CP: The United States federal government should reallocate the funds previously directed to substantially increasing free and public transport as per the plan text and redirect the funds to social services.
Contention 1: It’s mutually exclusive – funds go to EITHER the plan OR the CP
Contention2: It solves –
Social services bring up “ethics of care” incompatible with the current system of neoliberal governance
Askew 2009, Louise E. Askew, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, “At home’ in state institutions: The caring practices and potentialities of human service workers,” DA: 7/22/12, Geoforum, Volume 40, Issue 4, July 2009, pg. 655-663, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718509000487 -- g.b.
5. Reflecting on an ethic of care: the potentialities of human service work and state institutions
The task of understanding and examining state institutions and human service practices has been undertaken in a myriad of ways, and the intimate account of care presented here is just one approach. Care may appear here as a rather simple and overly optimistic entry-point. Yet, in the human service spaces of Families First and SaCC, workers introduced the significance and vitality of care in their everyday negotiations, understandings and actions of human service provision. Too often state institutions and workers have been stabilised as the technical conduits or ‘automata’ through which (neoliberal) governing power is translated ( [Larner and Butler, 2007] and [Robertson, 2007]). From such a strongly theorised perspective, the congested spaces and prosaic possibilities of state institutions are muted. The contribution of the intimate, ethnographic approach adopted in this research is an attention to the prosaic performances of state institutions—how policy is engaged by state workers, how governance agendas are understood, and how everyday individual actions, affects, decisions and ethics might shape state institutions and human service practice. It is in ‘mucking around’ in the prosaics of state institutions that everyday and formative practices such as care become difficult to ignore. The people of state institutions, the friendships, respect and trust, the care that they hold for each other and the communities they work with; all these features may exceed our common understandings of state institutions yet are already existing in diverse and formative ways as part of human service practices. As researchers, we too must surely engage in friendships with our colleagues, negotiate the prosaic politics of our workplaces, nurture care in our work practices and relationships, and value the decisive role of genuine and trusting relationships in our work and lives. So in our research we need to question why these energies seem untenable in state institutions, government settings and agency practices and how listening for these everyday energies might help in identifying and supporting effective human service practices. The potential for thinking about and performing state institutions and human service practice are indeed nurtured by the prosaic and hospitable perspectives of this research. Yet, the potentialities I describe undoubtedly arise, in part, from the particular settings and spaces of the research. The human service sector of state institutions has long been associated with policy activism, caring and dedicated workers, overrepresentation of women and commitment to social justice issues ( [Watson, 1990], [Nyland, 1998], [Roberts, 2004] and [Larner and Butler, 2007]). Might other state institutions such as environmental agencies express similar energies? In what ways do those enrolled in the finance sectors of government work and interact in personal and ethical ways? How might people who are active in writing policy communicate the diversity, creativity and care innate to their lives? These questions of state institutions excite further research with the capacity to challenge fixed concepts of ‘the state’ and governance through attention to the diversity of people, understandings, affects, activities and ethics that infuse and shape state settings. We cannot expect that other state settings will reveal the same particularities of governing practice but, as Blomley (2005: p. 293) argues, we can expect “that other places will provide equally complex stories”.
Solvency/2NC_Must-Read__Ethics_of_care_challenge_the_stability_of_the_neoliberal_system_by_affirming_public_responsibility_over_the_expectations_of_“private”_spaces'>Solvency/2NC Must-Read
Ethics of care challenge the stability of the neoliberal system by affirming public responsibility over the expectations of “private” spaces
Askew 2009, Louise E. Askew, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, “At home’ in state institutions: The caring practices and potentialities of human service workers,” DA: 7/22/12, Geoforum, Volume 40, Issue 4, July 2009, pg. 655-663, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718509000487 -- g.b.
6. Conclusion
It is this challenge of re-thinking and re-vitalising state institutions that has been the subject of this paper, through a particular focus on human service agencies and care. I have argued for an everyday and hospitable (Gibson-Graham, 2006) orientation to state institutions; a perspective that widens from the myopic hold of overarching theories of governance to hopeful visions of prosaic human service practice and possibility. This deliberately welcoming and dynamic framing of state institutions provides a foundation to investigate how the diversity of human service practice comes to be and the ways in which these practices may be generative of both new and yet to be nurtured potential. Such an orientation does not necessitate the ‘doing away’ with ongoing debates around neoliberal governance and its interactions with human service practice. Rather it is in placing, activating and personalising state institutions and human service practice that a political-economic rationality, or “commonsense” (Peck and Tickell, 2002: p. 381) such as neoliberalism appears less certain, universal and controlling than we might expect. Moreover practices such as care can be welcomed as vital parts of human service spaces, challenging abstract expectations that such ‘peopled practices’ belong in private spaces rather than those concerned with governance and the political-economic sphere. Expectations and ideological categories soften in the congested spaces of everyday human service practice, disarmed by the interminable fluidities of negotiation, change and contingent political and peopled action. Neoliberal agendas are not always co-opting. Nor are caring practices forever progressive and generous. Care is a complex and multifarious practice, yet one that is ‘at home’ in the spaces of states institutions. Once we are able to think about state institutions in this way, then it is possible to identify potentialities and capture existing opportunities to support the people and caring practices that make ethical, effective and enjoyable human service work possible.
Solvency
Increasing neoliberalism has led to a decrease in welfare assistance as well as federal devolution of responsibility to private actors
Askew 2009, Louise E. Askew, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, “At home’ in state institutions: The caring practices and potentialities of human service workers,” DA: 7/22/12, Geoforum, Volume 40, Issue 4, July 2009, pg. 655-663, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718509000487 -- g.b.
2. ‘At home’ in state institutions: care and ethics in human service agencies
The recently burgeoning theories of care demand, perhaps surprisingly, an attention to literatures on neoliberal governance. In most instances, care evades the eyes (and ears) of geographers caught up in seemingly more powerful conversations of abstracted and ever-neoliberalising state practices (Barnett, 2005). Yet for some analysts, and possibly in light of this oversight, the notion of care is being redrawn as a potentially resistant and increasingly necessary responsibility that may offer respite from the onslaughts of neoliberal governance agendas. The premise of this approach to care, although somewhat crudely condensed here, is that recently reordered powers of states reproduce neoliberal modes of governance, evidenced through an increase in decentered and moralised forms of state power (i.e. ‘government at a distance’ and ‘etho-politics’)2 ( [Rose, 1999], [Isin, 2000] and [McDonald and Marston, 2005]). In the domains of social governance, this expanding neoliberal agenda is aligned with the decline of welfare states, and a reverberating erosion of state mechanisms and practices of social support ( [Hochschild, 1995], [Smith, 1997], [Easterlow and Smith, 2004] and [Lawson, 2007]). Any caring relations and supportive provisions of states are viewed from these perspectives as largely co-opted by neoliberalised etho-political agendas, promoting the individual, moralised and privatised responsibilities of both the providers and recipients of social services. Arising from this analytical framing is a sense of the pressing need to rescue care from the onslaughts of neoliberalism, with care positioned as a newfound responsibility and potentially liberating retaliation in a fight against neoliberalism.
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