Reconfiguring Agency and Responsibility in the Governance of Social Housing in Scotland

Abstract

The construction of identities for subjects as self-regulating agents characterises processes of governance in advanced liberal democracies. Such identities implicate subjects within moral bonds of responsibility and agency to prescribed ethics of normalised consumption and duties to community. Within this 'ethopolitics' of social housing in the UK, the conduct of tenants and practitioners is framed within a conceptual triangle of consumerism, communitarianism and managerialism. This paper examines specific technologies used by Scottish social housing agencies to construct identities of agency, self-regulation and responsibility amongst their tenants. It identifies the rationales, processes and implications of these techniques for tenants and practitioners and suggests that emergent ambiguities in the reconfiguration of governing identities reflect conflicting conceptualisations about the role for social housing.

Social Mix and the Problematisation of Social Housing

“…As a condition of the receipt of welfare payments, social housing tenants are required to participate in a range of social and economic activities tied to notion of what a responsible and active citizen should be and do. Services that once would have been positioned as the given right of citizens, are now positioned within a contract of obligation to participate in social and economic life that legitimises citizenship (Flint, 2004). These notions were expressed by practitioners in discussions around the role of community and employment in social housing renewal.…”

“…Policy approaches informed by this interpretation thus aim to change individual behaviour and instil responsibility to break from welfare dependence in the individual (Jacobs, 2008;Raco, 2007). This linking of individual conduct to self-regulation is characteristic of a neoliberal form of governance (Flint, 2004). The association of social exclusion with social housing, and particularly with social housing estates, means that these differing discourses of social exclusion are embedded in social housing policy such as social mix policies.…”

Governance and Governmentality in Community Participation: The Shifting Sands of Power, Responsibility and Risk

“…Thus communities become 'responsibilised' as governments withdraw from responsibilities which were formerly part of the welfare state, and communities come to believe that such responsibilities rightly lie with them (Imrie and Raco, 2003). As with governance theory, ideas of pervasive governmentality have been critiqued, particularly through evidence that communities often resist attempts to responsibilise them (McKee, 2011) and that processes of responsibilisation are often ambiguous and inconsistent (Flint, 2004).…”

The impact of the direct payment of housing benefit: evidence from Great Britain

“…First, there is a growing literature on responsibilisation and it has been researched in a number of contexts including: education (Peters, 2001); crime (Barry, 2013;Bennett, 2008;Kemshall, 2002), poverty (Dean, 1992), unemployment (Wiggan, 2012), health (Beckmann, 2013;Greco, 1993) and homelessness (Dobson & McNeill, 2011). Of most relevance to this paper is the work of Flint (2003Flint ( , 2004aFlint ( , 2004bFlint ( , 2006 who explored responsibilisation in the context of social housing, and the regulation and management of anti-social behaviour specifically. He argued that, while the focus on responsibilisation in this context was not new, its nature and scope has been broadened (Flint, 2004b).…”