Biopolitics Generic Dartmouth 2K9 1
1NC 4
1NC 5
1NC 6
1NC 8
Social Service Link 10
Link – Social Services 11
Link – Welfare (Expertise) 13
Link-Welfare (Responsibility) 14
WELFARE/Earned Income Tax Credit LINK 15
WELFARE LINK 16
Link-Welfare 17
Link-Social Services 18
Link-Social Services 19
Link: Poverty/Dependency/Work & !: Otherization 20
Link: Social Services (1/2) 21
LINK--Social Services (2/2) 22
LINK--Social Services & No Solvency 23
LINK--Social Services/Dependency & No Solvency (1/2) 24
LINK--Social Services/Dependency & No Solvency (2/2) 25
LINK--Social Services & !: Turns Case (1/2) 26
LINK--Social Services & !: Turns Case (2/2) 27
LINK--Behavior 28
Link – Social Work 29
LINK--Behavior & !: Otherization/State Intervention (1/2) 30
LINK--Targeting Groups (1/2) 31
LINK--Information Gathering (1/2) 33
LINK--Information Gathering (2/2) 34
LINK--Poverty Line (1/3) 35
LINK--Poverty Line (2/3) 36
Link-Labeling the “Poor” 37
Link-Labeling the “Poor” 38
LINK--Liberalism 39
LINK--Family Planning & !: Women’s Rights (1/2) 40
LINK--Narratives 41
LINK-Job Creation 43
Link: Employment/Job Creation 44
Link: Economy/Employment 45
Links – Social Service Surveillance 46
Link-Deserving vs. Undeserving Poor 47
Link: “Working”/”Worthy” poor 48
Link: “Working”/“Worthy” Poor 49
Link-Court 50
Link-Courts/Legal Enforcement 51
Link – Equal Protection 52
Link: Law/Courts 54
LINK-Social Science Methodology 55
Link -- Social Science Methodology 56
THERAPEUTIC FRAMING LINK 57
Link—Empowerment 58
Link-Empowerment 60
Link-Empowerment 61
Link--Citizenship 62
Social Services-Managerial Frame Link 63
DEPENDENCY DISCOURSE LINK 64
Health Education 67
HEALTH LINK 68
HEALTH LINK 69
Links – Health Discourse 70
Links – Medicine 71
Links – Health Discourse 72
Link: Health Care 73
Link: Health Care – Screening/Preventative Care 74
Links – Nutrition 75
Links – Social Service Surveillance 76
Links – Abortion (Privacy) 77
Link: Poverty/Pov Line 78
Competitiveness Link 79
Competitiveness Link 80
Link – Social Insurance (Regulatory Devices) 81
DISCOURSE PRIOR 82
DISCOURSE PRIOR 83
DISCOURSE PRIOR 84
DISCOURSE PRIOR 85
DISCOURSE SHAPES REALITY 87
Discourse Shapes Reality 88
Discourse Shapes Reality 89
Discourse Shapes Reality 90
Impact – Surveillance Biopolitics 91
BEURACRACY/DISCIPLINARY POWER IMPACT 92
IMPACT—FASCISM 93
IMPACT-STIGMATIZATION 94
BIOPOLITICS IMPACT-HEALTH MODULE 95
BIOPOLITICS IMPACT—HEALTH MODULE 96
Disciplinary Power Impact-Legal Cases 97
IMPACT-STIGMATIZATION 98
TURNS CASE--ASSISTANCE 99
TURNS CASE--HEALTH 100
TURNS CASE – Job Creation Affs 101
Turns Case-Poverty 103
Turns Case-Poverty 104
!: Turns Case/Otherization 105
Alt: Problematize 106
Alt: Problematize 107
Alt: Problematize 108
Alt: Deconstruction 109
Alt Solves 110
Alt Solves 111
Alt Solves 112
Alt Solves & Discourse Shapes Reality 113
Alt—Linguistic Change 115
Alt-Linguistic Change 116
Alt Solvency 117
Alt – Change Method/Research 118
Alt-Change Methods 119
Alt v. Legal Cases 120
Alt v. Legal Cases 122
Alt vs. Legal Cases 123
Alt. v. Legal Affs 125
AT: ETHICAL RESPONSIBILTY 126
At: K Ignores Suffering 128
At: K Ignores Suffering 129
AT: PERM 130
AT: Perm 131
At: Perm 132
At: Perm 133
A2 Perm 134
AT: Perm (v. Legal Affs) 135
At: Perm (Legal K Alt) 136
Aff: Perm 137
Aff: Good Policies Solve 138
Aff A2: Word Pic 139
Aff A2: Word Pic 141
Aff A2: Coercion 144
Aff Claims Suspect-Poverty 145
Aff Claims Suspect 146
Aff Evidence Suspect 147
Aff Evidence Suspect 148
Aff Claims Suspect 150
Aff Claims Suspect 151
Aff Claims Suspect 152
Aff Claims Suspect -- Competitiveness 153
Competitiveness Claims Suspect 154
At: Framework 156
At: Framework 157
AT: Dickinson/Checks on Liberal Power 158
AFF— 159
PERM—CRITICAL SOCIAL WORK 160
Aff – Perm 161
Perm-Incrementalism 162
Perm 164
Perm Solvency: K2 Change 165
SOCIAL SERVICES GOOD 166
Alt Cedes the Political 167
Alt cedes the political 168
Aff Solves Root Cause 170
Alternative fails – No discursive shift 171
Alt Fails--No Discursive Shift 172
Poverty – Starting Point 173
WELFARE OBJECTIVES -- STARTING POINT 174
Aff-Immigration 175
Aff-Gender 176
Aff—Market Rule Worse 177
Aff A2: Private Food Shelves 179
Aff A2: Food Shelves Coercion 180
Aff A2: Coercion 183
***Aff Legal K** 184
Aff – Legal K 185
Aff – Co-option 186
At: Legal K Alt 187
Grass Root’s Politics Fail 188
At: Legal K Alt 190
Perm 191
Perm Solvency: Ideological tension good 192
Perm-Legal Alts 193
Cede Political 194
Neolib Turn 195
1NC
The discourse of social service disciplines those labeled as persons living in poverty.
