Poverty in the 'age of affluence': a governmental approach.
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Date
2010
Authors
Bletsas, Angelique
Editors
Advisors
Bacchi, Carol Lee
Mayer, Peter Baldwin
Spencer, Vicki Ann
Mayer, Peter Baldwin
Spencer, Vicki Ann
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
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Thesis
Citation
Statement of Responsibility
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Abstract
This thesis addresses the growing tendency to treat poverty in Australia as an individualised problem. Analysis is situated in relation to the restructuring of welfare in western liberal states in the post-war period, highlighting the way that the welfare state ‘crisis’ appears to correspond with a new ‘consensus’ on poverty as individualised. Examining the way that poverty is formulated in recent welfare policy and governmental texts it is shown that this positioning of poverty comes increasingly to be premised upon the idea that a state of ‘affluence’ has been achieved. Importantly this trend in understanding poverty as an individualised problem is argued to occur across the ideological spectrum. It is demonstrated that, through reference to a ‘paradigm of affluence’, contemporary representative authors from both the right and the left constitute poverty today as ‘residual’ and thus as primarily individualised and behavioural.
Applying tools of analysis from post-structuralism and governmentality studies it is argued that both poverty and affluence constitute historic ‘events’ – interventions in the way social life is thought and organised – and not simply demographic phenomena. Therefore, in contrast to existing writing on affluence, within which affluence is seen to have replaced poverty as an evolutionary stage of development, the argument advanced in this thesis is that the relevance of poverty and affluence to particular rationalities of government is not premised upon their level of incidence. Instead it is argued that both poverty and affluence have functioned as ‘problematics’ of government – sites through which the project of government is made meaningful. In this way an emergent governmentality of affluence is posited.
In its premise of a governmental rationality of affluence the thesis provides a framework for analysing the on-going restructuring of the Australian welfare state, and liberal states more broadly. Treating conceptions of poverty and of affluence not simply as ‘natural’ phenomena, but as interpretative events and motifs of government, the thesis also provides a counter-point through which to resist individualised conceptions of poverty and the punitive policies to which they often lead.
School/Discipline
School of History and Politics
Dissertation Note
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of History and Politics, 2010
Provenance
This electronic version is made publicly available by the University of Adelaide in accordance with its open access policy for student theses. Copyright in this thesis remains with the author. This thesis may incorporate third party material which has been used by the author pursuant to Fair Dealing exceptions. If you are the owner of any included third party copyright material you wish to be removed from this electronic version, please complete the take down form located at: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/legals