ÑóẊîöʼn
18th December 2013, 15:56
Whistle While You Work (For Nothing): Positive Affect as Coercive Strategy – The Case of Workfare (http://medicalhumanities.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/whistle-while-you-work-for-nothing-positive-affect-as-coercive-strategy-the-case-of-workfare/)
In this post, Lynne Friedli (http://www.centreforwelfarereform.org/who-we-are/fellows/lynne-friedli.html) and Robert Stearn (http://birkbeck.academia.edu/RobertStearn) look at the role of psychological coercion, notably through the imposition of positive affect, in UK Government workfare programmes. There has been little or no debate about the recruitment of psychology/psychologists into monitoring, modifying and/or punishing people who claim social security benefits. This silence raises important ethical questions, including about the relationship of psychology to the medical humanities.
The linked blog post is a very interesting analysis of how the state and capital in the UK collaborate in using psychocratic coercion and brainwashing as tools for exploiting the unemployed, disabled and working poor. It certainly fits in nicely with neo-liberal supply-side dogma that actively ignores and effaces environmental and social considerations in favour of a myopic focus on the atomised individual. Shit like this is both symptomatic of and contributes to the alienation of the common person.
I've had to endure this kind of cack-handed attempt by parasitic spivs like A4e to reprogram me into some kind of inanely grinning nincompoop, the kind who takes all the shit that life throws at them without complaining. I could see it a mile off, but that doesn't make it any less reprehensible. I can't help but worry that people not as psychologically robust as I am have been harmed in some way by this kind of poisonous, soul-warping shit.
In this post, Lynne Friedli (http://www.centreforwelfarereform.org/who-we-are/fellows/lynne-friedli.html) and Robert Stearn (http://birkbeck.academia.edu/RobertStearn) look at the role of psychological coercion, notably through the imposition of positive affect, in UK Government workfare programmes. There has been little or no debate about the recruitment of psychology/psychologists into monitoring, modifying and/or punishing people who claim social security benefits. This silence raises important ethical questions, including about the relationship of psychology to the medical humanities.
The linked blog post is a very interesting analysis of how the state and capital in the UK collaborate in using psychocratic coercion and brainwashing as tools for exploiting the unemployed, disabled and working poor. It certainly fits in nicely with neo-liberal supply-side dogma that actively ignores and effaces environmental and social considerations in favour of a myopic focus on the atomised individual. Shit like this is both symptomatic of and contributes to the alienation of the common person.
I've had to endure this kind of cack-handed attempt by parasitic spivs like A4e to reprogram me into some kind of inanely grinning nincompoop, the kind who takes all the shit that life throws at them without complaining. I could see it a mile off, but that doesn't make it any less reprehensible. I can't help but worry that people not as psychologically robust as I am have been harmed in some way by this kind of poisonous, soul-warping shit.