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Matthew Cole
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Sociology contra government? The contest for the meaning of

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Sociology contra government? The contest for
the meaning of unemployment in UK policy
debates
Matthew Cole
Cardiff University
ABSTRACT
The 1980s witnessed an intense political and ideological struggle over unemploy-
ment 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 rebut-
tal of governmental victim-blaming tactics restricted a deeper critique of the mean-
ing 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 explic-
itly or tacitly positing (paid) work as the preferred or only solution to the prob-
lem 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.
KEY WORDS
moral discourse of work / New Labour / Thatcherism / unemployment / work ethic
Introduction
R
esearch on unemployment in the 1930s, such as Jahoda et al.s (1972)
famous study of the unemployed of Marienthal, has been foundational in
setting the direction of subsequent unemployment research, and in fram-
ing the moral discourse of work that underpins much of that research (Cole,
27
Work, empl oyment and soci et y
Copyright 2008
BSA Publications Ltd
Volume 22(1): 2743
[DOI: 10.1177/0950017007087415]
SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore
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2007). The essence of the 1930s studies was to assert the central place of work
in forging meaningful human experience (especially that of adult men). The
concomitant of this was that unemployment was assumed to be morally (as well
as materially) damaging for those who experienced it, manifested in various
forms of psychological decay documented by the researchers.
The impact of this research and the favourable view of paid work as an indi-
vidual and social good that it contained can be traced in more recent debates
over UK unemployment policy in social research. Throughout the 1980s, the
sympathetic portrayal of the unemployed as victims of impersonal structural
forces, foregrounded in the Marienthal study, became pivotal in an ideological
struggle with the victim-blaming strategies of the Thatcher government (see, for
example, Allen et al., 1986; Coffield et al., 1986; Fineman, 1987a; Hayes and
Nutman, 1981; Hutson and Jenkins, 1989; Wallace, 1987; White, 1987). The
ideological conflict with the Thatcher government over the meaning of unem-
ployment hinged on the social sciences producing research that defended the
unemployed from governmental charges that they lacked a work ethic. It further
denied that they were to blame for their own unemployment, a charge which, if
politically plausible, allowed the government to evade responsibility.
However, this particular assault does not mean that Thatcherism was anti-
work as such. The entrepreneurial self it encouraged and Margaret Thatchers
own infamous ability to work long hours with minimal sleep indeed represent
individualizing heroizations of workers, but not of work as a source of unify-
ing class identity. Despite this valorization of individual hard work, the suspi-
cion remained that Conservative discourse was focused on excusing and
massaging high unemployment rates. Tonge describes the creation of large
national schemes for removing the unemployed from the jobless register, such
as YTS (Youth Training Scheme), participation in which was compulsory for
unemployed 1618 year olds (Tonge, 1999: 221). Despite such suspicions, both
social research and government articulated a similar moral discourse of work,
in that the debate was restricted to arguing over means to the same valued end
of paid work: through individualized entrepreneurial efforts, or through the
bolstering of demand-side sources of opportunities to work.
The moral worth of paid work in governmental discourse has arguably
been entrenched yet further under New Labour, which has intensified the focus
on correcting the presumed deficiencies of the unemployed (Mizen, 2003: 468).
Social research has kept pace with continued criticisms of what might be char-
acterized as victim-blaming, or more neutrally, individualizing, employment
policies like the New Deal or the focus on NEET (Not in Education,
Employment or Training) young people (see for example, Furlong, 2006;
Mizen, 2003; Tonge, 1999). As such, it has remained locked into an ideologi-
cal debate over the best route to secure the opportunity for paid work for all,
while maintaining its defence of the work ethic among unemployed research
respondents. This approach is legitimated by the legacy of social research that
demonstrates the suffering, deprivation, marginalization or social exclusion
that results from unemployment.
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In this article I argue that the ideological critique directed towards govern-
ment unemployment policies from a significant strand of social scientific
thought has been misplaced. By remaining wedded to the notion of paid work
as an individual and social good, researchers and policy formulators are led into
searching for a way to rescue individuals from the damaging fate of unemploy-
ment by providing access to paid work. In fact, if work is seen as the core
provider of individual and social goods, it is difficult to forge any meaningful
argument for social policies that do not explicitly aim to increase the numbers
of people in paid work. Indeed, as McDonald and Marston put it, we inhabit a
culture in which work is equated with worth (2005: 391). This is clear from
the way in which New Labours leadership has trumpeted the increase in the
UK working population in recent years. This bias leads social research into
evaluating social policies in their own terms (do they work), rather than advo-
cating policies that do not teleologically inscribe the ideal outcome of increas-
ing the number of working citizens at the outset. The latter is to imply that
achieving the status of working citizen were the pinnacle of human experience.
