded on account of the
various ‘lockdown’ measures introduced to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Migrant labour is not – as may be often assumed – limited to factory work since
many white-collar workers, including social workers, fall into this category.
These workers’ presence in the cities is generated by the de-collectivisation of
agriculture and the need for proletarian labour, particularly in the construc-
tion and micro-electronics assembly plants. In terms of the former sector, the
Chinese construction industry has been ‘consuming half the world’s concrete
and a third of its steel and employs about 60 million people, most of them rural
workers coming from all over the country’ (Pun, 2016: 42). The company which
achieved prominent notoriety in the latter sector is the Hon Hai Precision
Industry Company founded in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, in 1974. It is better
known as ‘Foxconn’ – an abbreviation alluding to the corporation’s renown for
producing electronic connectors at quick and agile fox-like speed. Multinational
corporations availing of Foxconn services include renowned surveillance capi-
talist brands such as Amazon, Apple and Microsoft (Pun et al., 2016; see also
Chapter 4). In short, a veritably grim rollcall of global capitalism’s hip and ‘cool’
corporations (McGuigan, 2009).
Foxconn has industrial plants in a number of countries, but the PRC is home
to more of its factories than any other country. The largest of these is located in
Shenzhen, where hundreds of thousands of workers, including the company’s
own social workers, are employed on a campus often referred to as Foxconn
City. The working – and living – conditions of these workers have been the
source of longstanding concerns (Pun and Koo, 2015). For example, the com-
pany has been criticised for the length of employees’ working-day; the pace and
robotic character of the work undertaken; the way that workers are treated (not,
for instance, being able to talk to each other); the recruitment and deployment,
as part of so-called mandatory ‘internship’ programmes, of school students as
‘cheap labour’ (Smith and Chan, 2015); the use of crowded migrant dormito-
ries which blur the boundaries between home and work. Intensifed forms of
exploitation and value extraction have unsurprisingly generated various types
of worker protest. In 2010, eighteen young migrant workers attempted suicide
at Foxconn production facilities (Pun, 2016: 57). In January 2012, on Foxconn’s
Wuhan campus, over ‘one hundred workers protested on the roof of a three-
story building, threatening to commit mass suicide’ (Pun and Koo, 2015: 414).
Later that year, 5,000 armed police were dispatched to respond to a riot by of
thousands of workers at the Foxconn factory in the northern Chinese city of
Taiyuan (Beech, 2012).
 Social work’s Chinese future? 211

In the 1980s and 1990s, it was primarily young women who were perceived
as the ideal workers to undertake this form of assembly work. Now the second
generation of migrant workers is more gender balanced. Young migrant work-
ers, interviewed by Pun and Koo (2015: 413) were also keen to possess the ‘cut-
ting-edge networking gadgets they produced, such as iPhones and iPads, so that
they could be connected to urban modernity’. Many of these workers are likely
to have been lured to the various Foxconn factories because wages are often
relatively higher than the local market norms. In the nineteenth century, Marx
(1990 [1867]): 784) wrote about a similar category of workers who constituted a
‘disposable industrial reserve army’, a ‘mass of human material always ready for
exploitation’. According to Marx, these workers became the ‘lever of capitalist
accumulation’ and a ‘condition of the existence of the capitalist mode of produc-
tion’ (see also Chapter 2). What he terms the ‘latent’ element of this ‘surplus
population of workers’ are sourced from the countryside. Likewise, today in the
PRC, workers based in the countryside are ‘called upon to work in the city but
not to stay in the city’ (Pun, 2016: 67). The rural-urban divide is administered
and surveilled via the hukou system – a household registration scheme – intro-
duced in 1958 and resembling an internal passport scheme (Wang and Liu, 2018).
Many urban workers hold rural household hukou permits and so their presence in
the city is often ‘contingent and precarious’ (Cho, 2013: 14).
The scale of economic inequality is striking in that 1 percent of the population
owns 42 percent of the wealth. In 2012, the average income of the top 20 percent
was twenty times that of the bottom 20 percent (Leung and Xu, 2015: 57).
Although continuing to profess an adherence to Marxism, the PRC is willing to
tolerate – even, apparently, to nurture – extreme inequalities. For example, the
Shenzhen-based real estate developer Hui Ka Yan is reported to have a net worth
of $42.5 billion (Flannery, 2017). Aside from a super-rich class, an ‘emergent,
fragmented, and amorphous’ middle class has evolved, in cities such as Shanghai,
which has been empowered to purchase homes in ‘gated communities’ and to
send their children to private schools (Woronov, 2009). Each day, often under
the watchful eyes of attentive and armed security personnel, such children are
shepherded onto and off new, shiny yellow school buses. Many will be destined
for university education beyond the fnancial reach of many families. Additional
‘symbolic capital’ accrues to those parents able to have their offspring educated
at Western universities (Bourdieu, 1991).
By 2005, according to offcial pronouncements in the PRC, the formerly
state-planned economy had been superseded by a ‘socialist market economy’
(in Hui, 2017: 73). Nevertheless, it is apparent that this process has been steered
by a ‘fedging capitalist class’ (Hui, 2017: 73). Eradicated in the years following
the foundation of the state in 1949, this class is comprised of three core elements
(Sio-ieng Hui, 2017). First, foreign corporations which became situated in the
PRC after the inauguration of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), starting with
Shenzhen the ‘holy place of China’s economic reform’, from 1979 onwards (Cho,
2017: 275). The injection of foreign capital in these areas is illuminated by the
212 Social work’s Chinese future?

presence of Walmart littering the Chinese landscape with almost 450 retail units
over 189 cities. Second, a tier composed of ‘cadre-turned capitalists’ profting
after state owned enterprises (SOEs) were ‘corporatised or sold to private entre-
preneurs in the mid-1990s’ (Hui, 2017: 17). Third, although still publicly owned,
reshaped SOEs function as ‘key market actors’ in vital sectors such as telecom-
munications and banking (Hui, 2017: 73).
Economic ‘reforms’ have boosted, according to one social work-related
contribution, ‘China’s socioeconomic development’ with the resulting seismic
changes having ‘considerably improved … people’s living standards’ (Meng et al.,
2019: 938). Based on the World Bank threshold of $1.25 a day, the poverty rate
dropped from 84 percent in 1980 to 10 percent in 2013 (in Leung and Xu, 2015:
2). However, the Human Development Index compiled by the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) still ranks the PRC only at 85 out of the 189
countries assessed (UNDP, 2019). ‘Big picture’ representations, such as those
amplifed by Meng et al. (2019), also risk inadvertently obscuring the fact that
the development strategy in the PRC manifestly accords ‘priority to the develop-
ment of a certain section of the population and certain regions’ (Pun, 2016: 15).
After thirty years of ‘reform’ the country transformed from a global centre
of revolution for people into a workshop of the world for capital. With ‘29 per-
cent of the world’s workforce, labour costs in this giant “global factory” are as
low as one-sixth that of Mexico and one-fortieth the US’ (Pun, 2016: 6). It was
during the period when Jiang Zemin was General Secretary of the CPC (1989–
2002) and President of the PRC (1993–2003) that capitalist restoration policies
became more pronounced and stridently energised. Capitalists were permitted
to join the CPC and, by 2014, ‘close to one-third of the super-rich in the coun-
try’ were members (Hui, 2017: 73–4) (see also Table 10.1). Eighty-six billion-
aires were members of the National People’s Congress and sixty-nine billionaires
were members of the People’s Political Consultative Conference. Indeed, the
CPC apparatus and capitalist elites appeared to have fused into one ‘historical
bloc’ committed to a ‘passive revolution’ bent on eradicating the economic order
established in 1949 (Hoare and Nowell Smith, 2005). Relatedly, the PRC has
been subject to starkly uneven of development with economic resources being
‘disproportionately allocated’ to showcase cities, most prominently Shanghai,
and other coastal cities (Gray, 2010). Meanwhile, inland provinces have lagged
behind. This development is illuminated in Mun Young Cho’s (2013: 3) ethno-
graphically rich depiction of the northeast where ‘old manufacturing cities, once
a socialist industrial base, have become a moribund rustbelt … at the moment
when their country is being heralded as the world’s emerging superpower’.
Moreover, public discourses now ‘mock northeasterners for their radical shift
from being the “sons of the Republic” to ignorant dropouts’ because they are not
‘successful’ (chenggong) (Cho, 2013: 29).
The working class and peasants have been deprived of a range of material
and social gains since the ‘reforms’ of 1978. Urban work units (danwei) and rural
communes (renmin gongshe), which also provided forms of solidarity and social
 Social work’s Chinese future? 213

assistance, have been replaced by market-driven arrangements whereby workers

are compelled to sell their labour power (Hui, 2016). The loss of the so-called
‘iron rice bowl’ – the commitment of the government and the CPC to provide
secure employment and a steady income – was indicative of the offensive aimed
at workers located in SOEs (Chan, and Peng, 2011; Cho, 2013; Chaohua, 2015).
The demise of this policy and, symbolically, the ethical assurance that ‘everyone’
would eat from the ‘same big pot’ heralded the dismantling of collective state
provision for workers and their families (Leung and Xu, 2015). This situation
was memorably and plaintively evoked in Jia Zhangke’s remarkable and poignant
2008 drama-documentary 24 City.
Over thirty years, ‘an entire generation – or two – of China’s industrial
working class was made victim to the reform process. For them, the net effect
was no better than that of “shock therapy” in Russia’ (Chaohua, 2015: 31–2).
Furthermore, this development seems to typify what Harvey (2005) refers to as
capital ‘accumulation by dispossession’. Beginning in the late 1990s, a whole host
of sectors directly ‘linked to the quality of life of the common people – hous-
ing, health care, education, etc. – basically became marketised’ and sources of
capital accumulation (Pun, 2016: 14). Today, it ‘costs money to send a child to
school, it costs money when an older person gets ill – the fnancial burden on
the individual family has increased dramatically’ (Pun, 2016: 24–5). With the
foundation of the PRC in 1949, private property was outlawed. However, begin-
ning in 1979, urban residents – foreshadowing the policies of the UK admin-
istration of Margaret Thatcher – were encouraged to purchase their work unit
located homes, at greatly reduced prices (Cho, 2013: 51). Within newly con-
fgured workplaces, neoliberal ‘contract’ schemes and other forms of precarious
working were introduced. Mass dismissals also resulted, with lay-offs amounting
to ‘more than 20 million in the 1990s’ (Chaohua, 2015: 31–2). Indeed, market
mechanisms generated a massive swathe of what are euphemistically referred to
as ‘off-post’ (xiagang) workers.
By 1982 the ‘right to strike’ contained in earlier PRC constitutions had been
removed as ‘ultra-leftist’ (White, 2013: 799). Still, strikes and industrial unrest
continue to take place with restructuring leading to more than ‘three thousand
worker strikes and protests every year in the late 1990s and early 2000s’ (Cho,
2013: 28). Protests sparked by land expropriation, house demolitions and the
despoliation of the environment have also taken place but strikes and related dis-
ruptions have failed to coalesce into a mass opposition movement (Gray, 2010).
Indicative of the conceptual purchase of the ‘passive revolution’ formulation, the
world’s largest trade union organisation – the All-China Federation of Trade
Unions (ACFTU) – has been largely incorporated within the mechanisms of the
Chinese state and thus it has been rendered largely compliant and unwilling to
destabilise the ‘reform’ programme introduced in 1978 (Hui, 2016; Friedman,
2014).
In what follows, we will utilise Gramsci’s conceptualisation of ‘hegemony’ to
interpret and understand the notion of the ‘harmonious society’, so central to the
214 Social work’s Chinese future?

