Action Research: Critical Evaluation of Superstructures

This is the final installment of the first phase of an action research project interrogating the activities of administrative structures (like the Outcomes Star) in the lives of people who lack agency in the UK cultural context.  As a project it has triggered an investigation of administrative systems with a particular view to asking what a healthy bureaucracy looks like, and also what do the deadweight costs of dysfunctional bureaucracy look like.

 

In order not to overly depersonalised the work each installment has been prefaced by ethnographic accounts and narratives intended to speak to the emotional capacities of the reader, as it is important to feel in order to understand what is going on in the world. Purely academic and policy oriented documents manage to effectively overshadow the human experience and suffering which go on in the junctures which are being examined.  The emotionless, parsed and ‘soundbite’ accounting of life is problematic.

 

As Antonia Darder emphasizes in her work, emotional states give important information about whether the world is impacting in a generative or destructive way in terms of the individual; without this information many social evils are lost in policy documents and spreadsheets. Out of this research project one of the main issues which has surfaced is how important it is to re-humanize the people (on both sides of bureaucracies) who all too often are not treated with the rights and dignities associated with humans. You can find the collection of published work so far by clicking HERE.

 

You can read the previous section of this project ‘Action Research: The Politics of Bureaucracies’ by clicking HERE.

 

This article deals with a connected range of considerations when trying to understand the nature of superstructures – organisational structures which extend beyond the capacity of any one individual to be familiar with the other actors within it. My interests focus on asking questions about how we can critically evaluate the actions and behaviours of superstructures in a similar way that the evolving legal instruments are trying to parse things like corporate manslaughter. At what point do the actions of individuals involved in an organisational structure become absolved of responsibility for harms and/or have the recognition for their skill, arrangement and effort wrested up from them in a hierarchy so that someone in a senior position takes the credit ?

 

This article goes on to explore how bureaucracies commonly (dare I say universally ??) lack the inherent appraisal mechanisms of the organisational structure itself, such that in some systems all the actors end up constantly working at odds with their colleagues and the client base. I explore Principal-Agent analysis as a useful framework for examining specific problems such as Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard. I touch on the notion of the social contract and think about what certainty can be found in contracts, a term which explains many interactions in civic life.

 

From there I go on to discuss the effect of loss of agency and lack opportunity in the lives of people before bringing in the notion of tangled hierarchies and self referencing paradoxes, important ideas in logic and mathematics that can help us scrutinise particular types of failure within organisational structures. To add to this I introduce the notion of dependencies and explore how the artificial creation of scarcity is a dynamic which impacts in the lives of people. This goes some way to account for some types of social justice issues that arise because of the way which governance structures have been designed.

 

This leads to an articulation of dehumanisation through professionalisation, situations where the introduction of finance and monetary rewards/punishments produces situational forces that influence the behaviour of actors within the bureaucracy. I look at abstraction as having the effect of de-individuating the human beings in the informational system of governance, an important part of the road to dehumanised outcomes. All in all, I argue that these dynamics result in the misapprehension of human beings implicating them as playing a role in unintended consequences, negative outcomes and antisocial ‘weather systems’.

 

Preamble

This being the final installment of my introductory thesis accounting for my experience of dysfunctional bureaucracies in my life, the final preamble I feel important to raise is what I am calling ‘the categorical demonstrative’.  As someone who has chosen to investigate the dysfunctions of the bureaucracies and administrative structures in context with my time and place, I saw action research as offering a description of the intention which has driven me to do the work.

 

My intention has not been to attack the systems I have encountered but to make the sound critique which is missing on most records. My motivation has been to make sense of the crazy-making nature of administrative structures which I have seen impacting on all levels of the human cohort touched by these practices. Bureaucracy is a long studied phenomenon that describe means of organisation whereby governance can be enacted from centralised positions.  There are good things about bureaucracy and administrative structures, and there are which emerge from their usage.

 

It is not so much that administration or governance is bad, but more that I am interested in understanding what the hallmarks of good governance structures are.  For this reason I have interviewed a range of individuals in varying positions in governance structures from front line workers, through ‘team leaders’, line managers, policy makers, creators of bureaucracies, chief executive officers of third sector organisations, senior civil servants, and of course, people who live under the influence of certain structures, like myself.  You can listen to some of these interviews and read the transcripts on this website by searching the Outcomes and Measure archive.