Therefore, I argue that the sociology of unemployment could benefit from
a greater sensitivity to its historical moral commitment to paid work. This exer-
cise in reflexivity could free policy research from rather narrow critiques of gov-
ernment policy. It could also prevent sociology from reproducing the
teleological inscription of paid work as the preferred destiny of most citizens.
One possible route to retain a pragmatic policy focus while avoiding the pref-
erence for a particular form of life as paid worker, may be found through a
guaranteed incomes policy. Before considering this possibility in the conclusion
to this article, I look briefly at the role of social psychology in formulating the
taken for granted status of unemployment-as-suffering. I then examine the
character of social research on unemployment in the 1980s, before turning to
recent developments in the context of the New Labour administration.
Social psychology: forging the truth of unemployed
experience
On the basis of their research in the Austrian town of Marienthal in 1930,
Jahoda et al. (1972) formulated five fundamental human needs that were satis-
fied by paid work:
shared experience
structured experience of time
collective purpose
status and identity
the requirement for regular activity
This approach was foundational in framing the problem of unemploy-
ment as it would be understood in social research for decades to come (Cole,
29 Sociology contra government? Cole
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2007). This can be seen in its influence on social psychology in the 1980s,
which worked to refine and update Jahoda et al.s research. However, the same
animating moral precepts were retained: that unemployment was a form of
moral injury to the individual person (with important patterned differences of
effect, not least in relation to age, gender and class). Hayes and Nutman pro-
vide an authoritative statement of the social psychological approach to unem-
ployment in this period. They build on the work of Jahoda et al. (1972), and
pose seven functions of work (1981: 3843):
provision of income
provision of activity
structuring of time
a source of creativity and mastery
an opportunity for social interaction
a source of identity
the provision of a sense of purpose
Hayes and Nutman may be seen to evidence a trend towards individualiza-
tion, in that their seven functions leave room for, or anticipate, autonomy and
self-direction, rather than focusing on the purely extrinsic features of paid work
such as timetabling of activity. The form of subjectivity they evince is therefore
similarly individualistic: the job hunt can involve search behaviour directed
either at the objective of re-establishing the individual in his or her previous posi-
tion or identifying and establishing the individual in a new position (1981: 107).
Regardless of the continuities and disjunctures with the 1930s research the key
focus remains on the essential functions provided by paid work.
Other 1980s research typically recorded individual anecdotes of suffering
subsequent to job loss. This evidence served to confirm the theories of social psy-
chologists, in that it seemed to demonstrate that the absence of paid work was
the key variable determining that suffering. Examples included reporting unem-
ployed respondents as mimicking the form of a working life, without the content
of a job. Fryer and McKenna reported continued early rising among their respon-
dents: My conscience gets me up (1987: 53). Paid work is overtly recognized as
a necessary condition for a solid social existence: What one is and what one does
are no longer as important as they were when one had a job (Bostyn and Wight,
1987: 154). The deleterious impact of unemployment was well established in this
period. Strandh argues that the great body of sociological and psychological
research dedicated to the subject reflects the central position of employment in
Western society, not least due to its harmful effects (2000: 459).
In addition to refining the approach of Jahoda et al. (1972) for a new era,
Hayes and Nutman also point to a hierarchy of suffering. This inheres in the
argument that paid work may be more important to some types of people than
others, with the result that some people are likely to suffer more from unem-
ployment than others: Work may be more of an end in itself for some people
and more of a means to an end for others (1981: 45). Jahoda, in her return to
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the topic of unemployment a year after Hayes and Nutman published their
overview, makes a similar point about executive managers deriving more intrin-
sic satisfaction from work (1982: 57). Hayes and Nutman use the example of
professionals (1981: 45). The implication for both is that unemployment is
more damaging the higher up the hierarchy of work that we travel: it is worse
for adults, it is worse for men, and it is even worse for professionals. It is not
just the social and economic fact of multiple inequalities in terms of age, gen-
der and social class, but a moral justification of those inequalities in line with
the closer approximation to the truth of humanity as work for works sake. If
work is an individual and social good, then those for whom work is more
important are in some sense implicitly better. This is indicative of one of the
key problems of policies and discourses that teleologically prescribe desired
behavioural outcomes they invite judgement, and therefore unequal regard, as
to how close to or far from the ideal individuals get. This hierarchical treatment
of citizens in line with their relationship to the labour market is well docu-
mented in research. Fineman argues that government and voluntary sector pal-
liatives for the unemployed in the 1980s effectively quarantined them, and
helped them see themselves as not proper citizens (1987a: 245), while Finn
reports an internal government memo of 1984 that states that people must be
educated once more to know their place (1987: 171), and goes on to criticize
YTS as in effect training for the dole (1987: 187).