(re)creation of social work in the PRC. Contentiously, according to Leung and Xu

(2015), the ‘harmonious society’ concept is so substantial as to represent a ‘third’
rupture, following those prompted by the establishment of the PRC in 1949 and the
‘reform and opening’ in 1978.

A new hegemonic project: Assembling

the ‘harmonious society’
Hegemonic power is not to be misleadingly interpreted as the antithesis of
domination or outright coercive intervention. Rather, as Gramsci avows, the
supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as ‘domination’ and as
‘intellectual and moral leadership’ (Gramsci in Hoare and Nowell Smith, 2005:
57, emphasis added). For a hegemonic project to be successful, therefore, it has
to address people’s lived experience of the world. Thus, a dominant class has to
organise, persuade and maintain the consent of the subjugated by ensuring that its
own ideas constitute the core perceptions and ‘common sense’ within a particu-
lar nation and social formation (Crehan, 2011). In this context, stark inequalities
present particular challenges to the ‘hegemony’ of the CPC because it was not
meant to be this way. That is to say, whereas

most ghetto residents in the United States or slum dwellers in India have
been mired in poverty throughout their lives … impoverished workers in
China’s shantytowns were once ‘the people’ serving as both ideological
representatives and the main benefciaries of the socialist regime.
(Cho, 2013: 59–60)

In terms of leading and managing the population, the PRC is a social formation
in which the CPC leadership – since 1949 – has appeared particularly attuned
to the political and cultural importance of ‘keywords’ and it has aspired to lexi-
calise hegemonic power (Williams, 1983; Garrett, 2018a). In the early years of
the state, in fact, many leading cadres had professional backgrounds in publish-
ing and editing and a series of struggles took place concerning particular words
to include or exclude from offcially produced dictionaries (Lee, 2014). During
the period of Mao, for example, sustained battles were waged aimed at omitting
words deemed too ‘pessimistic’ (Lee, 2014, 432). Since Xi Jinping became the
General Secretary of the CPC and President of the PRC – in 2012 and 2013,
respectively – the government, sensitive to criticisms directed at the range of new
powers that he was accorded, has censored a range of ‘sensitive’ words used on
social media (China Digital Times, 2018; Phillips, 2018).
Over the last two decades, the CPC has ‘retained its commitment to the
Dengist core idea of integrating China gradually, but ever more fully into global
capitalist networks of production and exchange by entrenching market institu-
tions’ (Mulvad, 2017: 29). However, Hu Jintao (General Secretary of the CPC
 Social work’s Chinese future? 215

from 2002 to 2012 and President of the PRC from 2003 to 2012) adopted a
somewhat different approach to that of the so-called ‘Shanghai Gang’ whose
political dominance was symbolised by Jiang Zemin (Gray, 2010: 462). The
Chinese working class has a history of radical politics and because of this, a fear
of ‘harmful reactions against the government is a constant undercurrent’ (Yang,
2015: 3). Both leaders were, therefore, attentive to the threat of revolt – espe-
cially from a potentially antagonistic working class – and both administrations
adopted tactics and strategies to try and ward off this occurring. Put rather sche-
matically, the period 1978–2002/3 was one of ‘passive revolution’ and the subse-
quent period has been one of capitalist ‘hegemony’ with the CPC-state seeking
to further embed the new evolving economic relations following the dramatic
shifts taking place in the fnal quarter of the century (see also Table 10.1).
The Hu Jintao leadership ‘shifted to a “softer” variant of Dengism with more
emphasis on retaining social stability’ (Mulvad, 2017: 29). It aimed to ‘present
itself as being more focused on the plight of those left behind in China’s prosper-
ity, on clean and transparent government and the rooting out of corruption, and
on the rule of law’ (Gray, 2010: 12). A fresh emphasis was placed on greater social
inclusiveness and more ameliorative social policies (Leung and Xu, 2015). This
move was also likely to have been triggered by the marked escalation in labour
disputes. According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, such disputes
jumped dramatically from 12,368 in 1993 to 693,465 in 2008. Moreover, the
number of ‘mass incidents’ (the offcial term for protests, strikes and demonstra-
tions) escalated from 10,000 in 1994 to 87,000 in 2005 to 127,467 in 2008 (in
Hui and Chan, 2011: 160).
This social turbulence provided part of the context for the conceptualisation
and amplifcation of the more conciliatory and upbeat ‘harmonious society’. The
concept – inextricably linked to the (re) creation of social work – was initially
raised at the sixteenth CPC Congress, held in November 2002. Subsequently,
it was defned by the CPC Central Committee’s fourth plenary session of
September 2004 as a society building on ‘democracy and rule of law, justice and
equality, trust and truthfulness, amity and vitality, order and stability, and a har-
monious relation with nature’ (in Hui and Chan, 2011: 160). Later, the Peoples’
Daily, the main CPC-state newspaper, articulated the ‘harmonious society’ as
one in which ‘all the people will do their best, each individual has his proper
place, and everybody will get along in harmony with each other’ (in Hui and
Chan, 2011: 160). In early 2005, Hu Jintao asserted that the ‘harmonious society’
was integral to a politics intent on ‘consolidating the party’s social foundation to
govern’ and achieve its historical ‘mission’ (in Hui and Chan, 2011: 161). In this
way, in Gramscian terms, the CPC view this construct as an essential component
of its hegemonic project to furnish intellectual and moral leadership and a politi-
cal direction during a time of social turbulence.
Thus, in recent years, the rhetorical emphasis has been placed on social stabil-
ity and harmony (shehui wending he hexie) and such notions have been deployed to
216 Social work’s Chinese future?

suggest that the PRC had abandoned the strategy of uncontrolled growth and its
associated abyssal social and economic inequalities. In this sense, the brake was
being applied to halt reckless and destabilising processes of capital accumulation.
Signifcantly, seeking to reach into the ‘lifeworld’ of the people, policy debates
circulating around the ‘harmonious society’ have also been historically grounded
in Confucian values stressing ‘social stability and order over confict, collec-
tive over individual interests, obedience to authority, family obligations, a work
ethic, and the importance of education’ (Leung and Xu, 2015: 10).
‘Hegemony’ is not, however, simply achieved via a series of discursive inter-
ventions undergirded by the constant threat of coercive state measures against
insurgent tendencies. That is to say, actual material concessions are also neces-
sary. For example, since the late-1990s, a Minimum Livelihood Guarantee – col-
loquially known as dibao – has been the main response to poverty. Originating in
Shanghai in 1993, the assessment criteria is complex, and it is percolated, perhaps
like systems of income maintenance elsewhere, by culturally embedded ideas
about the ‘deserving’/’undeserving’ (Li and Walker, 2017). Prevalent here are
discourses around ‘welfare dependency’ not unlike those in the United Kingdom
(Tyler, 2013), for example, mockery of those ‘who “eat on dibao” (chi dibao)
without actively searching for a new job runs through media accounts’ (Cho,
2013: 89). Similarly, terms such as ‘“dibao sluggards” (dibao lanhan) or “dibaon-
iks” (dibao zu) are frequently used to denigrate “lazy” people who are supposedly
satisfed with dibao and thus reluctant to look for work’ (Cho, 2013: 89).
Migrant workers were granted more legal protection and minimum wage
increases occurred in some regions. Signifcant new laws governing industrial
relations and contracts were also introduced in 2007 (Hui and Chan, 2011).
Strikingly, despite the promulgation of this rhetorically recalibrated model of
development, income inequality and the wealth gap have not been adequately
dealt with by the state (Statista, 2018). Since Xi Jinping has taken the helm, there
does not seem to have been any substantial departures from the ‘harmonious
society’ theme articulated by Hu Jintao and his ruling circle. Throughout the
‘reform’ era, though, Chinese leaders have continued to search for a ‘new ideo-
logical justifcation for their leadership’ (Lee, 2014: 435). With the current lead-
ership, a much more nationalistic strand – refected in the aspiration to achieve
the ‘Chinese Dream (zhongguo m eng) of national rejuvenation’ – is to the fore
(Xi, 2017: 1). This ‘vision’ aims to encourage the ‘release of positive energy and
efforts to mobilise people to identify with and fulfll state interests’ (Yang, 2015:
9). According to some commentators, the whole idea of ‘national development’
seems to have entirely usurped ‘proletarian dictatorship’ and ‘revolution’ as the
most ‘powerful signifer’ in the PRC (Cho, 2013: 34). Indeed, today ‘national-
ism is the only effective ideological force consolidating people’s identifcation
with the state’ (Laikwan, 2017: 7).
Given this structural and political context, what type of social work is pres-
ently being constituted in the PRC?
 Social work’s Chinese future? 217

Eliminating dissent and (re)creating social

work in a ‘harmonious society’
The social sciences were re-established in the late 1970s and, by the end of the
following decade, social work programmes had been put in place at a small num-
ber of universities (Leung and Xu, 2015). The ‘cornerstone’ of social work’s (re)
creation in the PRC was laid in September 1987 when the Ministry of Civil
Affairs (MCA) invited a group of mostly sociology scholars from different uni-
versities to attend a forum in Beijing (Gao and Yan, 2015: 94). In 1991, the
China Association of Social Work was founded (and subsequently joined the
IFSW) and the China Association for Social Work Education (now a mem-
ber of the International Association of Schools of Social Work) was established
three years later. Arguably, even into the 1990s, the government ‘endorsement’
of the profession appears to have been rather lukewarm (Leung and Xu, 2015:
154). However, a new ‘spring of social work’ (Leung, 2012: 338) blossomed in
2006 as the ‘harmonious society’ hegemonic project began to become embedded
in political discourses.
According to the Director of the Offce of Social Work at the MCA, since the
pivotal year of 2006, the CPC has assessed the ‘timing and situation to strategi-
cally plan for building the enormous team of social work personnel, according
to the macro framework of constructing a socialist harmonious society’ (Wang,
2015: 78). A licensing system was established in 2008, and, in 2010, it was pre-
dicted that there would be a need for two million social workers by 2015 and
three million by 2020. In 2012, this was revised to 0.5 million and 1.5 mil-
lion, respectively (Leung and Xu, 2015: 157). Still, even these revised numbers
would considerably swell – and proportionately enhance the Chinese constituent
part of – the global social work community; in the United States, for exam-
ple, there are approximately 850,000 social workers (DATEUSA, 2018) and, in
England, a mere 60,000 (Scourfeld, 2020: 49–50). By 2020, some 500 social
work schools were due to be created in the PRC (Leung and Xu, 2015: 158). As
Leung and Xu (2015: 157) maintain, it seems that ‘no other country in the world
has such a comprehensive and long term plan for the development of its social
work profession’.
Reports indicate that more than one million individuals have received social
work training over the past decade, and 312,000 people were employed as
social workers by the end of 2017 (Niu and Haugen, 2019). However, Social
Work Organisations (SWOs) are largely concentrated in the coastal provinces
of Guangdong, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Beijing (Leung and Xu, 2015:
161). Despite the manifest political and policy aspirations to ‘grow’ the profes-
sion, the number of social workers is relatively meagre given the population size
of the PRC (Gray, 2008). The development of services is also strikingly uneven
with, a few years ago, almost 12,000 registered social workers in Beijing but only
two in Tibet and 184 in Ningxia (Leung and Xu, 2015: 161).
218 Social work’s Chinese future?

