Conceptualising hy‐bivalent subjectivities to facilitate an examination of Australian government Mutual Obligations policies

Abstract

This paper illustrates how the work of feminist theorists Valerie Walkerdine, Helen Lucey and June Melody, Beverly Skeggs, and Nancy Fraser were used together to examine the lived effects of Australian government Mutual Obligations policies. As ‘active’ welfare policies, Mutual Obligations construct particular relations between themselves and policy subjects. Those most affected are poor and working‐class Australian young women and girls. This is because of their location at the margins of education and work, and their over‐representation among the numbers of lone parents. An understanding of the subjectivities of contemporary young women and girls was necessary to support the analysis of Australian government Mutual Obligations policies and their lived experience among those most affected by these welfare reforms. This paper shows how the combined theoretical and conceptual resources of the above‐mentioned feminists support the development of an appropriate conceptualisation of subjectivities.

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my appreciation to the two anonymous reviewers who provided detailed comments that have improved this paper.

Notes

1. This catchphrase appears to have originated from the UK. John Fitzpatrick (2002, p. 2) attributes it to New Labour MP Jack Straw ‘in October ’98, in promoting the Human Rights Bill in Parliament’. Fitzpatrick cites Jack Straw as stating: ‘There can and should be no rights without responsibilities, and responsibilities should precede our rights’. Australian Prime Minister John Howard (2000, p. 2) used the term ‘no rights come without responsibilities’ in a statement to the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in relation to Australia’s contribution to peacekeeping efforts. More often than not, the words and the meanings encapsulated by the catchphrase are used as follows: ‘There is a renewed awareness that for societies to function effectively, the growth of individual “rights” and “choices” needs to be married with a growth in individual “responsibilities” and “obligations” to society’ (McClure, 2000, p. 32).

2. The discourse of ‘welfare dependency’ has been described and discussed by Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon (1994). They argue that the keyword ‘“Dependency” … is an ideological term. In current US policy discourse it usually refers to the condition of poor women with children who maintain their families with neither a male breadwinner nor an adequate wage’ (p. 79).

3. The Job Network and Centrelink are not central to my research interests at present.

4. Other ABS data (2003c, p. 1) show that 49.2% of females in the workforce have children aged between 0 and 4 years, but they do not indicate in this data set the number of hours of paid work performed by this group of workers.

5. Projection is a concept developed by Sigmund Freud and is used by Walkerdine et al. (2001) in the same sense as Freud developed and applied it. Walkerdine et al. (2001) describe projection as the process that families unconsciously use ‘to excavate their own feelings onto another member, feelings that often stem from fear and a sense of inadequacy’ (p. 92). Similarly, Skeggs uses projection to mean the fears and ‘judgemental responses’ (1997, p. 93) felt by working‐class women from their middle‐class counterparts. Skeggs (1997) describes the gaze as implicated in this process.

6. Skeggs (1997) and Walkerdine et al. (2001) use the concepts of conscious and unconscious and in similar ways. For example, both describe projection as an unconscious process. Unarticulated fears and fantasies are unconscious processes, where the articulation of these fears and fantasies and recognition of projection brings these unconscious thoughts into consciousness. Walkerdine et al. identify ‘unconscious defence mechanisms such as projection, introjection and transference’ as ‘relational and dynamic’ (2001, p. 84), adding that ‘in order to examine other people’s unconscious processes you must be willing and able to engage with your own’ (p. 85).

7. The notion of hybrid subjectivity is attributed by Walkerdine et al. (2001, p. 55) to cultural theory (Bhabha, 1990; Hall, 1992; Gilroy, 1993).

8. Despite criticisms of Fraser’s work by Iris Marion Young (1997) and Judith Butler (1998), I use Fraser’s work in preference to other theorists because of her detailed analysis of gender with class and welfare. Both Butler and Young have critiqued Fraser’s work and her focus on identitarian politics. Space here does not allow me to provide a summary of the dialogue between the three; it is summarised in greater detail in Edwards (2004).