This brief look at social psychology has illustrated how social research can
play a part in supporting governmental views of the intrinsic worth of paid
work, and that this is compatible with criticizing particular unemployment
policies. This is not to argue that there are not dissenting voices. As Fryer
(1986) argues for instance, the Jahoda-style approach imputes passivity to the
unemployed (cited in Strandh, 2000: 463). Nevertheless, the following discus-
sion of sociological research into unemployment during the Conservative
administrations since 1979 illustrates the deep influence of the view of work as
being in some way essential to human experience.
Sociology vs Conservative unemployment policies
Many sociological accounts of unemployment in the 1980s and early 1990s
took their cue from the Jahoda-style view, whether explicitly (see for instance
Fryer and McKenna, 1987: 49; Wallace, 1987: 71) or implicitly, through inves-
tigation of one or more of Jahodas five human needs (see for instance Bostyn
and Wight, 1987; Coffield et al., 1986: 6170; Furlong, 1992: 139).
Sociological literature of this period also tended towards a broadly left-wing
agenda that continually stressed the nature of unemployment as a public and
collective issue (Platt, 1986: 151; Seaton, 1986: 23). This may be seen as a
response to the advance of neoliberal forms of government in this era (see Barry
et al., 1996: 10). One example is the contrast drawn between sociology and the
individualizing and pathologizing approach of the Conservative government
31 Sociology contra government? Cole
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and its media backers (Coffield et al., 1986: 111). Seaton, for instance, dis-
cusses the rise of scroungerphobia and blame in the media at this time (1986:
25; see also Sinfield, 1987: xii). The attacks on the government similarly pulled
no punches: Through MSC [Manpower Services Commission] schemes, the
government set the example of overtly denying workers their basic rights At
least employers did not pretend to be offering anything other than shit jobs
(Coffield et al., 1986: 115). Seaton goes on to describe the media discourse of
the 1930s as an appeal to the conscience of the nation over the suffering of
unemployment (1986: 23) some of George Orwells articles of the time could
certainly be included here. The battle lines are drawn, and Seaton puts it in a
nutshell when she argues that Conservative party rhetoric transmuted social
issues like unemployment into moral problems, and that the mass media played
an assisting role in this alchemy (1986: 23, 27).
This conflict indicates the adoption (or more likely an amplification) of an
anti-Conservative political standpoint over the issue of the collectivity versus
the individual. The vision of the unemployed as a collective political entity,
manifested in the brief flowering of the NUWM (National Unemployed
Workers Movement) in the 1930s, had become a fantasy for the sociologists
of the 1980s (see McKee and Bell, 1986: 149). Coffield et al. discuss the inap-
propriateness of the community ethic fostered in fading mining communities in
the context of a competitive individualizing ethic being fostered in the educa-
tion system (1986: 140). Sinfield, implying an advocacy role for sociology,
argues that the unemployed have been abandoned in the face of the scrounger
mythology, which sociology would be well placed to refute (1981: 49). Wallace
and Pahl describe the breakdown of a traditional solidaristic community into
a prison of jealous eyes in the context of fear of detection of benefit fraud by
the DHSS (1986: 118). These examples lament the absence of an unemployed
collective voice and experience.
Seabrook went beyond lamentation and into exhortation when he
described how rising crime indicate[s] the extent to which the poor fail to
channel their energies into the struggle for political change (1987: 20). Instead,
the focus had shifted towards an intensification of the tendency to personalize
unemployment. Seabrooks response was as a literary agitator for the working-
class. Sinfield targeted the popular substitution of the term unemployment for
the unemployed as indicative of an impersonal aggregation that it was soci-
ologys task to rectify (1987: ixx). Sociologists responded directly to
Conservative condemnation of feckless idlers by providing counterpoint val-
orizations of dormant workers who were victims of a system rather than per-
sonal immorality.
However, the strategy of deploying intensely personal case studies (for
examples see Coffield et al., 1986: 1929; Wallace, 1987: 10120), and ubiq-
uitously in-depth one-to-one interviews, fed into individualization from another
angle to the scrounger rhetoric of media and government. The rescue from
impersonal aggregation was enacted through individualized accounts of depri-
vation, suffering, resistance, and so on. This tactic facilitated the discursive
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rehabilitation of the unemployed into the mainstream. The objective was to
de-other them and thereby motivate a sense of broader social responsibility for
ameliorating their plight, as was articulated by McRae: They live the same life
as the rest of us, they just live less of it (1987: 81). Fineman criticized the oth-
ering effect of the political use of the mass term unemployment, through its
obscuration of the lived experience of unemployed individuals (1987b: 1).