As in a number of other countries, social work is most carried out by women.

In Guangdong, for example, 70 percent of social workers have been reported to
be female (in Cho, 2017: 282). Running counter to perceptions that the PRC is a
highly centralised state, the government encourages local approaches when try-
ing to develop national policy on social work’s evolution (Gao and Yan, 2015).
For example, in Shanghai, several NGOs were established in the ‘mid-1990s to
provide community-based welfare service. Pilot social work stations were cre-
ated in schools, hospitals and neighbourhoods. In 2003, three NGOs were set up
by the government to deliver youth crime prevention services in the city’ (Leung
and Xu, 2015: 155).
In the West, there is a substantial literature dwelling on the evolution of
‘therapy culture’ (Furedi, 2004). Such a culture can also be identifed in the
PRC with Yang (2015, 17) referring to a ‘hegemonic psychological discourse
that creeps into the process of managing social issues and groups’ (Yang, 2015:
17). Over the past two decades, a so-called ‘psy fever’ (xinli re), even something
of a ‘psy boom’ has occurred in many Chinese cities (Zhang, 2017: 7). This
‘logic’ of ‘psychologisation’ emphasises the ‘self and self-fulfllment’ and presents
the ‘breakdown of the work-unit system that was once a source of emotional
and communal support for workers as “empowering” for the individual’ (Yang,
2015: 14). Moreover, discourses circulating around ‘positive psychology’ and
the attainment of individual ‘happiness’ are prevalent in the PRC (Kuhn, 2013).
Indeed, psychology is now frmly situated as part of a ‘new language’ which is
‘designed to encourage people to rebuild their identities around an emotional
core that obfuscates the effects of socioeconomic dislocation they experience’
(Yang, 2015: xvii).
This upsurge in ‘person-centred’ rhetoric clearly coheres with those aspects
of social work rooted in ‘handling psychological dynamics, human relationships
and the human–society interface’ (Leung et al., 2012: 1050). However, social
workers are not psychologists and the users of services appear able to make that
distinction. For example, following the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, psycholo-
gists – keen to offer one-to-one support to individual ‘victims’ – were rebuffed
by many survivors whereas social workers, seemingly more focused on the
wider social dimension of the disaster and the more practical aspects of recovery,
received a more welcoming response (Sigley, 2011: 111). More generally, how is
the current hegemonic order shaping the (re) created profession? In terms of our
focus on dissenting social work (DSW), at least, three factors may be signifcant,
and these relate to politics, the ‘community’ and practitioners’ terms and condi-
tions of work.

Politics
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the recreation of the profession is a wholly top-down
initiative, social workers fulfl narrowly defned roles tending to exclude dissent
(see also Woodman, 2019). As one of Leung’s (2012: 347) Shenzhen respondents
 Social work’s Chinese future? 219

comments, social workers are ‘small potatoes’ needing to stay within their ‘hum-
ble positions’. Focusing on Guangzhu, Lei and Huang (2018) detect a preference
for pragmatism and de-politicisation amongst their respondents, including aca-
demics, directors agency directors and senior practitioners. Ying (2013: 1593)
reports a social work educator, in a city in the Shandong province, having lectures
monitored by CCTV to ensure that there is no wavering from what is deemed
the appropriate political line. More pervasively, the activity referred to as ‘social
work’ is frmly wedded to ‘allegiance to state policy’ (Leung, 2012: 346). This
may be altering because overt and constantly emphatic control is, it is suggested,
‘getting more diffcult with the proliferation of social transactions in the civil
society’ (Leung, 2012: 348). Nonetheless, it appears apparent that the emerging
profession of social work has been harnessed to the ‘harmonious society’ construct
(Leung, 2012). One of Leung’s respondents, for example, argues that social work-
ers and government cadres share the ‘same goal – to enable stable living [and] to
create a harmonious society’ (in Leung, 2012: 346; see also Kang, 2020). A little
more sceptically, a female social worker confdes to Cho (2017: 282): ‘I’m nothing
but a handful of sand. … We social workers and volunteers seem to be merely a
decorative army that the government has mobilized in order to give people the
impression that our society is peaceful and harmonious’.
At the present conjuncture, social work is being engineered to respond to a
range of ‘social problems’ sparked or worsened by the restoration of capitalism in
the PRC. However, stripping away the aspirational language used to defne social
work in the West, it might be also be proposed that social work with Chinese
traits is similar in many ways to its mainstream Western counterpart given the
‘propensity for conservatism’ and the fact that the ‘state provides much of the
professional privilege’ practitioners accrue (Leung et al., 2012: 1052). Despite
the political and cultural differences, social work in the PRC perhaps chimes
with Martin Davies’ (1981) well-known metaphor of the social worker as ‘main-
tenance mechanic’ employed by the state to ‘curb some of the excesses of deviant
behaviour’ whilst ‘concerned with ameliorating the living conditions of those
who are fnding it diffcult to cope without help’. Fundamentally, as stressed
by Davies, the ‘very idea of maintenance implies – indeed demands – a broad
acceptance of the existing political and economic regime’. Within this function-
alist paradigm, social workers in the PRC might be viewed as simply malleable
social technicians. Indeed, echoing Davies’ evocation, a key task for practition-
ers in the PRC is to address the needs of the ‘weak community’ (roushi qunti) or
most ‘vulnerable groups’ (Solinger, 2012: 1013). Hence, social work is described
as ‘a “shock absorber”, a “safety valve” a “social lubricant”, a “frewall” and a
“windshield”’ (Leung and Xu, 2015: 155). In short, the social worker is the ‘right
candidate’ to ease ‘social tensions’ which may erupt in a ‘harmonious society’
(Leung et al., 2012: 1045). In this context, research indicates that practitioners
are frequently tasked with ‘managing foreigners’ (Niu and Haugen, 2019): for
example, undocumented migrants and, in some parts of the PRC, members of
the sizeable diasporic African community.
220 Social work’s Chinese future?

‘Community’
Related to the ideology of the ‘harmonious society’, the concept of ‘community’
(shequ) is frequently deployed as a ‘new basic component of urban governance’
shaped to replace the ‘collapsed work unit’ (Cho, 2013: 19). Hence, in recent
years, the focus has been on ‘building community’ (shequ jianshe) (Cho, 2013:
96). During the Mao period, Residents’ Committees were the lowest tier of
administration within the PRC. In contemporary terms, these are now referred
to as Community Residents’ Committees (shequ jumin weiyuanhui) or simply
abbreviated to ‘the Community’ (shequ) (Cho, 2013). Their role is to maintain
community order and security, care for the needy, provide basic social welfare
and community services at the grassroots level (Yang, 2015). The staff recruited
from the local neighbourhoods are ordinarily ‘less-educated and retired, usually
women’ with a ‘strong sense of community identifcation’ (Chen et al., 2017:
42). Evidence suggests that these structures are also able to generate a degree of
‘dissent below the radar’ (Woodman, 2019).
Social workers have also been expected to play key roles in terms of provid-
ing new forms of expertise and ‘professionalising’ services in fedgling areas such
as ‘child protection’ (Zhao et al., 2017). However, they are not always favourably
regarded within their hosting ‘community structures’. Having undertaken empir-
ical work in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, Leung (2012: 343) reports that in the
‘top-down political culture’ of the PRC, ‘shutting out personnel assigned by the
municipal government’ is not a viable option. Nonetheless, the ‘forced introduc-
tion of social workers’, on occasions perceived as ‘trespassers’, results in their being
invited to do ‘unwelcome tasks’ such as photocopying, running errands or even
becoming ‘daily cleaners’ (Cho, 2013: 18). One disappointed Beijing-based social
worker tells researchers that residents seem to ‘care more about your work experi-
ence rather than whether you have studied social work’ (in Chen et al., 2017: 49).
Given these community structures tend to be largely comprised of older, retired
workers and social work practitioners are relatively young, this opposition may be
related to a generational divide. However, the resistance to the deployment of social
workers may also represent a form of political resistance to the new ways of framing
and responding to ‘social problems’. Certainly older ‘community-based’ workers,
perhaps survivors of the old work unit regimes, often appear to be unconvinced
that social workers can bring a distinct set of skills to aid their activity.

Terms and conditions of work

Concerns continue to be voiced about the calibre of training programmes and
the lack of relevant social work experience on the part of educators (Leung, 2007;
Lei and Huang, 2018; Xu et al., 2019). Not uncommon, but controversial, is the
practice of social work schools – and individual members of academic staff – set-
ting up their own SWOs to deliver services (Cho, 2017: 276). Educators may run
SWOs for ‘their own fnancial beneft, exploiting the manpower of students and
 Social work’s Chinese future? 221

university resources’ (Chen et al., 2017: 46). This practice is inseparable from the
neoliberal-style ‘outsourcing’ (goumai) and local government purchasing social
work services from ‘independent’ providers (Cho, 2017). Oddly prefguring the
social policy of David Cameron’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat government
in the United Kingdom, this manner of delivering services is framed by notions
of ‘small government, big society’ (xiao zheng fu da shehui) (Cho, 2017). This
endeavour aims to paper over the cracks created by the withdrawal of social
protections formerly provided by the state which was manifestly a ‘failed experi-
ment’ (Lei and Walker, 2013). Specifcally in terms of social work practice, there
is a frequent lack of professional supervision with, for example, the Shenzhen
local government opting to purchase supervision services from NGOs located in
Hong Kong (Leung, 2012). Although lying beyond the scope of our discussion
in this chapter, this dimension is fascinating given that the ‘Mainlanders’ are
often viewed as ‘culturally inferior and dangerous “unequal others”’ by many
from Hong Kong who continue to hold a ‘colonial attitude’ towards them (Lowe
and Yuk-ha Tsang, 2017: 38; 48; see also Kang, 2020).
Despite the prominence accorded to social work in the PRC in recent years,
it does not appear to possess the same status – and weight of ‘symbolic capital’
(Bourdieu, 1991) – as professions such as doctors and nurses in the health sector. For
example, even in a city prominent in developing social work, such as Shanghai, this
is likely to ‘affect social workers’ professional growth and income, and might result
in a talent drain in the future’ (Wenjun, 2016). The salaries of practitioners are low
and this, along with ‘delayed payment of wages, excessive demands made by local
governments, little recognition from the public and uncertain future career pros-
pects’, contributes to the ‘high dropout rates of social workers’ (Cho, 2017: 282).
Partly replicating professional concerns in the West, there are also debates occurring
about how social workers are becoming mired in administration (xingzhenghua) and
robbed of any sense of professional fulflment in their work (Chen et al., 2017).
Many social workers in the PRC are migrant workers subject to some of the
same precarious conditions faced by other groups of workers situated within this
category. Whilst their lives, within and outside the workplace, may be different
to that of those located in Foxconn plants, their situation is oftentimes, broadly,
comparable. Many social work students and practitioners are from rural areas
and must, therefore, deal with some of the constraints imposed by the hukou
system (Cho, 2017). In Shenzhen, most social work positions are flled by young
migrant workers fnding it diffcult to make ends meet in the modern metropolis
(Cho, 2017). In 2009 and in order to attract university graduates, an incentive
Beijing hukou (granting city residence) was provided on the condition of con-
tinued employment for one year (later two years). However, this experimental
policy was abandoned due to a large proportion of university graduates quitting
their posts and moving on after they obtained the hukou (Chen et al., 2017: 47).
Many young and newly qualifed social workers are frequently ‘forced to be on
the move owing to insecure contracts, low wages and poor career prospects’
(Cho, 2013: 271).
222 Social work’s Chinese future?