 

My personal story began a number of years ago when I was being driven mad by having to respond to a range of bureaucracies, each administered by different agencies, all of whom were trying to play some role in my life in assisting me to achieve basic means of living in British society.  In attempting to get advocacy from the Edinburgh Cyrenians, and becoming emotionally and cognitively exhausted by the disparate systems which they had to engage with in order to be paid to do their job, I reached across the fourth wall and asked them to take on board that my life was being swamped by a series of ‘person centered plans’, administrative hoops and Outcomes Stars, and that was all I was doing.

 

I had eventually connected to Edinburgh Cyrenians as an advocacy organisation because of a range of tangled hierarchies which were causing the dysfunction of the organisations (the failure of the given organisational structures to achieve their expressed policy aims) of people who were there to try and help me.  Attempting to get advocacy in terms of basic housing support and other things was proving impossible as I found that each third sector organisation after told me that they could not help me because I was not covered by their policy; simultaneously I was being thrown from pillar to post by various government agencies to account for why I needed support to have my basic needs met.

 

I am not keen on making this a public autopsy of my personal life and circumstances so I keep the personal details of my misfortunes private, especially in a climate of gang critique which the political and media complexes have generated. Nevertheless, I put into the public account enough of the details of my circumstance in order to provide context for the necessary meaningfulness to be communicated as I attempt to document what I believe is a far more wide ranging issue than there is any openly visible acknowledgment of.

 

People need not go far to discover what is not being reflected in the record, dealt with by the organisational structures, responded appropriately to by policy or managed properly by persons in post. You need only go to the pub, the water cooler, any off the record space and ask – ‘is this working for you ?’. You need only look at the turn over of staff, the mental and emotional exhaustion levels as measured by diagnoses and statement, the levels of failure demand (see Prof John Seddon) or the increasing scale of crises which services are facing in order to assess whether the organisational structures are working.

 

I do acknowledge that there are bad actors but feel that generally these are the exceptions to the rule and I suspect that mostly the reality of ‘bad actors’ is brought about by the situational forces which shape and act on the psychology and behaviour of individuals – in this I agree with Philip Zimbardo. I think that one of the major issues which we face in this century are systems issues which result in so called ‘wicked problems’. The large superstructures which we inherit and live-in-and-under (i.e. the paperworks, bureaucracies, rules, regulations, tools, policies, algorithms and technologies) are like the mythical golems set to do tasks in old stories.

 

The insatiable drive for ideological efficiencies set by industrial policies and the levels of precarity produced in peoples lives by magnates, chiefs of industry, the unethically wealthy and the euphemistically self described as ‘tax efficient’ social responsibility dodging privateers is eroding the social fabric which keeps people healthy, happy-enough and coalescent.  Taking into consideration of the macro picture is essential in order to understand what is happening at the meso and micro levels.

 

People who have been born into privilege or had to clamber up over others through ranging gauntlets I believe are trauma bonded to what has become their expressed behaviour – to accrue and accumulate more money, more status and to ensure these fictions (beyond a certain level) are maintained.  Sort of Stockholm ideologies of driving for new high scores or to be the ‘first’ in order blight the lives of people hollowed out by wealth and status such that they struggle to understand how else to exist, how or who else to be. Many seem to be captured by the meme of their own fantasies as if hypnotised by playing a computer game where they organise civilisations.

 

This brings me onto the idea of ‘the categorical demonstrative’.  Taking the notion which Immanuel Kant expressed in when he was trying to think through the characteristics of ethics – the categorical imperative – we can explore the idea of ethics being, to some extent, shaped by culture, time, context and place.  As social mammals we are affected by our surrounds; our sociological environment shapes our psychology and we construct from experience ideas which inform our behaviour in the sociological environment.

 

Kant, who became an influential philosopher reasoned in the categorical imperative an ethical system around an unconditional moral law which applies to all rational beings. It speaks to a fundamental ethical principle that people can use to understand the relative ethical merits of a given action. In simplified terms, treat each of your actions whereby you can consider should become a universal law true for all people; treat people as an end in in themselves and never simply as a means, and imagine you are a part of what he called the kingdom of ends – a society with perfect rational moral beings behaving as if your actions were to be approved by other members.

 

 

 

Company is a necessary imperative for social mammals and this informs the social construction of our values and knowledge. As animals we mimic each other. The psychology of this phenomenon has been studied and named ‘The Chameleon Effect’. As hominids we passively and unintentionally change our behaviour in order to match others in the social environment.  People often ape those who are in positions of power or who are given social exposure through media.

 

The psychological setting produced between people elevated into positions of privilege and the media apparatus which imposes their presence in the lives of people I suggest generates a ‘categorical demonstrative’.  Ordinary people who become things like politicians and celebrities, civil servants and CEO’s etc are exceptionalised and exemplified in the culture held aloft as examples, if not actively then tacitly.  The roles are often used to illustrate how good a person is in said role, and used to communicate what character they have.  We see the pantomime often play out in family settings when children are being encultured into society and impressed on about what they should aspire to be if they want the respect and affections of the general population.