Furlong reported a high commitment to employment among respondents and
argued that a positive view of work persisted among unemployed individuals
(1992: 101). Although he went on to state that experience of unemployment
tends to erode the work ethic, echoing Jahoda et al. (1972), he interpreted this
as evidence against a prior lack of a work ethic being a causal factor in becom-
ing unemployed (1992: 107). Similarly, Coffield et al. reported the attachment
of young adults to the protestant work ethic (1986: 226).
Seabrook took this further, inscribing work as the meaning of life that
1980s unemployment destroyed: it is as though the working class were being
wounded in its very reason for existence, work itself (1981: 14; see also Willis,
1987: xix). Again, in a reaction against right-wing political discourse, most
sociological studies were at pains to dissipate the fear of the unemployed mob.
Coffield et al. reported non-political, pragmatic young adults who were all still
eager for employment even on modest wages and who had turned their frus-
trations not against their elders but against themselves (1986: 209; see also
Finn, 1987: 184; Furlong, 1992: 15; Furlong, 1993: 28; Hutson and Jenkins,
1989: 119).
Seabrooks writing reanimates a patriarchal discourse that was also present
in the research from the 1930s, in his deployment of unemployment as a frus-
tration of abundant male energy (1981; 1987: 11, 19). He thereby legitimates
the common research finding that unemployed men contribute little to domes-
tic labour (see for instance Clark, 1987: 110; Wallace, 1987: 174; Wallace and
Pahl, 1986: 122) by implying that work within the home would be an inap-
propriate outlet for men. The energy of women is not discussed, as domestic
labour remains the assumed repository for it. Wallace reports that for men with
domestic responsibilities, any job was seen as an escape route, while women
in a similar position were put off looking for paid work by those same respon-
sibilities (1987: 130). Hutson and Jenkins report that housework is apparently
no substitute, for men, for real work (1989: 48). Seabrooks approach (1981,
1987) is at odds with other sociological findings that stress the drudgery of typ-
ical working-class employment. Coffield et al. describe frustration and leaden
hours for most in employment in shit jobs (1986: 90), while Willis refers to
the dead experience of work (1979: 52). Similarly, Sinfield argues that humil-
iation and anger and depression are ubiquitous aspects of the talk of those
returning to work after unemployment (1981: 41).
Seabrook (1981, 1987; see also Willis, 1987) promotes a view of work for the
working-class as an authentic value, that is as an end as itself, while research evi-
dence frequently asserts its instrumental use, for instance for the securing of
income, or even merely to avoid the stigma of unemployment itself (Coffield et al.,
33 Sociology contra government? Cole
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1986: 90). The greater suffering of unemployed executives or professionals,
described earlier in the context of social psychological research, is taken to demon-
strate a deep commitment to the work ethic. Hartley recounts unemployed male
managers whose wives did everything in their power to deny their own needs if
this would aid their husbands job and ease the strains and tensions he experiences
while out of work (1987: 122). These kinds of middle-class response to unem-
ployment are, according to Fineman, related to an inability to find alternative paths
to fulfilment outside of paid work (1987c: 82). It could be that long habituation to
full-time paid work leaves no time for a more diverse and rounded development of
non-(paid) work competencies or interests. In contrast, the resourcefulness and
resilience found among working-class respondents can be taken as a demonstration
of a faulty internalization of the work ethic they are simply not suffering enough,
despite their tendency to experience greater material hardship. In this light,
Bostyn and Wights report of the prevalence of petty crime and benefit fraud
among a sample of young working-class unemployed men (1987: 146) or
Seabrooks multiple stories of ingenious fiddles of the benefits system (1987: 13)
are vulnerable to stigmatization. Instead of resourceful adaptations to difficult
material circumstances, they may be taken as evidence of an instrumental, amoral
worldview.
Research also contains accounts of working-class instrumentalism that
support the confident assertion of a persisting work ethic among working-class
and young unemployed people. Wallace, for example, describes the shift from
aspirations for jobs with intrinsic satisfaction to an acceptance of extrinsic, that
is monetary, rewards as the principal motive for working among young unem-
ployed people (1987: 126). Wallace argues that unemployed people have the
same aspirations as employed people, but simply lack the means to achieve
them (1987: 173). There is an intersection here with social psychology and the
theme of a preference for work as an authentic value rather than an instru-
mental value. This can be interpreted as an effort to promote working-
class respondents up the work hierarchy, closer to the middle-class executive or
professional ideals of social psychological research. Similar strategies are found
in straight denials of instrumental work attitudes, such as Furlongs argument
that young people who become unemployed usually retain a strong commit-
ment to paid employment (1992: 28). This, or Wallaces report that young
adults were overwhelmingly committed to the work ethic, especially those who
had been longest unemployed (1987: 146), implicitly assert that paid work
remains central to the ambitions of young people.