Conclusion
The PRC ‘will soon possess the most social workers in the world’ (Cheung,
2017: 109). Although there is clearly no neat ‘ft’, the (re)creation of social work
took place during the same few decades when a Chinese proletariat was (re)
created. Moreover, this chapter argued that the Gramscian concepts of ‘passive
revolution’ and ‘hegemony’ potentially aid our critical understanding of the evo-
lution of the PRC since the late-1970s and, especially, since 2006. Whilst resist-
ing a reductively mechanistic interpretation of social work’s evolution in the
PRC, it was suggested that the profession’s new centrality can only be meaning-
fully comprehended if it is located within the wider hegemonic project pivoting
on the CPC’s promulgation of the ‘harmonious society’ and its aim to stamp out
dissent questioning capitalist restoration.
However, social work in the PRC shares many of the characteristics of
Western social work – itself a heterogeneous bundle of practices. Nevertheless, it
has been tentatively argued that three traits are, to differing degrees, signifcant.
Namely, the fact that social workers appear to be tasked to undertake politically
circumscribed and shackled roles; are often marginalised within the ‘commu-
nity’; and are subject to poor pay, precarious working conditions and have little
‘symbolic capital’ (Bourdieu, 1991).

REFLECTION AND TALK BOX 10

How might the conceptualisations of Antonio Gramsci assist practitioners and educa-
tors to better understand the role that social work plays within your particular time
and place?

Can the IFSW definition of social work, referred to earlier in the book, sufficiently
encompass the wide varieties of social work(s) emerging in the world?

Is the future of social work Chinese?

Without resorting to Orientalist perspectives or colonist hubris, how might practition-

ers and educators, located outside the PRC, relate to re-emergence of a social work
‘industry’ there?

How similar is social work in your own country to that in the PRC?

This book has been preoccupied with dissenting social work, but what may be the
main components of a consenting and compliant social work?

In whatever country it occurs, is social work predicated on often implicit ideas about
how a ‘harmonious society’ ought to function? What is the dominant vision of such
a society in the place you are located? Does it cohere with the vision of those com-
mitted to DSW?

Note
1 This chapter is a radically revised version of an article previously published in Critical
Social Policy and I am grateful to SAGE for permitting me to use this material (see also
Garrett, 2020c).
11
CONCLUSION

Why the footballer must be permitted to kick the football

The footballer is wearing the regular strip and appears ready for action. Everything
seems just fne. However, when they are passed the ball, they collapse to the turf
as they run and try and take possession. The problem is that they have a broken
ankle. Perhaps social work in Ireland is rather like this hapless player? It looks
the part, but it is unable to function because its regulating agency, as we saw in
our Introduction, has acted in a way which seeks to prevent it from effectively
participating and undertaking the role it is expected to fulfl. That is to say, the
removal of ‘human rights’ from its Code of Practice is a strategy to prevent prac-
titioners from properly functioning. Social work bereft of the commitment to
human rights is like a footballer who is no longer able to run and kick the ball.
Indeed, a social work commitment to safeguarding human rights is even
more vital on account of the global pandemic. As the Irish Human Rights and
Equality Commission (IHREC) (2020a: 1) maintains, COVID-19 underscores
the signifcance of

keeping the principles of human rights and equality to the forefront in

considering how public administration and legislators respond … The
choices we make in a crisis have far-reaching implications for our soci-
ety in the aftermath. Therefore, it is more important than ever that we
adhere to clear human rights and equality values in our deliberations and
decision-making.

Globally, the main constituent component of our present conjuncture is provided

by the pandemic and responses to it. In all likelihood, a pending world recession
will prompt even more turbulence. However, it is important to emphasise again
224 Conclusion

that this virus did not arrive into an empty social and economic space; rather, the
COVID-19 crisis arrived in a world with a ‘pre-existing condition’: it was, and
is, largely ordered, structured and driven by the imperatives of the global ruling
class. In this context, the neoliberal model of capital accumulation, is founda-
tional. Nonetheless, capitalism cannot be neatly separated out from intermeshed
issues relating to migration, global warming and the rise of the populist Right.
(See also Chapter 1.)

This is the ‘age of dissent’

Living during this diffcult time and inhabiting the uncertain landscape of
‘Covidia’, many of us may be feeling a little fragmented and frayed. Nevertheless,
given the damage which capitalism – and the institutional racialised and gen-
dered order that sustains it – generates, it is impossible to extinguish collective
dissent and protest. Prior to the pandemic, in the early months of 2019, it even
appeared likely that a self-proclaimed ‘socialist’ could become the Democrat’s
candidate for president in the United States. The past decade also saw the growth
of the global #MeToo movement, initially founded by Tarana Burke in 2006,
which focused on patriarchal structures that perpetrated abuse and silenced the
victims of such abuse (Snyder and Lopez, 2017).
Bailey (2020) draws attention to UK protest events since the 1980s and his
fndings lead him to conclude:

Many viewed 2011 as the high point of this wave of protest – with occu-
pations of public spaces taking place across the globe, not least during the
Arab Spring. But the trend has, in fact, continued to proliferate throughout
the decade. While austerity was the initial driver of protest in the UK, a
wide range of issues are now leading to dissent … This is the age of dissent
– and the last decade saw a large rise in protest events across the UK. The
relative social peace of the 1990s and 2000s has given way to a period of
economic crisis and social confict, sparked by the global economic crisis
of 2008 and its aftermath … In 2019 there were over 280 reported protest
events, compared with 154 in 2010 – and only 83 in 2007, the year before
the global economic crisis hit.

To use the title of Paul Mason’s (2011) popular book, it seemed – to have our
footballer metaphor reverberate – to be ‘kicking off everywhere’.
According to Bailey’s UK research, what is also noteworthy is that the multi-
farious and socially pervasive currents of dissent have begun to more frequently
feature white-collar groups. Although not appearing to involve social workers
– at least in an occupational capacity – such protests included lawyers protesting
cuts to legal aid and junior doctors objecting to unilateral alterations to their
contracts of employment. In the immediate period leading up to the pandemic, it
was possible to identify a global swelling of dissent with anti-neoliberal uprisings
 Conclusion 225

in France, Chile, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Haiti, Ecuador, Hong Kong, Spain and
elsewhere. In Italy, a series of iconic images was provided by the ‘sardines’ move-
ment which packed the piazzas to protest against Matteo Salvini’s right-wing
populism (Giuffrida, 2019; Spinney, 2020).
Such an upsurge in dissent, refected in these widespread public protests, was
curtailed on account of the ‘social distancing’ measures put in place by states
to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. However, in late May and June
2020, mass protests erupted in the United States – and elsewhere – following the
brutally lethal actions of the Minneapolis Police Department. A beleaguered and
bunkered President railed against the dissent of ‘Marxists’ intent on puncturing
his efforts to ‘make America great again’ (Luscombe, 2020). He also consid-
ered declaring a ‘state of insurrection’ and evoking the Insurrection Act 1807 to
enable the deployment of federal troops against U.S. citizens. However, a crisis
prompted by state violence cannot be resolved by more state violence.
A powerful editorial in Radical Philosophy maintains that the broad context for
the 2019 and 2020 mass mobilisations is all ‘too familiar and testifes’ to

the increasingly intolerable consequences of neoliberal economic poli-

cies; the social costs of austerity, mass unemployment, grotesque inequal-
ity and outright destitution; the scapegoating tendencies of authoritarian
and fascist regimes; the unrelenting experience of precarity and growing
despair about the future – all compounded by climate change, environ-
mental degradation, war-mongering chauvinism, the legacies of slavery
and racism. Even the most forceful measures taken to contain the spread
of COVID-19 will do nothing to address these structural problems, of
course, and in many ways and in many places they have already intensifed
them. Whether it’s a matter of accessing healthcare or of fnding a way to
make ends meet, there is obviously nothing ‘equal’ about the impact of
an epidemic in societies shaped by class, race and disparities of wealth and
privilege … . It’s the world system as a whole, as a system, that has become
the chief target of protest in so many places that, in the past, both internally
and externally, have been kept in check by reliable means of divide and
rule. Recourse to these ancient forms of domination may prove harder to
justify in a world that is starting to realise the full extent of its unity and
interdependence.
(Radical Philosophy Collective, 2020: 3–4)

It remains unclear what ‘shape’ capitalism is taking at present. However, referring

back to our chapter on Foucault and his delineation of two variants of neoliberal-
ism, we might argue that currently a struggle is taking place between the ‘Ordo’
tendency and the U.S. style ‘anarcho-capitalism’ (see also Chapter 3). The for-
mer recognises the need for state involvement and effective steering mechanisms
if the processes of capitalist accumulation are not to self-destruct, whilst the latter
is more inclined to entirely cede control to the market. The ‘Ordo’ approach is
226 Conclusion

refected in a reluctance to end ‘lockdowns’ too quickly and, relatedly, there is

grudging recognition of the need to provide a limited and temporary measure
of social protection for workers. In contrast, the anarcho-capitalist perspective is
refected in the reckless drive to bring the ‘lockdowns’ to a swift conclusion and
to return to ‘normal’. Coupled to this, there is an antipathy towards national and
international public health bodies and, occasionally, vocal opposition to meas-
ures (such as mandatory mask-wearing) introduced to protect the public. Both
these neoliberal approaches are, however, laden with internal contradictions and
they will not provide a way out of the multiple crises that they aim to resolve.

