The new class and the well-being state

Originally asked to look at what people thought about the welfare state, this paper has turned this question around somewhat and asks what do welfare professionals, experts and policy advisors think of people? To help answer this question, Alvin Gouldner’s 1979 sociological text about the Rise of the New Class will be adopted and explored in the context of twenty first century experiences and expectations (Gouldner 1979). The argument being made here is that the best way to understand welfare in the UK is not to focus on the punters receiving it, but to look at those who are handing it out. To give a brief response to the question, what do the new class think of the public, the answer this paper argues, is, not very much. However, today’s sense that the public are not up to much is no longer expressed through the gritted teeth of outraged moralists, but is spoken with soft tones by the new class, with empathy and understanding, and always with a desire to give us support. It is, in part, this desire to give people support that is the focus of this paper: Because if this is correct, it raises an old question in a new form, and the question we need to address is less one related to welfare as such, but a wider more all-encompassing question regarding the new class’s creation of a culture of dependency

The antisocialisation of children and young people: undermining professionals and colonising everyday life

This paper analyses the changing nature of relationships between adults and young people. Adopting aspects of the work of Frank Furedi, the question of the socialisation of children is addressed. It is argued that the problematisation of behaviour, coupled with the development of new state and institutional processes, has led to a growing spread of ‘professional’ and contractual involvement in everyday life. This is something that relates to and is accelerated by the emergence of micro-politics and micro-social policy over the last few decades. This colonisation of the lifeworld, it is argued, is increasingly formalising informal relationships and undermining spontaneous relationships between adults and young people. It also distorts the nature of professions and the relationships developed between them and young people. The real relationships between adults and young people are consequently being undermined and replaced by an ersatz form of socialisation

Football fans in an age of intolerance

This chapter explores the changing nature of policing at football matches, a change that incorporates two different forms of elitism. The shift, it is argued, relates to a move from traditional conservative snobbery about football fans, to a new form of cosmopolitan snobbery. The former, in the 1980s, resulted in the physical caging of fans and led to the deaths at Hillsborough. The latter is arguably more problematic and is preoccupied less with the control of ‘bodies’, than with the regulation of minds (and mouths). Today’s obsession about regulating football fans (and indeed players) stems from an exaggerated concern about the bigoted nature of football supporters – indeed of the white working class, in Britain. The regulation of speech and behaviour at games should be understood as a new form of moralising, a new etiquette and an intolerant form of policing of ‘offensiveness’

Antisocial behaviour and the vulnerable public

Key to understanding the emergence of antisocial behavior legislation in the UK is the concept of diminished subjectivity, the emergence of an insecure elite guided by a precautionary principle of safety, and the construction and engagement with a universalised vulnerable public. As such this chapter attempts to explain how the demoralisation of the Cold War political framework resulted in a new relationship developing between previously political and moral subjects and the (post) modern elite. Central to this is the transformation of the robust liberal subject into a newly conceptualised vulnerable individual. Helped by the decline of moral conservatism and the collapse of political radicalism the active individual and collective were reimagined as victims of crime and vulnerable groups. Once reconceptualised in this way, the more fragmented public of the post-Cold War world, were engaged with through the emotion of fear and the therapeutic state stepped in to regulate an increasing array of behaviours, actions and speech that were previously not seen as criminal or in need of state control. The outcome is the institutionalisation of an asocial, fragile character type as the new norm for society by an insecure state that keeps us all at a safe distance from one another

The vulnerable subject

Academic freedom is formally supported but often challenged, through activities like no-platforming and through a sentiment of sensitivity and an understanding that ideas can be harmful. This development is discussed here as a reflection of the rise of the ‘vulnerable subject.’ This paper demonstrates the growing importance of vulnerability as the central human characteristic in (post) modern times and with reference to law and justice practices explains the ‘collapse of the harm principle.’ Developed through Frank Furedi’s theory of diminished subjectivity we will demonstrate the extent to which the vulnerable subject has been institutionalised and adopted as a new (fragmented) norm. Within the framework of diminished subjectivity, the inner logic of vulnerability has a spiralling dynamic—once adopted as a norm, the vulnerable subject’s answer to the question ‘vulnerable to what?’ constantly expands, drawing in ever more areas of life, behaviour, relationships as well as words and ideas into a regulatory framework. Concerns about overcriminalisation are understood here to be a product of this vulnerable subject, something that cannot be resolved at the level of law but must relate to the wider cultural and political sense of human progress and a defence of the robust liberal subject in society

Criminalizing songs and symbols in Scottish football:how anti-sectarian legislation has created a new ‘sectarian’ divide in Scotland

Since the 1990s, the regulation of football fans has increasingly shifted from the policing of actions to the policing of words. With this in mind, this article looks at the impact of the anti-sectarian ‘industry’ in Scotland. In particular, it looks at the impact that legislation in Scotland, that criminalized football fans’ songs and chants, has had on Glasgow Celtic, and especially Glasgow Rangers, supporters. The article is based on participatory action research with football supporters in Glasgow who were opposing the Offensive Behaviour at Football Bill, in 2011. Through this work, two issues became necessary to address; firstly, the impact of the anti-sectarian ‘industry’ in Scotland, which has grown precisely at a time when sectarianism appears to be declining, and secondly, the emergence of a new tension, divide or form of intolerance, which is developing amongst fans (particularly Glasgow Rangers fans), that has been created by this anti-sectarian industry