 

Genschow O, Klomfar S, d’Haene I, Brass M. Mimicking and anticipating others’ actions is linked to Social Information Processing. PLoS One. 2018 Mar 28;13(3):e0193743. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0193743. PMID: 29590127; PMCID: PMC5873994.

Chartrand, T. L., & Bargh, J. A. (1999). The chameleon effect: The perception–behavior link and social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(6), 893–910. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.76.6.893

 

It is not suspicious that people aspire to people who have demonstrated certain qualities or who occupy lionized positions/roles in society. In many ways what a society rewards what a society lauds as values – it speaks to a ‘categorical demonstrative’ – the demonstration of the values of a society. So what happens when we have situations where the lauded/rewarded people of society behave in degenerative ways ? What does this do to the psychology of the nation ?

 

What does it say when politicians and ‘lords’ are stowing their money in tax havens (places where people go to avoid the law) ? What happens when chief executive officers of company’s are given pay rises for failure ? What happens when administrative systems are cruel, inhumane, dysfunctional, and unrepresentative ? What happens when dodgy deals done in pubs – like those done during covid for personal protective equipment – are not prosecuted ? What happens when the law is only accessible to people who have an abundance of disposable cash ? and so on…

 

It feels and demonstrates like Britain expresses that lying, cheating, blagging, exploiting, fumbling, fluffing and bluffing your way through pays well. It looks like meeting dysfunction with a straight face and a certain denial is a way of getting promotion. This country feels crook, its systems feel crook, its social fabric seems shredded in order to make a quick buck for those who have shares. A rising tide lifts all those who have a boat; the rest are being left to drown. It appears that the most prepared to take risk, to fill their boots, to not be held down by ethical values, are those who are rewarded most.

 

That is what I think about when I think about structural Britain and it is a shame. It is not representative in the same way that a category is not representative but when I see the Financial Times identify the UK as the number one place which the world comes to launder dirty money and I see the parliamentary system being undermined by the rich and wealthy who dodge taxes and laws which the most financially impoverished (and average person) are subject.

 

To summarize and illustrate what I am getting at what follows is an excerpt from the transcript with Nicholas Shaxson, a well respected financial investigator and commentator.  It illustrates how establishment figures throughout the Lords and parliament are dodging paying tax and effectively exploiting the infrastructure of the country in order to accrue their own private empires of wealth in offshore jurisdictions which shirk a range of laws.

 

YouTube player

Chatter #81 – Nicholas Shaxson on The Finance Curse

 

Transcript from Nicholas Shaxson interview above

Presenter: …So I’m gonna roll two questions in the one here because you kind of touched on both of them. So one of the things that really continues to strike me is sort of the the acceptance of of tax havens as a thing… honestly I’m baffled as to to why it’s kind of accepted legally that this just kind of happens – that it’s fine. That once you get to a certain level of wealth you can sort of just ship your money offshore and that’s all fine. We just we just kind of accept it and it’s not like it’s unknown to the public. I’d say that a good 50 percent of people on the street are aware that – maybe more I don’t know what the figures are…

 

…I’m just speculating wildly but the people are aware that the rich are taking their money and not playing the game that we all play; and why do you think that is both legal and accepted ? Like why is there not more just rage at the fact that it’s one rule for for everyone else and another rule once you get to a certain level of wealth and that kind of ties into like is there really a way to control the flow of of global capital ? Is it too powerful now for us to really get a handle on or like do you actually like see a genuine way that we can constrain it in in terms of its use of tax havens; the way it can sort of bounce around the world with no accountability and  do we have a way back ?

 

Nicholas Shaxson: Okay, I mean you’re certainly not alone in that question why on earth, why the hell do we accept tax havens ? Why are they allowed ? Why don’t we send in the gun boats and stop all this nonsense, and that many people have asked again and again and again ? um, there’s a couple of answers to that…

 

…I think the one of my favorite quotes from an American tax expert called Lee Sheppard. She answered this question by saying; she described them as financial whore houses and the reason we don’t crack down them is because the town fathers are in there with their trousers around their ankles and I think that kind of summarizes a lot going on. So many of the people in power are deeply involved in the tax haven racket;  you have sitting MPs in the UK who have been involved in setting up some of the biggest shell company operations in the Cayman islands for example – that kind of thing – and Belize, and they’re all steeped in it…

 

 