Notes on the future(s) of dissenting social work

In this book, we have looked at a number of theorists and philosophers and used
their work as a series of portals allowing us to gain access to a variety of themes
which are central to dissenting social work (DSW). Some of the chapters may
appear overly packed with ideas and, in truth, each of them could easily be
expanded to book length. Importantly also, none of the chapters functions as
unequivocal endorsements of particular writers; with some, especially Levinas
and to a lesser extent, Arendt, we have been very critical of their contributions.
More generally, Dissenting Social Work has drawn on Marxism and associated
critical approaches to illuminate a way out of the morass in which social work is –
for political and economic reasons – mired. In taking inspiration from Marxism,
the book is, therefore, radically at odds with many strands in the profession’s
literature, including that which foregrounds, for example, the fad of ‘mindful-
ness training’ and the like (Beer et al., 2020). This is not to entirely decry such
approaches, but it is to suggest that they contribute little – and may actually serve
to obscure – some of the structurally generated problems confronting practition-
ers. Similarly, DSW sets itself against notions circulating around the ‘traumatic
social identity of poverty’ which often appear to suggest that being ‘poor’ is an
‘identity’ to be recognised and better understood, rather than it being an out-
come, as Marx articulates, of processes rooted in socially eradicable economic
exploitation and domination (Shamai, 2018: 1733). Indeed, this emergent litera-
ture represents the most baleful and degraded form of ‘identity’ politics.
What might DSW ‘look like’ in the future? What might be some of the
pathways or strategies to follow? Perhaps, in broad terms, DSW may aspire to
generate new ways of operating in three, interconnected spheres. First, DSW is
an ‘outward’ facing activity which is keen to expand the politics of engagement
and progressive coalition building. In this sense, progressive social workers have
much to gain by continuing to build bridges with the ‘user’ movements and the
social movements which have proliferated in the past two decades. Such endeav-
ours can become potentially re-energised and reoriented by the passion for social
justice exhibited by Black Lives Matter (BLM) supporters.
Second, those interested in DSW might try to evolve distinctive forms of
critical praxis within the ‘feld’. How might DSW-imbued perspectives impact
 Conclusion 227

on the way that practitioners engage with those having regard to services? To
refer back to Fanon, does DSW practice have particular ‘antennae’ which illumi-
nate a specifc approach in terms of relationship building in social work? (See also
Chapter 9.) This is an important dimension because if ideas circulating around
DSW simply operate at the level of theoretical abstraction, then clearly, they are
of diluted usefulness.
Third, DSW might potentially provide a new knowledge project and a differ-
ent type of analytical lens to view themes, issues and practices from fresh angles.
Can supporters of DSW collectively construct new analytical strategies seeking
to generate new theoretical insights? How, for example, might pursuing key
DSW themes result in new ways of looking at uncritical, mainstream concep-
tualisations of ‘social problems’? Moreover, can productive linkages be made in
terms of phenomena that may seem unrelated? This is also bound up, of course,
with broader questions relating to class, gender, ‘race’ and other intersectional
considerations (Marovatsanga, 2020).
Specifcally, in terms of historical studies, the themes identifed in Chapter 1
are suggestive of certain research questions and more encompassing research
programmes (see also Chapter 1). In this context, such inquiries might try to
excavate historical patterns of dissent within social work. Endeavours such as
this might, in fact, result in potently subversive acts of political reclamation.
For example, Michael Reisch and Janice Andrews (2002) highlight how – albeit
often neglected in mainstream histories – Marxism provided a dissenting cur-
rent throughout the twentieth century within social work in the United States.
DSW-historically focused studies might interrogate the treatment of those in
receipt of social work services who were perceived as dissenters, even ‘deviant’.
For example, practitioners played a signifcant role in the construction of the
‘unmarried mother’ and this was associated with the years of mass adoption in
the 1950s and 1960s. Such practices prompted, in March 2013, the Australian
prime minister Julia Gillard (2013) to issue an apology on behalf of her govern-
ment to people affected by forced adoption and removal policies (see also Garrett,
2013).
Across the globe many practitioners tenaciously hold onto the values embodied
in the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) defnition. Palestinian
social workers exhibit tremendous commitment whilst being compelled to
‘operate in extremely diffcult social conditions (e.g. hyper-unemployment,
deep levels of poverty, severe restrictions on movement, poor sanitation, politi-
cal violence)…caused or magnifed by Israeli military occupation’ (Safadi et al.,
2020: 14). However, DSW-infuenced research might also dwell on instances
and decisive moments when social work appears to have been unduly compliant
and provided consent to political regimes antithetical to its ethics and values.
Ioakimidis and Trimikliniotis (2020: 3) refer to the ‘troubled past’ of social work
that is often occluded in many mainstream accounts. It is possible, they avow, to
identify many instances of ‘complicity, or at least acquiescence, in acts of state
violence and institutionalised oppression’ (Ioakimidis and Trimikliniotis,2020:
228 Conclusion

2). Perhaps the most glaring examples are the practices of social workers and
social pedagogues in Nazi Germany (Kunstreich, 2003). Over decades, social
workers were often complicit in processes implementing eugenicist policies
and contributed to the identifcation of the supposedly racially ‘inferior’ and
socially ‘unworthy’. Indeed, eugenics – to resort to a more contemporary lexi-
con – undergirded ‘evidenced-based’ practice in a number of states (Broberg and
Roll-Hansen, 1996).
More recently, ‘mainstream white South African social work, which had
largely accepted segregationist ideologies well before 1948, readily adopted the
practices of racial separation’ that culminated with the creation of Apartheid
(Ioakimidis and Trimikliniotis, 2020: 6). What is more, the ‘idea of developing
the social work profession was itself conceived and nurtured by military regimes’
in Greece, Argentina and Chile (Ioakimidis and Trimikliniotis, 2020: 5). As
mentioned in Chapter 9, social work has also functioned to bolster colonial prac-
tices against Indigenous and Aboriginal peoples in places as far apart as the conti-
nent of Africa, Canada, Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand and Greenland (BBC
News, 2015). All of these instances prompt the same question: why did social
workers consent, when their ethical foundations strongly suggest their response
should have been one of organised and collective dissent?
Nilan G Yu (2006) provides a fascinating account of the social work response
to the imposition, by Marcos in 1972, of martial law in the Philippines. This
action appears to have struck at the very core values of the profession and should
have ‘elicited an unequivocally critical response’ (Yu, 2006: 259) However, as it
is apparent from his survey of the fagship journal of the Philippine Association of
Social Workers, ‘human rights violations under martial law were never directly
questioned or contested by the mainstream social work community’ and ‘dis-
courses on the virtues of Marcos’ New Society and social work’s role in the new
order abounded’ (Yu, 2006: 259). Yu, whose study may have more universal
resonances and messages for social work today, speculates that this response may
have been attributable to issues pertaining to personal safety, inadequate theo-
retical orientation, the dominance of a value-free technological culture, efforts
to protect the boundaries of the profession and an ideological match between the
Marcos regime and the class imperatives of social workers.

Ending at the new beginning …

Normally, I am in the fortunate position of teaching no more than approximately
twenty-fve postgraduate students and there is a lot of discussion. However, this
cannot occur in the couple of undergraduate classes of two hundred or so that
I teach each year. Moreover, I never sense I do as good a job in these larger set-
tings as my approach and disposition always seems very stilted. Last year I gave
a lecture to a large group of undergraduate students on the deaths of children in
care (see also Garrett, 2006; 2012; 2014). Following my lecture, as I was get-
ting ready to leave, two students approached me to say they really enjoyed my
 Conclusion 229

presentation because it was ‘more critical’ than other lectures that they attended.
Both, they told me, had been ‘in care’ and they felt that my lecture had ‘told the
truth’. Something similar happened a couple of years ago, when I gave a lecture
on so-called ‘unmarried mothers’ and someone approached me afterwards to
quietly tell me how my lecture had resonated with her own experience of hav-
ing spent time in a Mother and Baby Home in the late 1970s (Garrett, 2020d).
I do not report these instances in a boastful or crassly self-serving way. My
recounting these examples provides anecdotal evidence that students may well
have a hankering for more dissenting and critically incisive approaches than are
sometimes available for them within taught programmes. Indeed, this book has
been partly driven by the realisation that students welcome such perspectives
and that the exploration of ‘diffcult’ forms of theorisation (see also Morley
et al. 2020). If carefully presented, critical theory can not only be accessible; it
can speak to students’ own experience of the world. Vitally, such pedagogical
approaches should be driven by the accounts and testimonies of those who, as we
have seen, Rancière perceives as having their ‘part’ or ‘share’ in the community
denied. If social work educators fail to meet this challenge, there is a danger
that we might merely help to promote and sustain what Paul Gilroy (2019) aptly
terms ‘carefully-managed ignorance, a curated ignorance’.
Neglecting to be suffciently inquisitive can also be connected to Hannah
Arendt’s fears about docile dispositions and ‘thoughtlessness’ (see also Chapter 7).
For her, the problem is that ‘thoughtlessness’ erodes the capacity to maintain a
‘sense of responsibility for broader outcomes’ and it nurtures forms of ‘inertia
and automatic’ behaviour ‘inimical to political freedom and human spontane-
ity’ (Topper, 2011: 370). Her paradigmatic fgure is the Nazi Adolf Eichmann
(Arendt, 2006 [1963]). Indeed, this endeavour to combat ‘thoughtlessness’ is at
the heart of critical social work pedagogy and it is a theme which beats, like a
restless pulse, through Dissenting Social Work. As we saw earlier, Fanon expresses
not dissimilar concerns to Arendt when he refers to the dangers inherent in any
profession that has become too stuck in habits and ‘gestures’ that follow ‘other
gestures without novelty’ (Fanon, 2018 [1953–1956]: 338). He was also haunted
by the concerted attempts, within colonised societies and psychiatric settings, to
‘decelebralise’ (Fanon, 2018 [1953]: 434) (see also Chapter 9). Seeking to coun-
teract this tendency, this book has argued in favour of engaging with critical
sociology, political theory and philosophy.
We began the book by reporting on the visit of the postal worker and com-
menting on developments in Ireland, but the concerns and reach of Dissenting
Social Work have been far from parochial and have stretched far beyond Irish
shores. The aspiration has been to examine a range of critical conceptual
resources which might help practitioners and educators to tilt social work in a
more socially progressive direction and to think about how it might be radically
re-imagined. As hinted earlier, if there are no sustained attempts to generate more
expansive and dissenting forms of thinking, then social work is, perhaps, at risk
of being ‘hollowed’ or completely ‘emptied out’ (see also Marx, 1981 [1857–58]:
230 Conclusion

488). In such a dystopian scenario, practitioners are increasingly likely to evolve

into docile functionaries wholly steered by algorithms and machine learning.
And how deeply paradoxical that would be, given how the global pandemic has
foregrounded the importance of the ‘social’ in social work. More than this, our
conjuncture illuminates afresh that we live in an interconnected world that can
only be economically and relationally sustained if we are collectively commit-
ted to socialist ethics and values rooted in interdependency, mutual caring and
solidarity.
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INDEX

Page numbers in “italic” indicate a fgure and page numbers in “bold” indicate a table.

