Local government and practice ontologies: agency, resistance and sector speaks in homelessness services

ABSTRACT

Present accounts of local government under neoliberalism risk poorly characterising and conceptualising forms of resistance by local actors. Institutional actors, and statutory agents in particular, have long been subject to analyses in order to appraise their complicity with, and resistance to oppressive political rationalities. Debates have gathered pace under ‘austerity’ and swingeing fiscal cuts to local budgets. The article argues that at the heart of existing accounts is the failure to engage with how institutional structures come to formation and how human agents come to action. Informed by relational and ontological approaches to the ‘making-of’ state formations, the ‘sector speaks’ concept is introduced. The concept draws on local actors’ narratives from an empirical study of homelessness practices, demonstrating these as a governance-action interface, ‘lived’ through day-to-day actions and social practices. This approach provides alternative insight into human agency and resistance, and how these may be captured through local government research.

KEYWORDS:

• Ontology
• neoliberalism
• resistance
• agency
• relationality
• governance

Acknowledgements

I presented earlier versions of this article at different workshops and conferences and thank the audiences, particularly colleagues in the themed edition, for their feedback and questions. I also thank the anonymous reviewers and themed edition editors, Neil Barnett, Steve Griggs and Helen Sullivan, for their guidance on revising the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rachael Dobson

Rachael Dobson is lecturer in the Department of Criminology in the School of Law at Birkbeck, University of London, UK. Using critical and cultural approaches, she investigates policy, social welfare institutions, human agency and resistance to understand the everyday ‘making-of’ governance phenomena. Recent publications explore this through legislative and institutional responses to ‘complex needs’ (‘Policy Responses to Rough Sleepers’, Critical Social Policy (2019), and ‘Complex Needs in Homelessness Practice’, Housing Studies (2019)).