Hartley DEAN Social Policy @ London School of Economics ’92 “Poverty Discourse and the Disempowermetn of the Poor” Critical Social Policy 12 (35) p. 86-87
CONCLUSION
Returning for a moment to the Working Together Against Poverty conference, one of the participants is reported as having said 'I think this word poverty is a real crusher'(Lister and Beresford, 1991 plO). Certainly, the data from our interviews with social security claimants reveals in its sheer complexity a certain crushing force behind the currency of the 'p' word. The simple imagery of 'victims and villains' dissolves into a miasma of more subtle meanings. Poverty' evokes fear, resentment, guilt, confusion, mistrust and disempowerment.
However, does this discursive analysis bring us any closer to the true meaning of 'poverty'? By interviewing social security claimants, were we in fact interviewing 'the poor'? Such questions cannot be answered because they miss the point.
Poverty is a social construction -just as, for example, sexuality or criminality are social constructions. There is nothing inherently difficult about defining and describing sex (as a biologically conditioned aspect of human behaviour) or crime (as consensually embargoed forms of conduct), yet the socially constructed notions of sexuality and criminality are hugely difficult to define or describe. By the same token, it is a relatively straightforward matter to define and describe levels of material deprivation and inequalities of distribution, but the notion of 'poverty' is highly problematic, as we have seen.
It has been argued (by Foucault and others) that it is through the expert and administrative systems by which we regulate sexuality and criminality that we create our historically specific patterns of sexual activity and crime. Simi- larly, the role played by the welfare state and, in particular, the social security system in regulating the distribution of resources is inextricably bound up with the way that modern poverty is socially constructed, experienced and understood (see Dean, 1991). If therefore we wish to tease apart or 'deconstruct' the discourse of poverty, then it is not only reasonable but perfectly logical to investigate the perceptions of social security claimants. The social security system and its 'clients' are after all the most palpable objective phenomena around which poverty discourse is generated.
In this context, it is highly significant that the majority of social security claimants should resist the suggestion that they are in 'poverty'. The word is a 'crusher', not because it uniquely refers to the experiences of 'the poor,' but because it constructs the perceptions of the population as a whole. So long as the social distribution of resources remains unequal, 'poverty', as a phantom of discourse, is capable of quietly terrorising the entire population. If we go behind the many different things which the word 'poverty' may be used to describe, it may be seen that the discourse of poverty constitutes a process of subjection; a process which is disciplinary rather than descriptive and which is general rather than specific (Dean, 1991).
What is more, the discourse of poverty (as with the discourse of class) can often shoulder aside other dimensions of oppression, especially those of gender and 'race': it can obscure or deny the reality of the experiences and struggles of women and black people. It is now commonplace to recognize that women and black people are overrepresented amongst those on low incomes (see, for example, Oppenheim, 1990) but this phenomenon is then addressed in terms of their particular vulnerability to 'poverty'. It becomes a technical or a moral problem rather than a political one. Questions of oppression and power - not to mention the possibilities of resistance - are submerged through the discursive construction of pervasive 'poverty'.
Finally then, should we use the word 'poverty'? Are those who campaign against poverty simply tilting at windmills or, worse still, are they perpetuat- ing a discourse which disempowers those whom they seek to defend? In reality, we have little choice but to engage with the discourse of poverty. Rhetoric and discursive manipulation, however, are legitimate weapons of political struggle and those who would campaign against social inequaity could begin to focus their own and their opponents' attention upon that pro- cess of subjection which 'poverty' constitutes but fails to describe. What this article suggests is that the contradictory relationship between discourse as subjugation and discourse as a means of political struggle needs to be better understood and continually addressed.
1NC
The ethos of welfare reform conceals sovereign violence with the rhetoric of assistance and obligation.
