Paper for HSA workshop, York, April 2010

Collective ownership, consumer insulation, housing futures & the ‘real third

way’: some ideas under development

[Actually turned out to contain quite a lot on the theme of social regulation & ‘the new

behaviourism’ in social policy.]

Malcolm Harrison

Outline for this paper

1. Ongoing socio-economic changes, & implications for low income and vulnerable households.

2. Fear, discipline and control; from labour market policies to ASB.

3. A holistic overview of welfare systems

4. Are we in an era of a ‘new behaviourism’ ?

5. The ‘real third way’ (property rights & empowerment)

6. Advantages, problems, & housing policy implications

1. Ongoing socio-economic changes; & implications for low income & vulnerable households (quick reminder only)

Labour market changes: loss of traditional work & training pathways; uneven development; differentiated opportunities; more women in paid employment but low pay; ‘open economy’ (cheap labour goals); wealth divides; decline of influence of organised labour movement, etc.

Population & household trends: composition of households & neighbourhoods; lifestyles; ‘difference’; ongoing segregation by incomes & wealth.

Decay of post-war settlements: retreat from universalism; marketisation; asset disposals.

Problems for vulnerable & low income households

2. Fear, discipline & control; across the board, from labour market policies to ASB.

An ‘explosion’ of strategies & machinery for securing criminal justice, containment and discipline (?).

Certainly, the ‘reach’ and scope of interventions is large, and sometimes unexpected in its targets.

A massive literature & many critics from criminology, sociology, etc.

Perhaps less has come from any overview of social policy/welfare systems as such.

What has been happening to social policy at the ‘front line’ ?

•ASBOs given to people with mental health conditions they cannot control.•Sex workers targeted (one told not to carry condoms or go to the area where her clinic was).•Evicted for condition of garden; ASBO’d for singing in bathroom; low levels of tolerance (?); e.g. complaints about switching lights on.•‘Unborn babies targeted in crackdown on criminality’ (The Guardian, 16/5/2007).•Young people not shielded although ‘vulnerable’. ‘Naming and shaming’; is this OK ?

‘NAMING AND SHAMING’

What role do welfare support systems play in this trend ?

With a diminution of the capacities of employment and neighbourhood arrangements to secure social order, surrogate and alternative systems take on growing weight.

I suggest that this is particularly viable (politically) where selective support (dependent on measuring means or other conditions) offers avenues & legitimacy for discipline. Social housing is one important instance.

‘Selectivity’ provides one of several ‘structural keys’ for understanding the drive to identify and discipline the supposedly culpable human agent and group.

3. A holistic overview of welfare systems

It is not enough to start with models of change derived from criminal justice analysis or labour markets.

‘Welfare’ involves an ensemble of systems that reflect & help confirm or reconstruct differentiated opportunities across fields of consumption outside direct wages.

Multiple channels have operated for households, some very beneficial (underpinning capital accumulation & life-long planning). Generally, bounded choices/pathways.

There is often a close interweaving of support with discipline. This has run through the long history of welfare interventions (as in housing), especially for those who are poor, or are otherwise disadvantaged or vulnerable.

Implications of welfare state ensembles; some particular hypotheses

Oppressive practices bearing on households are often likely to be contingent to some degree on the characterisation of welfare as a ‘gift’ rather than a right.

Emphasis on selectivity in dealing with consumers – rather than universalistic rights of access to services – is likely to be accompanied by or facilitate the emergence of both extensive & intensive forms of classification, measurement, surveillance & regulation.

These in turn pave the way for restriction, denial and discipline, & (although selectivity may not always be accompanied by these phenomena) there is often potential for their elaboration & growth.

4. Are we in an era of a ‘new behaviourism’ for social policy ?

I have been trying to think about this. It can be difficult to divide past & present because of continuities. Some things that look innovative may really be less so (e.g. IFSPs/FIPs etc.).

Any division has to acknowledge overlaps between periods, & differing things happening in different areas of policy.

Nonetheless, there are some factors, shifts or trends that may make the present or most recent period distinctive.

Shifts over time

1. Early post-war years (Social reconstruction; social & economic rights, needs & planning orientations)

2. The 1950s & early 1960s (Note Wootton; the rise of socio-medical approaches and ideas; psychiatry)

3. The ‘turbulent & contested interlude’ of the mid/late 1960s & 1970s (Mixed messages on environment versus methodological individualism)

4. Post-1979; the Conservatives in office (Back to individual & group failure, but slow on some ‘disorders’)

5. The new behaviourism

The general picture from the 1950s

Barbara Wootton (1959), Social science and social pathology:

Noted the rise of psychiatry, & how the myth of the welfare state had turned the minds of investigators away from the study of material want. Culpability was out of fashion, the vogue being for traumatic experience.

Yet the preference was to analyse “the infected individual” rather than to eliminate the infection from the environment.

Things were more complex in the later 1960s and 1970s.Today, ‘blaming’ has returned in a big way, but perhaps environment still has not.

Housing paternalism of the past

Quoted by Ward in Tenants Take Over (1974). Attributed to a handbook issued by a council to its tenants in the 1950s.

“Keep your home clean and tidy. Endeavour to have some method of cleaning as you go along; do not try to clean the whole house in one day. Regular bed times for children and adults, except on special occasions. Sit down properly at the table…” etc.