Tales of unemployed stoicism served a similar purpose: The silent
endurance of deprivation and rejection does not make headlines, and is aston-
ishingly often dismissed as apathy or lack of will (Sinfield, 1981: 53). In such
cases, the opposition between sociology and government crystallized around a
representation of a mass of people cheated of the opportunity to manifest their
persisting commitment to work, versus a (falsified) representation of feckless
scroungers. By insisting that work remained unimpeachably inscribed into the
nature of the unemployed working class, sociology placed work closer to the
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intrinsic nature of its respondents than did the rhetoric of government, which
relied on the belief that work was a value to be nurtured and, failing that,
imposed on individual unemployed persons. To put it another way, the govern-
ment strategy inhered in promulgating work as an authentic value, and imput-
ing instrumentalism among the unemployed as legitimation for YTS and other
disciplinary interventions. Meanwhile sociology either denied the existence of,
or at least minimized, an instrumental relation to work among its respondents.
The issue of age, specifically the transition from youth to adulthood, pro-
vided an especially interesting context for a defence of a stigmatized group by
sociologists. One reason for this derived from the stigmatized situation of
youth as such, which doubled the stigma when combined with unemployment.
The clearest articulation of these twin stigmas was produced by Coffield et al.:
young adults are double stigmatized: not only are they on the dole, but they are
also in the no mans land of adolescence without the status accorded to either
adults or children (1986: 81). The intrinsic inferiority of youth as opposed to
adulthood is expressed by Allen and Waton, who describe youth unemploy-
ment as disruptive of the transition to adulthood (1986: 8; see also Hutson and
Jenkins, 1989: 2). The implication is that paid work is a necessary condition for
the achievement of adulthood, such that work as natural is treated as a latent
potential. Seaton blames governmental policy and the media for pathologizing
the unemployed as a social threat (1986: 27). Pathologization was argued by
sociologists at the time to be an intentional strategy on the part of government
part of an agenda that unashamedly favoured capitalism and the interests of
profit (for example Coffield et al., 1986: 84). For mainstream sociology, the
profit motive was a disease every bit as serious as was the supposed ailing work
ethic. The issue of youth-adulthood produced rebuttals from sociology. Furlong
argued that unemployment is unlikely to erode young peoples work ethics (i.e.
it is not symptomatic of any disease) (1992: 15). Hendry similarly minimized the
extent of a supposed generic oppositional stance of young people (1987: 198).
Coffield et al. meanwhile stressed the ideological manipulation of youth unem-
ployment: The media and politicians alike perpetuate the myth that all can suc-
ceed through hard work by publicizing stories of the infrequent individuals who
move from rags to riches (1986: 84). This kind of argument segues into socio-
logical suspicions of the value of policies designed to make young people more
employable, like YOP [Youth Opportunities Programme] or YTS. This was
most strongly voiced by Furlong, who argued that YTS did little to remove the
handicaps of its disadvantaged trainees, and in fact institutionalized unemploy-
ability (1993: 33). The key point here is that such policies failed in their own
terms, that is failed to ameliorate youth unemployment, and from this sociolog-
ical perspective, therefore inhibited the achievement of adulthood through exac-
erbating unemployment among young people. Once more then, unemployment
is problematized in such a way that work becomes the only logical solution.
So far, we have seen how a significant body of social research in the 1980s
and early 1990s tied itself into a valorization of paid work as a strategic rebut-
tal of governmental or media victim-blaming discourses. One result of this is
35 Sociology contra government? Cole
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that an adult worker identity is likewise valorized, with the concomitant
de-valuing of alternative forms of life experience. Formulating or advocating
policies that do not necessarily encourage paid work as the most desirable out-
come is therefore made more difficult. How, if at all, has the situation changed
since the end of the Conservative administration?
Sociology vs New Labour unemployment policies
Since the demise of the Conservative government in 1997, researchers have
pointed out continuities in policy despite differences in presentation. There is
no doubt that increasing the numbers of people in paid work is the primary
thrust of New Labour policies like the New Deals: The current British govern-
ment has expressed the view that work is the best form of welfare (Lindsay
and McQuaid, 2004: 298). Gray makes a similar point that any kind of job is
inscribed as preferable to unemployment in New Labour policy (2002: 655).
