Sociology contra government? The contest for the meaning of unemployment in UK policy debates

Matthew Cole
Additional contact information
Matthew Cole: Cardiff University, colem5@cardiff.ac.uk

Work, Employment & Society, 2008, vol. 22, issue 1, 27-43

Abstract: The 1980s witnessed an intense political and ideological struggle over unemployment in Britain, which often involved sociologists defending the unemployed against real or perceived governmental attacks on their work ethic. Notwithstanding valid criticisms of the practical efficacy of supply-side unemployment policies, this rebuttal of governmental`victim-blaming'tactics restricted a deeper critique of the meaning and purpose of work, and perversely helped to reproduce a moral discourse of work in symbiosis with the Thatcher government. Subsequent critiques of New Labour policies have frequently perpetuated this moral discourse, through explicitly or tacitly positing (paid) `work' as the preferred or only `solution' to the `problem' of unemployment.An alternative solution could be a guaranteed income policy. This could both challenge the moral discourse of work and direct policy critique away from areas that teleologically inscribe preferred lifestyles such as that of paid worker.

Keywords: moral discourse of work; New Labour; Thatcherism; unemployment; work ethic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017007087415 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:22:y:2008:i:1:p:27-43

DOI: 10.1177/0950017007087415

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Work, Employment & Society from British Sociological Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().