Pub Date : 2021-06-15DOI: 10.46692/9781529211344.007
T. Boland, R. Griffin
Typically the CV is criticised as self-aggrandisement or the commodification of the self for the market. Building on emergent research on jobseeking, both off and on-line, this chapter examines CV advice books and the interface of LinkedIn as a networked platform. Moreover the CV is explored here as a confession of the self; not just as a profession of faith in the self and the market, but as a process of self-scrutiny and reflection which avows unemployment as a personal fault. Following a longer history, the CV is an inheritor of the demand to ‘tell the truth about the self’ which is a transformative trial for the self, in a power relation, once with an abbot or priest, but now with a work coach. Furthermore, the audience of the CV is not always embodied, but distant – God or the Market is the judge of the worth of the person and the truth of their confession. Thus, the CV is not a neutral representation, but entices individuals to internalise the perspective of potential employers and the judgements of welfare officials.
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Pub Date : 2021-06-15DOI: 10.46692/9781529211344.002
T. Boland, R. Griffin
Our approach is an ‘Archaic Anthropology’, a methodological combination of contemporary anthropological engagement with the historicisation of the present using genealogical methods, drawn from Nietzsche, Weber, Foucault and Agamben, a contribution to the emergent paradigm of ‘economic theology’. Specifically this entails taking contemporary discourses – from social policy to job-seeking advice – as constitutive of the society it purports to describe. Thus, contemporary conceptualisations, whether created by academic disciplines or popular culture draw from existing cultural models, including theology, to make sense of complex social and economic experiences, from national recessions or growth to personal careers or unemployment. Thus, government is not simply evidence-based but incorporates medieval pastoral power – following Foucault, or the market reflects an invisible hand which is equally providential as it is economic – drawing on Agamben’s theological genealogy. By combining key ideas and figures from cultural sociology and governmentality studies, our approach allows us to trace the ‘production of meaning’ – how cultural models are deployed to decipher meaning in even arbitrary events, shape identities continuously and give direction and purpose to social and economic life.
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Pub Date : 2021-06-15DOI: 10.47674/9781529211344.001
T. Boland, R. Griffin
Chapter 1 available Open Access via OAPEN under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Western culture has ‘faith’ in the labour market as a test of the worth of each individual. For those who are out of work, welfare is now less of a support than a means of purification and redemption. Continuously reformed by the left and right in politics, the contemporary welfare state attempts to transform the unemployed into active jobseekers, punishing non-compliance. Drawing on ideas from economic theology, this provocative book uncovers deep-rooted religious concepts and shows how they continue to influence contemporary views of work and unemployment: Jobcentres resemble purgatory where the unemployed attempt to redeem themselves, jobseeking is a form of pilgrimage in hope of salvation, and the economy appears as providence, whereby trials and tribulations test each individual. This book will be essential reading for those interested in the sociology and anthropology of modern economic life.
{"title":"Introduction: Paradoxes of Welfare","authors":"T. Boland, R. Griffin","doi":"10.47674/9781529211344.001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47674/9781529211344.001","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 1 available Open Access via OAPEN under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Western culture has ‘faith’ in the labour market as a test of the worth of each individual. For those who are out of work, welfare is now less of a support than a means of purification and redemption. Continuously reformed by the left and right in politics, the contemporary welfare state attempts to transform the unemployed into active jobseekers, punishing non-compliance. Drawing on ideas from economic theology, this provocative book uncovers deep-rooted religious concepts and shows how they continue to influence contemporary views of work and unemployment: Jobcentres resemble purgatory where the unemployed attempt to redeem themselves, jobseeking is a form of pilgrimage in hope of salvation, and the economy appears as providence, whereby trials and tribulations test each individual. This book will be essential reading for those interested in the sociology and anthropology of modern economic life.","PeriodicalId":233543,"journal":{"name":"The Reformation of Welfare","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128005970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-15DOI: 10.47674/9781529211344.003
T. Boland, R. Griffin
Chapter 3 available Open Access via OAPEN under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Western culture has ‘faith’ in the labour market as a test of the worth of each individual. For those who are out of work, welfare is now less of a support than a means of purification and redemption. Continuously reformed by the left and right in politics, the contemporary welfare state attempts to transform the unemployed into active jobseekers, punishing non-compliance. Drawing on ideas from economic theology, this provocative book uncovers deep-rooted religious concepts and shows how they continue to influence contemporary views of work and unemployment: Jobcentres resemble purgatory where the unemployed attempt to redeem themselves, jobseeking is a form of pilgrimage in hope of salvation, and the economy appears as providence, whereby trials and tribulations test each individual. This book will be essential reading for those interested in the sociology and anthropology of modern economic life.