Furthermore, Mizen argues that New Labour has returned to Thatcherite-style
victim-blaming ideology in its assumption that individual deficiencies were
responsible for their unemployment (2003: 468). The scope of victim-blaming
might even be seen to have expanded. Furlong argues that the introduction of
the catch-all term NEET in governmental youth policy problematizes those who
would once have been described as the young unemployed. It also catches a
much broader group of young people who are not only out of paid work, but
also out of the officially sanctioned routes into paid work (2006: 554).
McDonald and Marston argue that social citizenship [has become] conditional
on individuals adopting an active disposition, narrowly defined in terms of eco-
nomic participation (2005: 379), and that this therefore legitimates increas-
ingly individualized approaches to unemployment, including the advent of New
Deal personal advisers or individual job seekers agreements in the UK.
Despite changes in style and emphasis, broad consensus of a continued supply-
side focus therefore persists. The strategy of promoting paid work as a desir-
able outcome also endures. Strandh, building on the theme of the impact on
mental well-being of unemployment, argues that Re-employment equalizes
mental well-being by remedying economic problems and a lack of life-course
predictability for those experiencing these negative aspects of the unemploy-
ment situation (2000: 473). Mizen criticizes a trend towards the increasingly
punitive application of benefit sanctions for their targeting of the most vulner-
able (such as drug and alcohol users, the homeless, ill and those with criminal
records) and not the wilfully disobedient and the recalcitrant (2003: 470). This
is to imply that the latter might be legitimate targets of benefit sanctions
because of their refusal of the paid work telos.
Lindsay and McQuaid provide a critique of the service sector that advo-
cates using policy instruments to broaden the searches of reluctant job seekers
to include service work (2004: 297). Their reasoning is based on the argument
that even the lowest skilled service work can, in the right circumstances, offer
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individuals benefits in terms of self sufficiency and the dignity of work, and the
opportunity to develop a range of competencies, such as reliability and com-
munication skills (2004: 301). In other words, this is a reiteration of the func-
tional argument about work inaugurated in the 1930s. They conclude with a
call for further research into the barriers that inhibit the pursuit of employ-
ment in the service sector among the unemployed (2004: 315). This line of
argument sounds very close to what might be expected from government itself,
and is suggestive of a closer alignment of a strand of social research with the
individualizing New Labour rhetoric of enhancing the employability of those
outwith the labour market. As Tonge argues, employability has displaced full
employment as the overt policy goal of New Labour (1999: 228).
The efforts to tackle unemployability of the New Deals or the Connexions
service may be interpreted as noisy demonstrations of the scale of the problem
of job unready individuals. So long as this noise level can be maintained, debate
as to creating jobs for which the newly employable have been made ready can be
drowned out. Arguably the scale of the issue may be greater than in the 1980s,
given the trend towards individualizing forms of governing the unemployed, or
NEET youth. This translates as attention being yet more microscopically focused
on supply-side measures. For instance, Lindsay and McQuaid argue that Supply-
side labour market policies have struggled to address the strong correlation
between weak labour demand and high welfare usage (2004: 302). Assertions
that the unemployed are in fact (according to social research findings) always
already job-ready are deployed in an attempt to silence unemployability dis-
course and turn attention to labour demand. In other words, agreement remains
as to the ultimate beneficence of paid work. Parry, for instance, describes the con-
sistent ascription of a persistent work ethic among unemployed inhabitants of
former coalmining regions (2003: 231). She goes on to report that The unem-
ployed consistently detailed the satisfactions associated with paid work, suggest-
ing that its functions are more clearly conceptualized in their absence (2003:
240). Russell pursues the same line as 1980s research: The current data provide
little evidence that lack of contact with people in employment leads to any decline
in willingness to work (1999: 215).
The echo of the classic studies of the 1930s can also be heard. For instance,
Parrys work comes close to a tacit recapitulation of Jahoda et al.s five needs
satisfied by paid work: Coalmining constituted purposeful activity, which was
enhanced by the politicization of union membership, and was relatively
autonomous work. Beyond that, it provided a context for social interaction
(2003: 231). Furlongs critique of current youth policy retains faith in paid
work as a social good. One of his main points of criticism of NEET discourse
is that it detracts from the substantial knowledge base of the ways in which
youth unemployment, particularly long-term unemployment, can lead to
marginalization or exclusion (2006: 555).
