The Body in Social Policy: Mapping a Territory

Abstract

The paper explores the relevance of recent theorising around the body for the discipline of social policy. It aims to show how such work opens up new ways of thinking within the core areas of social policy as well as proposing new subjects for social policy consideration, arguing that the common image of the body as an absent presence that has been characteristic of sociological accounts in the recent past still applies in relation to social policy, but that considerable gains can be made from incorporating this new theorising and new subject matter into the scope of the subject. It explores this by means of six areas of relevance: health care, community care, disability, no-power consumption, as well as cross-cutting themes of age, ‘race’, gender, sexuality.

Managing the body work of home care

“…They did catherisations and checked blood levels, but cleaning up body waste and bowel routines were not part of their official duties (this is also the general trend across the other cases in the larger project). Reflecting Twigg’s (2002) observations about hierarchies in nursing, in home care the work of RNs and even of many RPNs is ‘marked by distance from the body and direct body work’ (Twigg 2002: 428). The ‘dirty work’ was more squarely the task of PSWs and attendants like Maggie and Gina.…”

“…In recognising the interaction of bodies (of caregivers and care recipients) in the production of lived experience, we are able to observe processes whereby powerful discourses concerning care are embodied in day‐to‐day encounters, such as those involved in home care. We find the lens of embodiment useful to our analysis: thinking about care from an embodied perspective, focuses on the experiential lived body (Twigg 2000, 2002, Wolkowitz 2006). For instance, in her study of the ‘dirty work’ of dealing with excrement in a mental hospital, van Dongen (2001: 205) notes nurses’‘disgust and contempt in relation to body wastes and care’.…”

Corporeal realism and victimology

“…Social workers are concerned with the social and psychological circumstances of the individual and community, and as such the body traditionally marks the point at which social work expertise ends and medical expertise begins. But individual and community care are in large measure about the body (Twigg, 2002). Significant portions of victim service organization clients are older people and disabled people, whose problems arise from physical difficulties with mobility, eyesight, and hearing.…”

Partnerships and Collaborative Governance in Welfare: The Citizenship Challenge

“…Often a greater concern for citizens, whether they are service users or only potential users of health and social care services, is the availability, quality and ease of access to services -in fact, users often cannot distinguish between a 'health' and 'social' care service except when they are asked to pay services charges for one and not the other (Twigg, 2002). Often a greater concern for citizens, whether they are service users or only potential users of health and social care services, is the availability, quality and ease of access to services -in fact, users often cannot distinguish between a 'health' and 'social' care service except when they are asked to pay services charges for one and not the other (Twigg, 2002).…”