Mitchell DEAN Sociology @ Macquarie ‘2 “Life and Death Beyond Governmentality” Cultural Values 6 (1-2) p. 126-127
This point about the multiform character of ensembles of rule can be quite easily made in relation to the ethos of welfare. In what does this ethos seek? From Foucault (1981, 2001), it is about an effort to maximize the security of the population and the independence of its members. This entails balancing the labor of forming a community of responsible, virtuous and autonomous citizens with a pastoral care of their health, their needs and their capacities and means to live. The ethos of welfare is a potent admixture of rights and obligations, freedom and coercion, liberty andlife. It is formed through practices of freedom by which citizens are formed and form themselves. Yet these are located within a web of sovereign powers by which subjects are bound to do certain things. These include the use of deductive and coercive powers of taxation, of systems of punishment, detention, expulsion and disqualification, and of compulsion in drug rehabilita- tion, child support, immunization and workfare programs, etc., for the achievement of various goals of national government. More fundamentally, these sovereign powers consist in decisions as to what constitutes a normal frame of life, and hence of what constitutes public order and security, and when such a situation obtains (Schmitt 1985b: 9). Today there are various rationalities of the government of the state that attempt to provide a means of deciding this normal frame. Among communitarians, such as Etzioni (1996), this normal frame is decided upon by the shared moral values of communities. Among sociologists such as Anthony Giddens (1998) and Ulrich Beck (2000), this normal frame is defined by the processes that lead to a new kind of institutionally negotiated individualization and cosmopolitanism. Among new paternalists, such as Lawrence Mead and his associates (1986, 1997), it is decided by the views of the citizenry made known by their representatives in the Congress. There is an agreement between all three groups that, however we decide the content of this normal, everyday frame of life, at least certain populations can be invited, expected and, indeed, obligated,to follow it. As Giddens puts it (1998: 37), We need more actively to accept responsibilities for the consequences of what we do and lifestyle habits we adopt. The theme of responsibility, or mutual obligation, was there in old-style social democracy, but was largely dormant, since it was submerged within the concept of collective provision. We have to find a new balance between individual and collective responsibilities today. Fifty years ago, T. H. Marshall smuggled in sovereign notions of rights to justify the pastoral character of the welfare state in his classic essay, aCitizenship and Social Classo (1963). Today, welfare reform, and its instruments of workfare, emphasizes the converse of rights, obligations, when it demands the transformation of the individual as a condition of the exercise of a pastoralÐand indeed paternalistÐcare. Both cross the threshold between the political-juridical order of sovereignty and pastoral government of conduct. For Marshall, pastoral care is a function of social rights; for new paternalists, communitarians and Third Way social democrats, sovereign instruments bind those receiving pastoral care to paternally defined collective obligations. Summing up this part of the argument, government, understood as the conduct of conduct, is one zone or field of contemporary power relations. To understand those relations we need to take into account heterogenous powers such as those of sovereignty and biopolitics. The exercise of power in contemporary liberal democracies entails matters of life and death as much as ones of the direction of conduct, of obligation as much as rights, as decisions on the fostering or abandonment of life, on the right to kill without committing homicide, as well as of the shaping of freedom and the exercise of choice. Nevertheless, having distinguished this heterogenous field of power, there are key thresholds that are crossed in which these distinctions begin to collapse. Sovereign violence, its symbols and its threat, is woven into the most mundane forms of government. The unemployed, for example, are to transform themselves into active job-seekers or participate in workfare programs under the sanction of the removal of the sustenance of life. In contemporary genetic politics and ethics, too, we enter thresholds where it becomes unclear whether we are in the presence of the powers to foster life or the right to take it. The biopolitical, the sovereign, the governmental, begin to enter into zones of indistinction.
1NC
Discursive analysis of the frame for poverty research is a pre-requisite for challenges to the existing problems of social service provision.
Sanford SCHRAM Social Policy @ Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College ’95 Words of Welfare p. xxvii-xxx
Discource and Structure
This, then, is not strictly a question of discourse per se. Poverty research as a special field of applied social science exists because it was created to serve state managers and existing political-economic arrangements." From government grants and contracts to a political realism that reinforces the need to impress those in power, the discursive practices of poverty research anticipate the prevailing structures of society writ large. Research gets writ- ten in ways that reinforce that structural context. Welfare policy discourse in turn promotes exclusionary practices in poverty research. Seeking to inform a policy discourse that limits alternatives serves only to impoverish the social science of poverty. Policies that are implicated in the perpetuation of poverty come to impoverish poverty research. Poverty research comes to reinforce poverty.
Helen Longino has sought to deflate the myth of autonomous, objective science by suggesting that science is always constructed out of values internal to any specific field of scientific endeavor, such as standards of method and evidence (i.e., constitutive values) and values external to that science associated with the broader cultural context (i.e., contextual values)." Sim- ilarly, I want to suggest that the microdiscourse of the social science of poverty is influenced by the macrodiscourse of the broader society26 No more autonomous than any other discipline, poverty research discourse is no pure unalloyed good, but instead is infiltrated by the prevailing discursive structures of the broader society, all the more so as poverty research strains to achieve policy relevance. This problem interests me as more than a way of debunking the alleged autonomy of social science or as a means for high- lighting how power operates in the exclusionary practices of scientific dis- course. It opens the possibility for promoting a postmodern, poststructural, postpositivistic poverty research retrofitted for the postindustrial era.