Tonge provides a useful summary of criticisms of youth unemployment
policies, grouping them according to three types of argument: that policies
served merely to provide cheap labour; that they provided inadequate training;
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or that they had no lasting impact because young people were churned back
into unemployment after participation in a particular government scheme
(1999: 223). Again, all of these criticisms share the quality of accepting the
stated telos of youth unemployment policy getting more young people into
paid work. This is not to argue that there has simply been a replication of the
original 1930s research. Russell, for instance, is critical of the research of
Jahoda et al., stressing that the socially withdrawn respondents who populate
the 1930s studies were not echoed in her own findings (1999: 212). Meanwhile
Strandh (2000: 463) draws on the work of Fryer (1986) to highlight the lack of
agency that Jahoda et al. (1972) implied with their functional theory of paid
work. However, neither of these critical points necessarily implies any revision
of the status of paid work as a desirable policy goal.
More broadly, policy critiques do imply an alternative to policies designed to
increase the (paid) working population that are not always fully explored. For
instance, Parry argues for the value of non-market activities in her research with
South Wales coalmining communities, pointing out that not only the employed
work, since work is performed in a variety of forms and for a number of reasons
(2003: 239), but still on the basis of what those activities provide to human beings.
That is to say, there remains an unstated theory of human need, and the worth of
non-market activities is tacitly assessed in relation to their capacity to satisfy those
needs. Recent research, while still maintaining some form of commitment to paid
work, or at least to the functions or needs it is argued to fulfil, have nevertheless
pointed in the direction of an abandonment of the teleological inscription of paid
work into social policy. For example, Furlong argues for the discernment of those
in danger of marginalization from those exercising lifestyle choices or exploring
career options (2006: 559). Why are the marginalized not engaged in choice and
exploration? The key difference may be argued to be their relative lack of
resources, and concomitant lack of capacity to plan alternative activities that have
uncertain financial rewards.
This element of financial insecurity and barriers to pursuing, or even for-
mulating, life goals have been highlighted as the central reason as to why unem-
ployment is experienced as suffering at all. Parry argues that former coalminers
who chose to retrain were not necessarily committed to paid work as the sole
form of valuable and meaningful work (2003: 236). Having experience of other
routes to fulfilment than paid work therefore gave them the ability to think dif-
ferently about how to live well. To continue the point in another context, Russell
reports that Women with full-time continuous work careers experienced more
social shrinkage following unemployment than unemployed men (1999: 219).
Russell further argues that this is a consequence of a lack of time to devote to
developing extra-work relationships and activities in light of the persistent dou-
ble burden of paid and unpaid domestic work for women (1999: 219).
Without time to cultivate other facets of experience, unemployment is there-
fore inevitably experienced as a more damaging experience as one is left with
fewer social and personal resources to fall back on. Strandh reports that The
impact of exit to paid labour on mental well-being could thus be understood as
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the result of increased life-course predictability and an improved economic
situation (2000: 475). He goes on to assess different exits from unemployment
in relation to their capacity to enhance mental well-being, and concludes that the
key variables are whether exits (which include education as well as employment)
confer sufficient financial resources and a measure of life course predictability
(2000: 476). Meanwhile, Mizen argues that New Labour policy has eroded
access to key resources that could facilitate beneficial changes in the lives of
young people (2003: 470). Furthermore, the link between New Labour and
some measure of employment security has been broken, as government attempts
to confine young peoples aspirations for work within the limits set by the mar-
ket (2003: 467). In light of Strandhs argument then, it can be seen how the
emphasis on pressing (especially young) people into paid work is likely to
increase insecurity. This will do little to ameliorate difficult financial circum-
stances in light of them being churned back into unemployment.
What these types of research findings point to is the value of providing suf-
ficient material resources and freedom from anxiety. This can facilitate the cul-
tivation of ways of living that break dependence on paid work. Furthermore,
they suggest that it is not a special property of paid work itself, but the money
and security it can provide, that is at issue. The current policy climate offers few
prospects for the young unemployed in particular to evade the imperatives
pushing them towards full-time paid work, or education or training instrumen-
talized as a route to paid work. Concomitantly, there is scant opportunity to
pursue diverse interests and activities, particularly if they are reliant on the mea-
gre financial support of the benefits system. The goal of policy therefore, need
not be concerned with providing paid work as such, but in providing financial
security and an ability to look confidently into a future free of the threat of des-
titution or hardship. Guaranteed incomes policies offer one possible means to
that end, and will therefore be considered in conclusion.