#MeToo movement 224 Alipay Health Code system 94

All African People’s Congress 190
Aadhaar system 90 Alston, Philip 99
abilities-machines 57, 63 Alternative für Deutschland (Af D) 26
absolute ethnicity 11 Althusser, Louis 45, 106, 107, 120; and
‘activation’ policies 16 Rancière 102–104
active equality 100, 105, 112, 114 alt-right 25
active proletarianisation 16 Amazon 75, 76, 81, 83
activism, outraged 3 Amazon Echo 81
Adamson, Morgan 63 American anarcho-capitalism 53, 54
Adamu, Semira 180 American Enterprise Institute 58
administration, violence of 165 American neoliberalism 56–58
Adoption and Safe Families Act Amnesty International 90, 91
(ASFA) 133 anarcho-capitalism 56–58
affective computing 82 Anderson, P. 171
affect recognition, forms of 84 anger 6, 182, 199
African-Americans, and exposure to air Anthropocene 19
pollution 17 ‘anti-psychiatry’ movement 193
Afrophobia 25 anti-Roma racism 25
ageist language 68–69 anti-Semitism 25
air pollution, and exposure based on class antiterror police, and school climate
and race 17 strikers 3
Algerian independence 102 anti-Traveller racism 25
Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) apophenia 92
182 Apple 76, 81
Algiers School of Psychiatry 186 Arab infltrators 177
algorithmic technologies, and social work Arab population, in Palestine 171
85–88 Arendt, Hannah 30, 143–145; on Adolf
Alibaba 70 Eichmann 146; criticism of 151–153;
Alienation and Freedom (Fanon) 182; description of the ‘Public,’ the ‘Private’
194–198 and the ‘Social’ 148; on Fanon 189;

and female emancipation 152; forced
migration 147; and human interactions
and society 148–151; infuence on
Zuboff 73; on ‘lying in politics’ 146;
and the Negro question 156; and
relevance to dissenting social work
(DSW) 156–157; review of Between
Past and Future 154; on the treatment
of Palestinian population 146–147; and
use of words 145–146; and the Zionist
project 171
Asian-Americans, and exposure to air
pollution 17
Attack of the Blob, The (Pitkin) 154
Australia 10, 17, 20, 170, 228; Pacifc
Solution of 22
automatic factory 85–88
Azoulay, Jacques 196, 197, 204
Badiou, Alain 112
Baidu 70
Bailey, D. J. 7, 224
Bailey, R., Radical Social Work 35
bailouts 13
Banks, Lloyd 89
banks, rescue of, in the United States 13
Barbagallo, Camille 153
Baum, Nehami 172
Bauman, Zygmunt 72, 86, 159, 160; and
Levinas’ work 161
Bayoh, Sheku 180
Beat Poets 154
Beccaria, Cesare 108
Becker, Gary 56, 62
bed-blockers, older people as 67
Ben-Ari, Adital 160
Benjamin, Ruha 28, 75, 97
Between Past and Future (Arendt), review
of 154
Beveridge reforms 53
Bezos, Jeff 14, 75
Bharatiya Janata Party 26
Big Data 70, 92
Big Tech 75, 88, 97
biometric identifcation
technology 94
biopolitics, Foucault and 63–68
biopower 64–68; neoliberal-infected 68
‘The Birth of Biopolitics’ (Foucault) 29,
52, 56
Black and ethnic minority social
workers 8
Black Caribbean children 3
Black children, and police aggression 181
Black feminist writers 6
Index 265
Black Lives Matter (BLM) 156, 180;
campaign 11; Demonstrations 28, 172;
‘Black Lives Matter at Schools’
network 3
Black people, suffocated by police in
Europe 180
Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon) 180, 181,
182; discussion of 182–186
Blair, Tony 63
Bloomberg Businessweek 81
Blue CRUSH program 90–91
Boddy, Jennifer 20
Böhm, Franz 53
Bohrer, Ashley J 15, 50
Bolsonaro 26
Boltanski, Luc 7
border control 22–23
Bourdieu, Pierre 6, 8, 46, 51, 115, 123;
Fanon and 188; perspective of 125;
and Rancière 107; and revolutionary
change 196; and social work literature
137; state’s ‘left hand’ 127; and
Wacquant departure from 128
Brake, M., Radical Social Work 35
breadwinner 15
Brexit ‘crisis’ 11
British Association of Social Workers 1
British Mandate 170
Brooks, Rayshard 180
Brown, Michael 3
Brown, Wendy 4, 5, 29, 49; and criticism
of universities 60; and the human
capital theory 58–61; perspective of
58–61
brutal extractivism 38
Buber, Martin 161, 171
Burgess, John Stewart 205
burkas 11
Burke, Tarana 224
Callaghan, James 52
Cambridge Analytica 71
Campbell, d. 176
Camus, The Plague 28
Canovan, Margaret 156
Capital (Marx) 14, 47, 53, 55, 71
capital accumulation 8, 12; neoliberal
model of 11
capital expansion, and effects on the
planet 17
capitalism 11, 43, 50; explaining
surveillance 74–75; forms of 36;
German ordoliberals and 52–55; laissez-
faire 53; Marx and Engels critique of
37–38; Marx’s analysis of 33; Marx’s
266 Index
tripartite critique of 37; neoliberal
12–17; new spirit of 7–8; restoration of
in PRC (China) 209–214; and slavery
and colonialism 38; surveillance 70–74
capitalist system: ‘crises’ 154–156;
intervention and 13
capital-led deforestation 18
care, ‘quality’ of 13
Caro, B. 172
Carothers, John Colin 186
cars, and global warming 16–17
Carter, Jimmy 56
Caygill, H. 168
CCC (Caring, Cooking and Cleaning)
jobs 22
Chakrabarty, Dipesh 9
chance, eliminating 77–78
chapter map 28–32
charity 132, 159, 162–166, 179
Charles, Rashan 180
Chauvin, Derek 98
Chester, Polly 4
Chiapello, Eve 7
child adoption 5, 119, 138
child exploitation, and neo-Nazism 25
child labourer, exploitation of 38
children: and police aggression 181;
technology to monitor 91; as tradable
commodities 13
Children (LAC) system 45
children’s homes 12; privately run 13;
residential care sector, growth of 13
child welfare 84, 130, 138; agencies 88;
informatics 86
Chinese Revolution 209
Chinese social work 205–209; expansion
of 31
Chinese virus 24; see also COVID-19
pandemic
Circle, The (Eggers) 29
class: consciousness 59; exploitation 14;
and exposure to air pollution 17
climate-induced extreme weather 17
Climbie, Victoria 23
Code of Ethics for Social Work:
Statement of Principles, human rights
and 1
Coker, Richard 67
collective labourer 10
Collège de France 52
college tuition fees 8
colonialism 178; countering 186–186; and
the revised Code 2
Comas-Herrera A. 67
combined working personnel 10
common ownership 12
Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels)
37, 46
Communist Party of China (CPC), and a
harmonious society 31
community (shequ), and social work in
China 220
Community Residents’
Committees 220
competitive liberal capitalism 36
computer algorithms 90
Conformism 151
conjuncture, encompassing 10–12
consciousness, form of 5
Conservative Party, and the Brexit
‘crisis’ 11
conservative revolution 51
cool capitalism 19
Cooper, Shirley 4
CORU 2
Counting Dead Women 153
COVID-19/global pandemic 7, 12,
51, 158; and border closure 21;
“community” transmission of 27;
Covidia 12, 224; crisis, and new
forms of surveillance 70, 93–97; and
deaths in Black and minority ethnic
communities 67–68; deaths in care
homes 67; and deaths in Long Term
Residential Care 66; and ‘emergency’
measures to contain 28; evolution
of 26–28; the Indian media AND
26;origins of 27; and pausing damage
to the Earth’s climate 17; and prison
population 141; and public health
64; and recession 33; response to 13,
66–67; and social work 223–224; and
technology frms 83; treatment, and
sectioning in Italy 66; and Trump’s
response to 43; using technology to
track 93–97; virus infection rate 26;
and vulnerable children 153; and
wealth infation 14; work from home
and 42; and young workers 48
crime: and policing by machine 90–93;
and use of emerging technology to
fght 84–85
cultural order 15f
cultural Zionism 174
Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) 22
Danish People’s Party 26
Danso, Ransford 24
data extraction, and extraction
architecture 79–84

‘Data for Black Lives’ (D4BL), and
COVID-19 data use 93
data gathering processes 70
Davis, Angela 172
Davis, C. 159
DDD (Dirty, Dangerous and Demanding)
jobs 22
debt 27–28
Deloitte 72
Democratic Republic of Congo
(DRC) 38
Dengism 215
Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) surveillance
platform 94
Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) 22
Der Flügel faction 26
‘desired’ and ‘undesired’ migrants 22
de Sousa, Boaventura 9
digital dystopia 88–90
digital mediation 97
digital welfare 88
digital welfare state 89–90; in India 90;
and right to privacy 90
‘direct provision’ accommodation 2, 153
disciplinary power 64
Discipline and Punish (Foucault) 64
disinterring of fascism 146
dissent 7; acting on 8; age of 224;
defnition of social work 5–6;
organised and collectivised 9; and
Rancière 100
dissent and resistance, elimination of 97;
dissenters 9–10
dissenting social work 4–10; and
Wacquant 137–141
Dissenting Social Work 4; Arendt and 143
dissenting social work (DSW) 6, 10, 70;
characteristics of 52; the future of
226–228; and Marx 33; and Marxism
36–40; and Rancière 117–120; and
Wacquant 123
dissenting social workers, and penal
locations 141
dissenting social world, defning themes
of 5
diversity 11, 125, 184, 204; crisis 91; of
older people 69
domestic abuse killings 153
dormant labour power 16
Dublé, Marie-Joseph (‘Josie’) 181
Dunn, B. 51
Dutch System Risk Indication (SyRI) 90
Duterte 26
Index 267
Eastern German Democratic Republic
(GDR) 55
echno-proceduralism 86
Eco, Umberto 26
economic crash 7
economic exploitation 43
economic polarisation 14
egalitarianism 99
Eggers, Dave, The Circle 29
Eichmann, Adolf 146, 229
Einstein, Albert 171
electronic turn 72
el-Hallak, Iyad, killing of 172
elite expectations 104–106
embedded liberalism 51
emerging practitioners 9
emotion analytics 82
emotion pulse 82
empowerment, and social workers 9
enemy, Levinas the category of 176, 178
energy footprint 20
Engels, F. 38, 44, 50; Communist
Manifesto 46
environmental concerns, and social
work 20
environmentalist protests 3
Epstein, Yitzhak 170, 174
equality 100–102; active 100; Rancière
and 122
Ernst and Young (EY) 88
erocentrism 166–168
Estévez, Ariadna 97
ethics v ethnic nationalism, Levinas
and 176
ethnic cleansing 171
ethnic nationalism 31, 169–172
Eubanks, Virginia 87
Eucken, Walter 53
Eurocentric critical tradition 9
Eurocentrism 178; Levinas and 166–168
Europe: Black people suffocated by police
in 180; and migrant labour 21–22
European Central Bank 25
European Convention on Human Rights 90
European Journal of Social Work 160
European Union (EU): leaving the 11;
monetary and fnancial policies
of the 55
examinations, predictive algorithm
and 88
Extinction Rebellion (XR) 3, 18
extractable behavioural data 89
extraction architecture 79–84
extractivist imperialism 17
extreme poverty 14
268 Index

