The shame of welfare? Lived experiences of welfare and culturally inflected experiences of shame

Mitchell, Emma; Vincent, Eve

doi:10.1016/j.emospa.2021.100847

Cited by 6 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…While shame is a feeling that accompanies transgressions of social norms (Mitchell and Vincent 2021;Peterie et al 2019), it is not necessarily experienced homogenously. For instance, through an ethnography, Watt (2020) scrutinized differing responses to IM among Aboriginal people in Cape York.…”

Section: Kanagawa Universitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, Mitchell and Vincent (2021), who investigated cultural differences of shame in the lived experiences of welfare recipients in cross-cultural groups, showed that shame is culturally inflected, historically conditioned, and spatially situated; while the experiences of shame of an asylum seeker and an Anglo woman seeking basic income involved a mix of acceptance and refusal, shame was absent among many Aboriginal people in a specific area, which was subject to IM. Drawing on Strong (2021), who examined the spatiality of shame, Mitchell and Vincent (2021) viewed shame not as limited to a personal setting, but rather as inhabiting the boundary between the private and public spheres, and between the personal and collective domains; they argued that shame involved giving meaning to one's culture. Accordingly, the experience of shame is a process of cultural boundary making, entailing both a self-definition and collective identity (Mitchell and Vincent 2021).…”

Section: Kanagawa Universitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Drawing on Strong (2021), who examined the spatiality of shame, Mitchell and Vincent (2021) viewed shame not as limited to a personal setting, but rather as inhabiting the boundary between the private and public spheres, and between the personal and collective domains; they argued that shame involved giving meaning to one's culture. Accordingly, the experience of shame is a process of cultural boundary making, entailing both a self-definition and collective identity (Mitchell and Vincent 2021). Mitchell and Vincent's (2021) work is important because it offers more nuanced interpretations of welfare-related shame by focusing on cultural specificity in one's experience of it.…”

Section: Kanagawa Universitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Accordingly, the experience of shame is a process of cultural boundary making, entailing both a self-definition and collective identity (Mitchell and Vincent 2021). Mitchell and Vincent's (2021) work is important because it offers more nuanced interpretations of welfare-related shame by focusing on cultural specificity in one's experience of it. However, as welfare measures initially intended for Indigenous people have been extended to non-Indigenous people, it is equally significant to explore how the experiences of welfare recipients from both groups intersect regarding poverty, unfair treatment from the welfare office, prejudice, and discrimination from mainstream society, despite their different historical and cultural backgrounds.…”

Section: Kanagawa Universitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While shame is a feeling that accompanies transgressions of social norms (Mitchell and Vincent 2021; Peterie et al. 2019), it is not necessarily experienced homogenously.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Coping with Welfare Shame: Responses of Urban Indigenous and Non‐Indigenous Peoples to “Mutual Obligation” Requirements in Australia

Kurita

2022

PoLAR

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This article examines how Indigenous and non‐Indigenous people in cities navigate welfare and the mutual obligation regime in Australia. Since the introduction of the mutual obligation requirements (MORs) and the accompanying “Work for the Dole” program, initially for Indigenous and later for non‐Indigenous welfare beneficiaries, welfare recipients from both groups are perceived as morally deficient people and are stigmatized by paternalistic state surveillance. Drawing on the idea of shame as a cultural boundary‐making process, this article shows that although welfare recipients from both groups have reinterpreted the concept of “mutual obligation” based on their cultural values and practices, contesting interpretations of the concept within each group have hindered them from fully deflecting shame by disrupting and replacing normative scripts of conduct. This article argues that such variations occurred first because the interpretations that both groups adopted to cope with government surveillance are already mobilized by the state to justify intervening in citizens’ lives, and second because the sociospatiality of a city such as Adelaide, where a broad range of neoliberal policy experiments have been implemented, facilitates the internalization of neoliberal values among citizens, regardless of whether they are Indigenous or not. [mutual obligation, “work for the dole” program, Indigenous, welfare recipients, shame]

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Section: Kanagawa Universitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Kanagawa Universitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Kanagawa Universitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Kanagawa Universitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While shame is a feeling that accompanies transgressions of social norms (Mitchell and Vincent 2021; Peterie et al. 2019), it is not necessarily experienced homogenously.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Coping with Welfare Shame: Responses of Urban Indigenous and Non‐Indigenous Peoples to “Mutual Obligation” Requirements in Australia

Kurita

2022

PoLAR

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Welfare Shame and Ageing in Neoliberal Australia: An Ethnographic Comparison of Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Beneficiaries

Kurita

2024

Shame and Ageing in a Transforming World

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The role of victim sensitivity between anti-welfare dependence attitude and mental health of older adults in China

Zhang

2023

Humanit Soc Sci Commun

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The ideals of the anti-welfare tendency may confront the realization of deficient, dependent, and delicate bodies, adding to a sense of bodily betrayal, which encumbers independence and sets older adults toward despair. The resulting collision may lead older adults who have perceived the law of the jungle to go to two extremes: either fall into social depression, or enhance their positive attitude, and be spurred to cultivate a positive mentality. Therefore, this study focuses on assessing the potential interaction between the law of the jungle and the anti-welfare attitude in shaping mental health. Based on the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) data in 2017, this study adopts the multivariate regression method to comprehensively address the theory-of-pragmatic-prospection-based relationship between the law of the jungle, anti-welfare tendency, and mental health of older adults, including concurrently coherent conceptualization and examination of core psychological perception indicators of the law of the jungle, such as victim sensitivity. The findings suggest that the anti-welfare dependence attitude positively correlates with mental health (coefficient = 0.618, p < 0.001). Victim sensitivity strengthens the above relationship (coefficient = 0.129, p < 0.001). Self-reliance has become part of the invisible armor that modern seniors equip themselves with against the risks of the law of the jungle. And precisely because the perception of the law of the jungle reinforces the fear that one’s own capacity is not sufficient to deal with emergencies, older adults are more likely to conform to the official discourse of productive aging and become more self-reliant. Although from the perspective of individual psychological mechanisms, the combination of the anti-welfare attitude and the law of the jungle has strengthened the mental health of older adults, there are still long-term hidden challenges: if the state is absent for a long time, when the external risk world is no longer within the control of the private welfare of older adults, will they be overwhelmed by pressures, enter a threshold, move to the other side of the resilience fracture, and fall into social depression? This study will leave it to future research to test these alternative explanations.

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The shame of welfare? Lived experiences of welfare and culturally inflected experiences of shame

Cited by 6 publications

References 30 publications

Coping with Welfare Shame: Responses of Urban Indigenous and Non‐Indigenous Peoples to “Mutual Obligation” Requirements in Australia

Coping with Welfare Shame: Responses of Urban Indigenous and Non‐Indigenous Peoples to “Mutual Obligation” Requirements in Australia

Welfare Shame and Ageing in Neoliberal Australia: An Ethnographic Comparison of Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Beneficiaries

The role of victim sensitivity between anti-welfare dependence attitude and mental health of older adults in China

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