…there’s an offshore investigator called David Marchant who runs an investigative outfit called Offshore Alert based out of Miami. They’re one of the best known investigative outfits in this whole area and he said when he’s investigating a corporate structure, when he sees a Lord or a Sir or one of these kind of British appellations in a corporate structure he treats it as a red flag

 

 

..in other word  – they call it – they talk about “having a lord on the board”; it’s kind of a way of legitimizing what you’re doing. You put one of these fancy names on and people think ‘oh this is all right and proper’ but what this is really telling us is that the whole establishment has become deeply corrupted by this stuff. These people are… the tax haven world totally suffuses our political establishment, particularly in the UK the Conservative party but the Labour party is certainly not immune. So there’s a whole kind of political capture going on. The other part of the story is ‘who are the tax havens ?’ and that’s one of the big themes of my of my book treasure islands…” [17 minutes 55 seconds to 21 minutes 46 seconds]

 

I have become much more interested in contrasting what is said and what is done. I have learned to look at the signs and signifiers of structures, actions and people in my environment in order to understand the underpinning values which are at work.  The wealthier people get the more I hear the utterance of “becoming tax efficient” not uncommonly in milieu of people talking about the good work they do in the third sector. I witness people putting their children through exclusive private schools whilst working the third sector and rubbing those pennies out of the word charity whilst they drive home to their expensive neighbourhoods in four by four cars. I see the Mr Hyde of Edinburgh in multifaceted ways.

 

The more that the country is exploited for its infrastructure by privateers like the ‘lords on the boards’, the more that the nation is ransacked for its taxes due whilst taking advantage of its hospitals, roads, civil service etc., the more that social provision is eroded moving towards a wild west model. As the privateers simultaneously control, lambast and undermine the apparatus of government, it becomes more and more a hostile environment for anyone who is not a part of the rentier class who can afford things like private health care and dentistry, transport and nutrient dense food, private education and personal tutors.

 

Just as the legislature of Britain is starting to mature so that it represents people other than the landed gentry we are seeing a flight of capital and relocation of the facades of responsibility to places which lack transparency and the reach of law. As an example, the prisons run by the government are subject to laws like the Freedom of Information act however privately run/owned/profited from prisons do not have to respond to Freedom of Information requests – companies like G4S who dodge tax. You need only put into search engines search the search terms “G4S + controversies + tax” to start building a picture.

 

When we look into the revolving door system and investment fund quagmire, it soon becomes obvious that the political system is riddled with people who are getting the profits.  It is enough to make you ponder the notion of the attempted rise of a second British empire through the stockmarket and tax haven system…

 

Click to download: Chapter 3 The Finance Curse Nicholas Shaxson

 

So what does all this speak to in terms of the categorical demonstrative ?  It asks a question of the values which are being demonstrated by the affluent and tacitly paraded as virtuous by virtue of how they are being rewarded via the organisational structures.  It brings me full circle to a quote from the Marquis De Sade’s first novel ‘The Misfortunes of Virtue’ where the story follows two sisters; one who does whatever she needs to succeed (Juliette), and one who will not bend away from the virtues (Justine) which she understood such as the importance of truthfulness.

 

“For if, taking social conventions as our starting-point and remaining faithful to the respect for them which education has bred in us, it should by mischance occur that through the perversity of others we encounter only thorns while evil persons gather nothing but roses, then will not a man, possessed of a stock of virtue insufficient to allow him to rise above the thoughts inspired by these unhappy circumstances, calculate that he would do as well to swim with the torrent as against it ?

 

And will he not say that when virtue, however fine a thing it be, unhappily proves too weak to resist evil, then virtue becomes the worst path he can follow, and will he not conclude that in an age that is utterly corrupt, the best policy is to do as others do? Or if you prefer, let the man have a degree of learning and allow him to abuse the knowledge he has acquired: will he not then say, like the angel Jesrad in Voltaire’s Zadig, that there is no evil from which some good does not flow?”

 

(Page 1 The Misfortunes of Virtue and Other Early Tales, The Marquis De Sade; A new translation by David Coward; Oxford University Press; Copyright 1992; ISBN 0-19-283695-1)

 

To understand the society in which I found myself, many years ago I made the conscious decision to explore the administrative structures and institutions by a policy of radical honesty. I made every part of my life available in every detail, followed every policy to the detail, and then – at least – I could understand what was my folly and what was the dysfunction of the system.

 

In earnest I set out to document every exchange, every interaction, every paradox – in part for my own mental health, and in part to produce a historical document of the actuality of the population which faced having to manage the administrative structures set in place like golem’s in our lives. This is part of that document.