FAANG 70 Free French Armed Forces 181

Facebook 70, 71, 76, 83 Freiburg School of economic thought 53
‘face mask’ protection, impact of on French Resistance fghter 6
interactions 158 Friedan, Betty, The Feminist Mystique 152
‘face-to-face interactions,’ Levinas Fronek, Patricia 4
and 158 Frontline 3
facial recognition 94 Front National 26
false trails 158 ‘furloughed’ workers, salary replacement
families 14–15; relationships 63; wage’ 15 and 42
Fanon, Frantz 31, 178, 196, 197, 229;
Alienation and Freedom 182; Black Gangs Matrix, and embedded racialised
Skin, White Masks 180, 181, 182; and bias 91
dissenting social work (DSW) 198– gangster babies 91
203; and human liberation 203; racist ‘gang’ violence 90
tropes 178; and social work literature Garner, Eric 98, 180
180; Studies in a Dying Colonialism 182; Gauny, Louis-Gabriel 105
The Wretched of the Earth 182 Generation Z 73
fascism, dissenting 146 Geofeedia 85
fearless speech 9 German ordoliberals 52–55, 166
Fedayeen 177 Geronimi 198
Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) 53 Gilets Jaunes 110
Federal Reserve, and the fnancial system Gilmore, Ruth Wilson, defnition of
in the United States 13 racism and 68
female emancipation, Arendt and 152 Gilroy, Paul 11, 191
Female Eunuch, The (Greer) 152 Ginsberg, Howl 154
feminism 152 global capitalism, and natural resources 17
The Feminist Mystique (Friedan) 152 global consumption patterns 20
feral ‘underclass 138 Global Financial Crisis 33
Ferguson, I 8, 138; Uprising 3 global greenhouse emissions, statistics
Fernández, J-L 67 and 19
fnancial crisis 10, 13, 51 Global North 9, 20, 21; migrants and 22;
Finn Party 26 and Muslims 25
Fitzpatrick, Katie, and critique of global position system (GPS) data 81
Zuboff ’s book 73 Global South 9; exploitation of 16; and
Floyd, George 3, 24, 98, 101, 172, 180 pollution 17
forced migration 20, 147 global warming 17–20
Ford, Henry 73 global wealth, growth in 14
Ford company, and the motor car 16 Goffman, I 153
Fordist period 15, 16 Goodman, S. 8
Fortress Europe 21 Google 70, 75, 76, 79; aim of 76–77;
fossil fuel 19 Google Home 81
fossil fuels/ economy 8, 16, 18, 19 GPS-equipped ankle monitors 137
Foucault, Michel 6, 9, 48, 53–55, 62; and Graham, T. 23
biopolitics 63–68, 68; ‘The Birth of Gramsci, Antonio 10, 31, 45
Biopolitics’ 52, 56; and the disciplinary Gray, Mel 205
society 68; Discipline and Punish 64; Great Depression 33
and dominance of neoliberalism 58; Great Lockdown 1, 33
to Foucault 124; and human capital Greek city-states 151
67; and the roots of neoliberalism 49; greenhouse emissions, global, statistics
‘Society Must Be Defended’ 64; and and 19
U.S. neoliberalism 56–58 Green New Deal 18
Fraser, Nancy 8, 11, 42, 50; capitalism ‘greenwashing’ narratives 8
and limits 50 Greer, Germaine, The Female Eunuch 152
Frazier, Darnella 98 Grossman, Vasily, Life and Fate 165
 Index 269

groupness 11 ideo-conferencing platforms 97

groups, ideological 43–45 ideological groups 43–45
Guardian 3, 12, 86; and Arendt 143 Ignorant Schoolmaster, The (Rancière) 120
gun control 3 Immigration: control 23; status, and
Gypsy children 3 immunity passport 95; and social
workers 24
Habermas, J. 120, 152 Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Hackney’s Children’s Safeguarding (ICE) 22, 85
Profling System 88 immunity passports 66
Hall, Stuart 8 imprisonment practices, as a means of
Hannah Arendt (von Trott) 143 containment 23
Harari 95 income inequality 14
‘hard’ borders 21 India: Aadhaar system 90; COVID-19
harmonious society 214–216; and social pandemic response 21; social protection
work in China 217–218 and assistance 90
Harris, Celeste 20 indigenous communities 10
Harvey, David 27, 51; free online lectures insane consumption 17
of 35 Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) 138
Hayek, Friedrich 53 Institute for Policy Studies 14
healthcare workers, women as in the ‘institutional psychotherapy’ 181
United Kingdom 15 Insurrection Act 1907, in the United
hegemonic power 10–11, 214–216 States 225
Heidegger, Martin 143, 159 intellectual violence 8
Henriquez, Mitch 180 Internationale 49
‘herd immunity’ strategy, and the Johnson International Federation of Social
government 66 Workers (IFSW) 96; defnition of
‘heroic’ martyrs 9 social work 1
Herzog, A. 162 International Labour Organisation (ILO)
Hessel, Stephane 6; A Time for Outrage 15–16; 42
31–32 international migrants 20, 21
HHS Protect Now 94 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 33
hierarchical relations, rejecting 106–108 international public health
Highgate Cemetery, London 48 infrastructure 43
Highway code 53–54 internet, access to 89
History Workshop Journal 104 internet of things 89
Hobsbawm, E. 33 Introduction to the Basic Principles of
Holborow, Marnie 60 Marxism 35
Holocene 19 Invasion of the Body Snatchers
home 40, 42, 47; privacy and 73, 153, 157 (Siegel) 154
homeless people 2 in-work poverty 16
household debt, statistics and 27–28 Iranian Revolution 52
Hu Jintao 215 Iraq 3, 225
human body, and tech companies 80–81 Ireland the Department of Employment
human capital 56–58; ‘disposable’ and Affairs and Social Protection 89
‘replaceable’ 67; elements of 56; putting Irish Code: revision and ‘human rights
theory into practice 61; theory of defence’ 2; shortcomings of 2
58–61 Irish Human Rights and Equality
human mobility 97 Commission (IHREC) 65–66, 223
human problems 8 Irish Refugee Council 153
human rights 7; defence 2; and the digital Irish Traveller 3, 25
welfare state 90; erasure of 2; social Islamophobia 25
rights and 1 Israel 146–147
humans: as capital 56; and climate- Israeli air force, and surveillance 85
induced extreme weather 17 Italian Left 42
270 Index
Jewish population 171
Johns Hopkins University 26
Johnson, Boris 11; Cabinet
composition 11
Johnson government, and COVID-19
response 66
Joint Statement on Contact Tracing 94
Jönsson, Jessica H 3
Judaism and Christianity, and Levinas
167–168
Kaczyński, Jaroslaw 26
Kamali, Masoud 3
Kerouac, On the Road 154
Keynesian economic policy 53, 56;
Keynesianism 54
Klein, Naomi 83, 96; ‘Screen New Deal’
99; The Shock Doctrine 99
Kurz, Sebastian 26
Labourism 52
Labour MP, killing of 25
laissez-faire capitalism 53
Landy, M. 45
Latinos, and exposure to air pollution 17
Lavalette, M. 138
left elites 51
Le Pe, Marine 26
Les Revoltes Logiques 104
Leung, J.C. B. 203, 218
Levinas, Emmanuel 30, 157; Bauman’s
work and 178; Eurocentrism and
racist condescension of 159; ‘face-to-
face interactions’ and 158; and Israel
172–174; and the Other 161–163;
and philosophy that promotes racism
167; ‘The Russo-Chinese Debate and
the Dialectic’ 168; and social work
audience 159–160; and social work
literature 158; and the state 163–166;
themes of 161–163; and Zionism /
Jewish Defence 176–178
Levinasian ethics 160
LGA research 13
Liberty, Policing by Machine 92
Life and Fate (Grossman) 165
Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrations 111
London Metropolitan Police (MP) 91
London School of Economics 67
Long Term Residential Care, and
COVID-19 deaths 66
Lorde, Audre 105
low-income communities, and exposure
to air pollution 17
Luxemburg, Rosa 62
Lyon, D. 71
Magnes, Judah Leon 171
‘Make America Great Again’ 24
Malm 16, 18–20
managerial ideology, and anti-capitalist
discourse 7
mandatory professional registration 9
Manji, Ambreena 42
Mannoni, Octave, Prospero and
Caliban 186
Marston, G. 9
Marx, Gary T. 71
Marx, Karl 10, 14, 16, 44, 49, 50; on
Adam Smith 46; Capital 14, 47, 53, 55,
71; and capital accumulation 12, 33;
Communist Manifesto 46; critique of
capitalism 37–40; and cultural order
15; and dissenting social work (DSW)
33; and human capital 61–63; infuence
on Zuboff 73; and labour 46–48; letter
to Ruge 33–34; over-consumption 17;
theoretical framework of 34; Theses
on Feuerbach 48; tripartite critique of
capitalism 37
Marxism 34–35; and dissenting social
work (DSW) 36–40; and the social
work classroom 34–36
Marxist analyses 10; Marxology 34–35
Mason, Paul 224
Mau Mau rising, suppression of 190
McCarthy, Mary 155
McCarthyism 147
McClintock, A. 188
McDade, Tony 180
McDonald, C. 9
McGettigan, A. 167
McGuigan, J. 19
media, monopolisation of the 44
Meir, Golda 175
mercantile capitalism 36
meritocracy 11
Mezzadra, S. 21
Microsoft 70, 81
migrant labour 21; racist discourses and 21
migrants: ‘desired’ and ‘undesired’ 22;
international 20, 21; statistics and
20–21
migration 20–24: points based-systems of
control of 22
Minneapolis murder 3
Minneapolis Police Department 225
mob, the, fear of 153–156