{"title":"Reform: Policies and the Polity","authors":"T. Boland, R. Griffin","doi":"10.47674/9781529211344.003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47674/9781529211344.003","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 3 available Open Access via OAPEN under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Western culture has ‘faith’ in the labour market as a test of the worth of each individual. For those who are out of work, welfare is now less of a support than a means of purification and redemption. Continuously reformed by the left and right in politics, the contemporary welfare state attempts to transform the unemployed into active jobseekers, punishing non-compliance. Drawing on ideas from economic theology, this provocative book uncovers deep-rooted religious concepts and shows how they continue to influence contemporary views of work and unemployment: Jobcentres resemble purgatory where the unemployed attempt to redeem themselves, jobseeking is a form of pilgrimage in hope of salvation, and the economy appears as providence, whereby trials and tribulations test each individual. This book will be essential reading for those interested in the sociology and anthropology of modern economic life.","PeriodicalId":233543,"journal":{"name":"The Reformation of Welfare","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115337113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-15DOI: 10.46692/9781529211344.005
T. Boland, R. Griffin
Social welfare policy, particularly activation policy and especially welfare conditionality with behavioural sanctions attempts to reform and transform the unemployed, making them work-ready, re-training them and governing their jobseeking. Not only is the effectiveness of these policies questionable, their cultural assumptions about work, reform and suffering are problematic. In this chapter, we argue that a purgatorial logic underlies activation policy, from the workhouse through to contemporary jobcentres, the idea is that individuals are responsible for their own unemployment, and that imposing harsher conditions, threats and punishments will serve a purifying and edifying purpose. Tracing the idea of purgatory through medieval theology to its widespread cultural resonance in early modern Europe, we suggest that the Protestant rejection of purgatory as a theological concept also marks its transference into governmental social policy, particularly in welfare and workfare – as demonstrated through an analysis of Bentham’s Pauper Management, contemporary policy, and the voices of the unemployed. This historicisation also attends to alternative to punitive policies within our culture, particularly charity and forgiveness, the impulse to alleviate suffering, which exist in tension with the current impulse to reform the unemployed.
{"title":"Purgatory: The Ideal of Purifying Suffering","authors":"T. Boland, R. Griffin","doi":"10.46692/9781529211344.005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46692/9781529211344.005","url":null,"abstract":"Social welfare policy, particularly activation policy and especially welfare conditionality with behavioural sanctions attempts to reform and transform the unemployed, making them work-ready, re-training them and governing their jobseeking. Not only is the effectiveness of these policies questionable, their cultural assumptions about work, reform and suffering are problematic. In this chapter, we argue that a purgatorial logic underlies activation policy, from the workhouse through to contemporary jobcentres, the idea is that individuals are responsible for their own unemployment, and that imposing harsher conditions, threats and punishments will serve a purifying and edifying purpose. Tracing the idea of purgatory through medieval theology to its widespread cultural resonance in early modern Europe, we suggest that the Protestant rejection of purgatory as a theological concept also marks its transference into governmental social policy, particularly in welfare and workfare – as demonstrated through an analysis of Bentham’s Pauper Management, contemporary policy, and the voices of the unemployed. This historicisation also attends to alternative to punitive policies within our culture, particularly charity and forgiveness, the impulse to alleviate suffering, which exist in tension with the current impulse to reform the unemployed.","PeriodicalId":233543,"journal":{"name":"The Reformation of Welfare","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134033791","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-15DOI: 10.46692/9781529211344.004
T. Boland, R. Griffin
Work is central to individual being and social belonging within modernity, with strong theological dimensions as identified in Weber’s ‘protestant ethic’ thesis. Drawing from a large corpus of qualitative interviews with unemployed people, this chapter examines how work is not only desired as an economic or social good, but is positioned as an antidote to the trials of unemployment. In particular, this chapter builds on Weber by analysing Maslow’s idea of self-actualisation through work as recapitulating the theological idea of work as internally transformative. Furthermore, mainstream sociological theories of unemployment, particularly the ‘deprivation theory’ are reconsidered as reflecting these religious concepts of work as redemptive. Indeed, the ideal of the social goods of work is modelled on disciplined labour, in a history stretching through the factory back to the monastery, with the unemployed appearing as the rabble or beggars outside these institutions, in need of reform – an impulse shared by left and right wing governments and even socialist thinking.
{"title":"Vocation: Doing God’s Work","authors":"T. Boland, R. Griffin","doi":"10.46692/9781529211344.004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46692/9781529211344.004","url":null,"abstract":"Work is central to individual being and social belonging within modernity, with strong theological dimensions as identified in Weber’s ‘protestant ethic’ thesis. Drawing from a large corpus of qualitative interviews with unemployed people, this chapter examines how work is not only desired as an economic or social good, but is positioned as an antidote to the trials of unemployment. In particular, this chapter builds on Weber by analysing Maslow’s idea of self-actualisation through work as recapitulating the theological idea of work as internally transformative. Furthermore, mainstream sociological theories of unemployment, particularly the ‘deprivation theory’ are reconsidered as reflecting these religious concepts of work as redemptive. Indeed, the ideal of the social goods of work is modelled on disciplined labour, in a history stretching through the factory back to the monastery, with the unemployed appearing as the rabble or beggars outside these institutions, in need of reform – an impulse shared by left and right wing governments and even socialist thinking.","PeriodicalId":233543,"journal":{"name":"The Reformation of Welfare","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125007310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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