‘Unsatisfactory tenants’ (1955/1968)

Paternalism & disciplines (from this report)

Duties of home advisers “appear to lie between those of a health visitor and a home help, and are mainly directed to giving the mother practical help in such matters as cleaning, cooking, child care and budgeting”.

“Southampton County Borough are using a large house for the accommodation of 10 to 11 unsatisfactory families, who will be under the general supervision of two experienced voluntary workers”.

A few councils had “considered the possibility of building special houses of tougher construction and without some of the amenities of a normal house.” Was not recommended!

Tentative conclusions on history

A shifting focus and sets of emphases over time, but with many historical resonances on methods and outlooks.

Overlapping periods, with slightly different relative weight placed on ‘agency’ as against ‘structure’ (or ‘individual’ as against ‘environment’) in each period. The balance of these implicit in policy trends may have shifted to some extent, as has the attention paid to structural as against pathological aspects of causation and explanation. Difficult properly to verify an overview of periods, as this would require extensive empirical investigation.

Tentative ideas on some distinctive features today (in summary)

• Attempts to reclaim or redirect very large numbers via social policy domains, with powerful therapeutic tendencies.

• Wider casting of nets (to cover perceived threats or risks, not just actions; and criminalisation of more behaviours).

• Growth in social engineering for groups and neighbourhoods (community cohesion, etc.).

• Political consensus in England (at least at visible level); few voices for strengthening of universalistic rights-based systems from either main Party (except re elders as on health/care interface ?).

• Implicit downgrading of structural factors and social rights claims, in favour of social pathologies, incentivisation, responsibilisation, etc.

Thrust, language & repertoires of new behaviourism (structural factors + human agency)

Various strands co-exist; & policy areas may differ in priorities or terminologies. Culpability, risk, ‘dependency’, ‘vulnerability’, etc. ‘Condition management’ & well-being.

Rather than recognition of rights to resources, one trend has been to project increasing contract notions (obligations, conditions & targets) onto service users or those seeking assistance.

Where are practices going ? Disability and illness are crucial tests (see Ravetz, ‘Is the government trying to abolish illness ?’, New Statesman, 2008).

Effects on & in occupational groups need studying.

Further intensification of therapies,

& experimentation with incentives ?

Bringing your staff up to scratch ?

Amusing US examples…training on ‘Featured Programs’ around ‘Learned Helplessness’ & ‘Learned Optimism’. This advertising also refers to key experiments in a prison, & with dogs, amongst others, & tempts us with a CD-ROM on ‘Sniffy the Virtual Rat’, allowing users to train such an animal to perform specific behaviours.

Testing the incentives & imposing the punishments ?

Are experiments on dependent service users only a distant prospect ? The option of random controlled trials has quite recently been proposed in a US housing collection.

The US spectre; punishment & surveillance instead of support ?

5. The ‘real third way’ (property rights & empowerment, co-ops, mutuals, etc.)

Concerns collective property rights (a principle especially obvious in housing, but applicable much more generally).

Social policies to build up greater equality of conditions & opportunities by adjusting assets, not just income flows.

Securing a measure of ‘consumer insulation’ (can also see my 2009 PPP online paper), & empowerment. Gives voice and leverage for resistance to negative effects of ‘open economy’ globalisation (including the ‘race to the bottom’).

6. Advantages, problems, & housing policy implications

Possible general benefits

Collective property rights might better secure legitimacy than direct selectivity via ‘the gift’.

Might offset ongoing marketisation & decline of commitment to universalistic outlooks.

Longer-term, might increase scope for embedding rights within broader sets of expectations (universalistic housing allowances/credits; general sustainability strategies for asset-building; universalised transport allowances; shared rights of ownership over utilities & resources [& football clubs ?!?]; workplace rights; participatory and collegiate systems for education; etc.).

Potential impact on ‘new behaviourism’ ?

Does the ‘real third way’ offer routes that might modify or reduce the rise of disciplinary & therapeutic interventions, ‘top-down’ mass surveillance, and a ‘downward spiral’ that might be heading social policy in the US direction ?

Probably yes (given the emphasis on rights, recognising interdependencies, prospects for learning processes, and informal social regulation) but it could be an uphill battle ! There is scope for vigorous social control if unrestrained.

Anyway, possibly the only route left ?!

Lots of specific challenges for real third way organisations & their sustainability

Please see the full paper for an initial list of eleven inter-connected foci (for further exploration & development).

Familiar issues include:problems of autonomy; democracy; risk management & flexibility; vulnerability to exit, asset-stripping and diversion; handling of self-interest; insiders versus outsiders; relationships with universalistic rules and norms; choices about scale and scope; security of funding; growth; etc.

Housing policy implications

• Bring tenant rights closer to those of owner-occupiers.• Subsidies/support systems to create, secure & recognise

‘stakes’ or assets as well as meeting housing costs (cf histories of tax benefits on pensions or owner-occupation, or right-to-buy).

• Estates as assets held in trust. Downgrade ideas about ‘economic rents’, & accept economic implications of mediated property rights claims here (cf Murie et al., 2007, p. 53). ‘Pooled discounts’ if transferring assets.

• Sheltered tax regimes for organisations that give ‘community benefits’ & generate mutuality (cf ‘charities’).

• Public expenditures/contracts should require asset-development, & recognition of claims people have over environments.