Modi 21, 26
Morris, Benny 171
mother-child attachment relationship 63
mothering capacity 43
Murray, Charles 138
Muslims, revenge of the Phalangists’ 176
National Domestic Abuse helpline, calls
to 153
nationalism, forms of 24
Nations Department of Economic and
Social Affairs (UNDESA) 20
nature/natural resources 18; and global
capitalism 17
Nazism 53, 65, 167, 191; see also
neo-Nazism
Negro civilization 185; Negro question,
Arendt and 156
Neilson, B. 21
neo-assimilationism, and social workers
engagement 23
neo-fascism 24–26
neoliberal austerity programmes 18
neoliberal capitalism 12–17, 15, 47;
Bourdieu and 123; and response to
global pandemics 27; in the United
States 4; and women empowerment 15
neoliberal-generated public housing
crisis 141
neoliberal globalism 11
neoliberal governmental intervention 54
neoliberal human capitalist theorists 62
neoliberal-infected biopower 68
neoliberalism 5, 8, 12; as a concept 51;
critique of 36; in Europe 13; as means
of organising capitalism 13; in North
America 13; and the ruling class 13–14;
and social orders and relationships 14;
and social policy programmes 51–52
neoliberal penalty 142
neoliberal rationality 5
neoliberal zeitgeist 76
neo-Nazism, strategies of 25
neo-social work 4
Netanyahu 26
neural dust 80
New Deal measures, President
Roosevelt’s 56
New Leftism, Marxism and 35
New School for Social Research 143
NHSX 94
non-Jewish ‘Others’ 172
North Africa 20
North America 21
Index 271
Obama, Barack 85; Obama
administrations 76
Occupied Territory 172
Ofcom 89
Offce for National Statistics (ONS) 67
Offce of the Children’s Commissioner 88
Offce, The 59
Ofsted 13
older people, and COVID-19 deaths 67
online bidding system, and fostering
placements 12–13
oppositional practices 9
oppressed communities, and use of
technology to defend 98
oppressive practices 10
Orbán, Victor 26
ORDO 53, 55
ordoliberalism 53; German 52–55, 166
Orta, Ramsey 98
Other, the 161–163
over-consumption 17
Pacifc Solution, Australia’s 22
Palaeolithic Ice Age 19
Palantir 85, 94
Palestinians 172–174; Arab 171;
ghettoisation of 66; Israelis,
discrimination against 172; Levinas
and 31, 159, 169, 176, 178–179; 'Other'
174–176, 177; population, treatment of
146–147; ‘so-called’ 175; social workers
227; and the state of Israel 171
Pandemic Shock Doctrine 99
Pandit, Rampukar 21
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of
Europe 25
parrhesia 9
Patel, Pritti 11
Pentland, Alex 77–78, 95
People’s Republic of China (PRC) 70,
203; contributions to International
Federation of Social Workers (IFSW)
world conference 205; COVID-19
pandemic and 27; and Marxism 35;
restoration of capitalism in 209–214
personalisation 80
persuasion, powers of 10
Phalangists 176–177
Philosopher and His Poor, The
(Rancière) 106
Piterberg, Gabriel 170
Pitkin, Hannah, The Attack of the Blob 154
Piven, F. F. 137
Plague, The (Camus) 28
272 Index
planet, the, capital’s threat to 17
Plato 106–107
police custody-related deaths 180–181
police/police order, Rancière’s
understanding of the term 78, 97, 102,
108–110
policing by machine 90–93
Policing by Machine (Liberty) 92
political and social preoccupations 10
political Left 51
political ‘subjectifcation 112
politics: privatisation of 110; Rancièrian
‘politics’ 110–113; and social work in
China 218–219
pollution 18
population, foating 55
populist Right 12, 24–26
powers of persuasion 10
practice specialism 10
predictable human subjects 77–78
predictive algorithm, and
examinations 88
predictive policing 138
Preston, Susan 35
Prevent programme 3
prison population, and COVID-19
management 141
private ‘home’ 153
private organisations, and fostering
placements 12
privatised social policy 55
‘productive’ and ‘unproductive’
work, Marxist analyses and 40–41;
‘productive worker,’ Marx’s view of 40
professional divisiveness 147
professionalism, and dissenting social
work (DSW) 6–7
professional registration, mandatory 9
‘progressive’ neoliberalism 11
progressive social movements 9
Proletarian Nights (Rancière) 105
Prospero and Caliban (Mannoni) 186
protests 7
‘provincialise’ Europe 9
PRWORA 133
public health system, in the
United States 27
Punishing the Poor (Wacquant) 30
‘quality’ of care 13
quantitative easing 13
quasi-autonomous ‘felds’ 6
quasi-incarceration and internment 23
Quick Response (QR) barcode 94
Quraishi, S. Y. 28
Rabin, Yitzhak 175
race 11; and effects of pollution 17–18
race and nation: and absolute ethnicity 11;
and groupness 11
racial equality 7
racialised processes 3
racism 153; defnition of 68
racist antipathy, Boris Johnson’s 11
racist discourses, and migrant labour 22
racist tropes, and Fanon 178
radical capitalism 51
radicalisation 3
Radical Philosophy 225
Radical Social Work (Bailey & Brake) 35
‘radical social work’ textbooks, in the
United Kingdom 35
Rancière, Jacques 30, 78; and Althusser
102–104; and Bourdieu 107; criticism
of his theorisation 113–117; on dissent
100; dissenting social work (DSW) and
117–120; Ignorant Schoolmaster, The 120;
Philosopher and His Poor, The 106; and
a ‘police’ order 78, 97, 105; Proletarian
Nights 105; thematic similarities with
European contemporary
philosophers 120
Rancièrian ‘politics 100, 110–113
Realeyes 82
recession, COVID-19 pandemic and 33
Reclaiming Social Work 8
‘red-baiting’ targets 147
Redden, Joanna 88
refugee and asylum seekers: host countries
and 21; perceptions and 20–21; refugee
status, granted 2
Renault 165
rents, exorbitant 8–9
Republic of Ireland: practitioners and
migrants 23; and response to media’s
language 69
resistant experiences 9
resistant imaginations 9
revenge of the Phalangists’ 176
revolutionary activism, and Levinas 164
right-wing demagogues 25; leaders 26
Roberts, D. E. 92, 98, 99, 132–133, 137
Rochdale grooming ring 13, 25
Rogan, Seth 170
Roma children 3
Romanian seasonal farm workers 22
Roosevelt, New Deal measures and 56
Röpke, Wilhelm 53
Rossiter, Amy 160, 161
Ruge, Arnold 33
ruling class, loyalty of 13

runaway economy, Arendt and 155
‘Russo-Chinese Debate and the Dialectic,
The’ (Levinas) 168
Rüstow, Alexander 53
Said, E. W. 169, 170, 174
salary replacement, for ‘furloughed’
workers 42
Salvini, Matteo 225
Sanders, Bernie 61
Santos, de Sousa 17, 18, 29
Schmidt, Eric 79
school children, demonstrations and 3
school climate strikers 3
school integration 156
school-to prison pipeline, in the United
States 3
Schultz, Theodore 56, 59
‘Screen New Deal’ (Klein) 99
second-wave feminism 8
Second World War 6, 16, 24, 51, 180
‘security’ state’s surveillance activity 71
self-evident natural laws 33
sentiment analysis 82
Sharma, Alok 11
Shaw, Bernard 84
Shock Doctrine, The (Klein) 99
Siegel, Don, Invasion of the Body
Snatchers 154
Simons, Henry Calvert 56
Skinner, B. F. 77
slavery and colonialism 38, 59, 225
slow violence 17
smart dust 80
‘smart’ houses or apartments 81
smartphones 10, 79, 81; statistics and 83,
89; tracking and 93–95
Smith, Adam 46, 56
Snowden, Edward 70
social change, promoting 9
social critique 7
social distancing measures 225
social formation 10
social justice 6, 7, 8; and social workers 9
social movements, progressive 9
social policy programmes 52
‘social problems,’ interrogate the 153–154
social protections, dismantling of 16
social reproduction 41–43, 50; fnancial
costs of 16; outsourcing of 15;
reproductive labour 15
social security benefts 54
social therapy 194
social transfers 54
Index 273
social work: and algorithmic technologies
85–88; and the automatic factory
85–88; and choices 50; defnition of
96; dissenting 4–10; and the emerging
technology 84–85; and environmental
concerns 20; ‘fast-track’ route into
3; International Federation of Social
Workers (IFSW) defnition of 1; in
Ireland 223; and the liberation of
people 7; and Marxism 35–36; and
social justice and human rights 7; and
surveillance 70; terms and conditions
of work in PRC 220–221
Social Work Action Network (SWAN) 36
social work assessments 34
social work classroom, and Marxism
34–36
social work education 35
Social Work England regulatory
authority 8
social workers: as agents of 4; burnout
and 9; and ‘heroic’ claims about 9;
and involvement with immigration
issues 24; and issues affecting prison
populations 141; and the liberation
of people 48; and neoliberal routines
3–4; in the People’s Republic of China
(PRC) 222; and the ‘unproductive’
worker label 45
Social Workers Registration Board Code
of Professional Conduct and Ethics 1,
7; motive for revising the 2
social work informatics 86; twenty-frst-
century practice 9
Social Work Reclaimed 8
social work schools, in the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) 220
social work services, privatisation of 41
social work students, younger 2
‘Society Must Be Defended’ (Foucault) 64
Sodha, Sonia 13
Southern Cross, fnancial collapse of 13
Spanish Civil War 194
specialism, practice 10
spoken surplus 81
Stalinism 165
state: controlled economy 52;
interventionism 52; maltreatment by
the 9; racism 65; state violence 225
stay-at-home mum label 15
steam power 19–20
steering wheels, shopping from 80
Strier, Roni 160
students, college tuition fees and 8
274 Index

Studies in a Dying Colonialism (Fanon) 182; universal credit 90

discussion of 186–189 University of California, Berkeley 123
Sub-Saharan Africa 21 unpaid care work 42
Sunak, Rishi 11 Ur-Fascism 26
surveillance 70–74; COVID-19 pandemic U.S. neoliberalism 3
and 93–97; and social work 70 U.S. New Right 138
surveillance capitalism/ capitalists 70–74, USSR 13
89; and COVID-19 93–97; evolution
of 76; explaining 74–75; keywords and Varian, Hal 81
processes of 72; and Zuboff 73, 96 virtual collaboration platforms 73
surveillance society 71 voluntary migration 20
surveillance studies, and race 91–92 von Justi, Johann 108
Sweden Democrats 26 von Mises, Ludwig 53
von Trotta, Margarethe 143
talent-for-citizenship exchanges 22 vulnerable children 12
Taylor, Breonna 180
team consciousness 59 Wacquant, Loïc 6, 123, 141, 142; and
techno-habitat 73 critical sociology for social work 30;
technological communication 39–40 criticism of his 133–137; Punishing the
technologies/technology: and police Poor 30; themes of 123–133
killings 98; use of 85–88 Wallace, Rob 27
tech ‘solutionism’ 93 Wallerstein, I. 182
Tencent 70 Walmart fortune 14
territorial stigmatisation 142 Walton family 14
Thatcher, Margaret 52 ‘war of position’ 10
A Time for Outrage (Hessel) 31–32 Warsaw ghetto 175
Theses on Feuerbach (Marx) 48 Watt, James 19
third-agers 62 ‘wealth surge’ 14
‘third way’ politics 155 wearable devices 81
Third World liberation movements, and Weeks, Kathy 6
Levinas 167 Weiser, Mark 79
Tomlinson, John 10 welfare cheat 11
Tonou-Mbobda, William 181 welfare dependency 5, 11
Tosquelles, François 193, 194, 196, 198; welfare retrenchment 10, 23
experiments 181 welfare systems, digitalisation of 89
trade union networks, and social change 9 West Asia sub-region 21
Traoré, Adama 180 West Bank 172
Trump, Donald 21, 26; and COVID-19 West Beirut, occupation of 176
response 43; fxation on Mexicans 11 Western Asia 20
Tunstill, June 3 What Works Centre for Social Care 88
Turkish Ottoman Empire 170 White supremacy 6, 7, 153, 156
“wild” viruses 18
Uber 76 Williams, C. 23
ubiquitous computing 89 Williams, Patricia J. 137
UK Bailey’s research 224 Williams, Raymond, review of Between
U.K. Conservative Party-supported Past and Future 154
‘reform’ programme 8 women: and fnancial independent
UN Declaration of Human Rights 6 15; labour market participation 15;
UNISON 46 ‘multiple and underpaid roles’ 15–16;
United Kingdom 12; and COVID-19 workers, role of 15
management in prison 141; women Woodford, Clare 110
healthcare workers in 15 work, Marx’s analysis of 45
United States-Mexico, militarisation of workers, exploitation of 16
the 21

work from home, and the COVID-19
pandemic 42
workplaces 9; exploitative economics
of the 14; surveillance practices
within 78; and team
consciousness 59
World Health Organisation (WHO) 43
world of work 45–48; contemporary
45–48
World Wide Web 70
Wretched of the Earth, The (Fanon) 182;
discussion of 189–193
Xantura 88
xenophobic politics 24
XR see Extinction Rebellion (XR)
Xu, Y. 203, 214, 217
Index 275
Yadav, Atul 21
youth unemployment, in Europe 48
Zangwill, Israel 174
Zeitgeist 145
Zionism 159, 165, 169–171; victims 174
Žižek, S. 169
Zola, to Sartre 124
Zoom 39, 97; Zoomism 97
Zuboff, Shoshana 30, 72, 76, 79–80, 82,
85; analysis of ‘surveillance capitalism’
79; critique of her book 73; and
predictable human subjects 77–78; and
reasons for growth of tech 76; and
spoken surplus 81; and surveillance
capitalism 73–75, 85, 96
Zuckerberg, M. 14, 75