Conclusion
This article has traced a recurrent theme in social research on unemployment
since the 1930s that places strong emphasis on the value of paid work as an
individual and social good. That theme has its roots in the pioneering work of
Jahoda et al. It was refined in the social psychology of the 1980s and was man-
ifested in the sociological critique of government victim-blaming in the same
period. Finally, contemporary arguments against the resurrection of victim-
blaming by New Labour have continued the theme. What these diverse
moments in social research have been shown to share, is a more or less explicit
commitment to providing meaningful, secure and well paid work as a valuable
policy goal. As such, criticisms have typically been directed towards govern-
ment policies for failing to provide paid work of sufficient quality for enough
of the people who desire and deserve it. Less often has the desirability of paid
work in itself been questioned. Beyond disputing the findings and theories of
39 Sociology contra government? Cole
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the classic studies of unemployment, contemporary research has asserted the
worth of non-market work. For this assertion to carry policy weight, however,
it needs to be disarticulated from a moral discourse of work that continually
places paid employment at the pinnacle. Policy critiques that retain a paid work
telos evidence Walters argument that ideologies may oppose one another,
yet rely on the same basic mechanisms to give effect to their governmental
ambitions (2000: 39).
Guaranteed incomes policies are at first sight an unpromising route away from
the tacit faith in paid work shared by politicians, policy-makers and social
researchers. McKay argues that advocates of basic incomes tend to share a partic-
ular focus on work [that] follows from an irrefutable faith placed in the labour mar-
ket as the primary source of both economic and social well-being (2007: 338).
However, the foregoing discussion has suggested that faith in the labour market is
misplaced. At best, the labour market is but one route among many that might
potentially facilitate freedom from financial and life course anxiety. Even at its best
though, this comes at the price of vulnerability to experiences such as unemploy-
ment, given that full-time work leaves little scope for developing the social net-
works and individual resources to adapt to radically changed circumstances. In
other words, full-time employment carries risks of dependency. The argument over
commitment to work among the unemployed is often viewed in relation to the con-
cept of dependency, most recently as a refutation of the claims of underclass the-
orists about benefit dependency (see Russell, 1999). However, as McDonald and
Marston imply, and as Marx pointed out a long time ago, so called independence
achieved through paid work is really no independence at all: Dependency on gov-
ernment for passive income support is turned into a personal deficiency, while
dependency on the labour market is applauded as a mark of freedom (2005: 396).
It is not at all clear as to why patterns of mutual dependency are to be deni-
grated in favour of a spurious independence in any case. Nevertheless, a guaran-
teed income policy could foster a far greater measure of independence, if, and only
if, any conditional connection with the labour market is broken. McKay (2007:
345) argues that policy continues to be considered with reference to some preor-
dained notion of what it should achieve to encourage and support active labour
market participation. A citizens basic income is to be preferred for its capacity to
break the necessary connection between work and income, because it allows indi-
viduals the choice of whether or not to enter paid employment without fear of
impoverishment. More than this, individuals would be freer to determine not only
personal goals, but also would have the time and resources to form and engage in
local social networks and exercise greater autonomy over the pattern of life in a
community, as well as being in a better position to offer and receive social support
in times of need with less reliance on the private or public sector. Although it is
beyond the scope of this article to examine economic arguments for and against
basic incomes, it is worth pointing out that the transfer of patterns of social sup-
port outside the market mechanism could offer substantial economies.
Paid work may well have a place in securing the capacity for the invention
and exploration of diverse ways of living, but it is only one possible instrument
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that could be directed towards that end, and it is a deeply problematic one at
that. Intractable disputes over the meaning of an experience that is always
already tautologically predetermined by its underpinning concepts (the com-
monsense view that unemployment is necessarily a bad thing) are a diversion.
Sociologists can instead play a positive role in advocating social policies that
emancipate the meaning of human life from dependence on paid work and leave
its definition and direction open to human invention and experimentation. One
happy consequence of this could be the permanent abolition of the concept of
unemployment from policy discourse.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Karen Morgan for her encouragement and constructive com-
ments on an earlier version of this article. Ruth Levitas also provided valuable feed-
back on an earlier draft. I would also like to thank the three anonymous referees
and the Editor for their helpful suggestions for improvements to the article.
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Matthew Cole
Matthew Cole is a researcher in the School for City and Regional Planning at Cardiff
University. His teaching and research interests have included moral discourses of unem-
ployment, utopian studies, and the sociology of sexuality. His current research interests
focus on the ethics and practice of veganism, humannonhuman animal relationships
and the normalization of consuming nonhuman animals.
Address: Dr Matthew Cole, School for City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University,
Glamorgan Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3XP, Wales, UK.
E-mail: colem5@cardiff.ac.uk
Date submitted April 2006
Date accepted September 2007
43 Sociology contra government? Cole