Extracts from Sanford F. Schram's 'The Return of Ordinary Capitalism'
"Yet for those who fail at becoming on their own financially savvy neoliberal citizen-subjects who can develop and leverage their own human capital, the state works to inculcate market compliant behavior via a panoply of incentives and penalties. And when that does not work, especially as the inequitable economy grows in ways that do not create economic opportunities for them, then coercive controls are imposed. The goal is to control and contain those left behind so as a disposable population they are less of a burden on the rest of society...
...it is not just the economy and the political system that are undergoing a structural shift. In response to these broader economic and political changes, social welfare institutions are being adjusted accordingly. In the transformed context, we see a shift from redistributing resources to the economically disadvantaged to an emphasis on enforcing compliance to behavioral standards so that subordinate populations become less of a burden on society.
It is here at this neoliberal terminus that we find a transformed social work, depoliticised and refocused on managing disposable populations. Social work no longer stands outside power but now is more than ever thoroughly assimilated to it. Across a wide variety of populations in need of various forms of assistance and treatment, social work shifts to technologies of the state, forms of governmentality, practices associated getting served populations to internalise an ethic of self-discipline and personal responsibility. The goal of this responsibilisation is for subordinate populations to handle their own problems as best they can on their own, with the aim that they become less of a burden for the constrained state. As a result, they should become more willing to take up whatever limited positions in the globalizing economy that they are offered. Social work increasingly comprises forms of psychological services focused on helping realise the disciplinary demands of the neoliberalising state, which is now ever more dedicated to managing rather than serving disposable populations.
It is the end of social work as we knew it and the ascendancy of a neoliberal regime that disciplines subordinate populations to be market compliant regardless of the consequences."
-Sanford F. Schram 'The Return of Ordinary Capitalism'
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