 

 

Click here to download: Joseph Rowntree Report – Destitution in the UK 2023

 


 

Critical Evaluation of Superstructures

In the Outcomes Star, the assessment process is meant to emerge through a dialogue between ‘expert’ and ‘lay person’, ‘service user’ and ‘worker’, principal and agent, which informs the perception of both parties while challenging the identity distinctions. The theory of the Outcomes Star is meant as a model of change that the worker uses to measure the process for outcomes. In the theory, ‘Data’ is collected and is presented back to the user in the form of the star. This is suggested to give a framework for an overview and encourage reflection on the implications for action. There is a significant discrepancy between the theory and practice of the Outcomes Star in the discursive textual processes.

 

The Outcomes Star approach suggests itself to utilise Participatory Action Research to form a list of subject areas which are formed into a geometric shape (i.e. a star), which can be used as a tool to visualise growth, change and development over time. This said, the Participatory Action Research embodied in the paperwork is done pre-formation of the standardized bureaucracy in use and created as a co-construction between the commissioned researchers and the frontline workers, rather than as a synthesis between the client, the frontline worker and the commissioned researchers.

 

Participatory Action Research has the dual purpose of both addressing practical problems and advancing knowledge. Proactive efforts to tackling the problem(s) and systematic research of the phenomena are integrated into a single process. Gilmore, Krantz and Ramirez suggest that “the notion of disturbing a system as the best way to understand it….has become a systematic and distinctive approach that emphasizes active engagement with clients and co-learning” [Thomas Gilmore, Jim Krantz and Rafael Ramirez, “Action Based Modes of Inquiry and the Host-Researcher Relationship,” Consultation 5.3 (Fall 1986): 161].

 

 

Thomas Gilmore, Jim Krantz and Rafael Ramirez, “Action Based Modes of Inquiry and the Host-Researcher Relationship,” Consultation 5.3 (Fall 1986): 161

 

They go on to describe three approaches of this type as: – Action Research that aims to contribute both to the practical concerns of people in an immediate problematic situation and to further the goals of science simultaneously – Action Learning that describes the complex collaborative relationships required of organizational change efforts – Action Science that takes purposeful action related to a particular phenomena.

 

In their book ‘Action Science: Concepts, Methods and Skills for Research and Intervention‘, Argyris, Putnam, and MacLain-Smith devise a rationale for questioning the normalized ways in which things are done:

 

“In social life, the status quo exists because the norms and rules learned through socialization have been internalized and are continually reinforced. Human beings learn which skills work within the status quo and which do not work. The more the skills work, the more they influence individuals’ sense of competence. Individuals draw on such skills and justify their use by identifying the values embedded in them and adhering to these values.

 

The interdependence among norms, rules, skills, and values creates a pattern called the status quo that becomes so omnipresent as to be taken for granted and to go unchallenged. Precisely because these patterns are taken for granted, precisely because these skills are automatic, precisely because values are internalized, the status quo and individuals’ personal responsibility for maintaining it cannot be studied without confronting it.” [Argyris, C., Putnam, R., and MacLain-Smith, D. (1987). Action science: [concepts, methods, and skills for research and intervention]. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, Page xi]

 

The practical reality of the outcomes paperwork and other funding bureaucracies is that dynamic ideas are crystallized into standardized forms which are iterative and repetitive dulling the organic interaction between the client and worker which is so vulnerable to social and psychological disruption. Due to the nature of support work, it is the opinion of the author that encouragement for reflection and growth generally more constructively comes from engaged personal dialogue reinforced with a unique co-produced documentary bringing into focus a narrative of the barriers.

 

For example, a narrative (such as this paper) which is owned and manifest that allows for identification of issues which do not appear in the bureaucracies. This serves the purposes: -To use the clients life experience as a scaffolding for learning and change – To identify structural problems the client and support worker face – To feed forward a body of contextualized experience and thinking for other clients/support workers/managers/researchers – To make palpable ownership of experience; to enable continuity of experience in the support system.

 

When there are stratifications and compartmentalisations caused through the very instruments which govern the societal structures, it is important that such methodologies as Action Research are embraced as tools for getting at the social science realties, and that they remain uncompromised in practice.

 

There should be a commitment to bringing scrutiny to the bureaucracies which rule and determine people’s lives based on the premises under which they themselves were formed. Collaboration on the questioning of the Outcomes Star bureaucracies and others is suggested in the very intellectual make up of its theory, thus is read as a suitable approach.

 

When instrumental paperworks, governance systems, targets and workloads are grafted onto existing communities of practice and inserted into individual people’s lifeworlds, the governance practices must be questioned, monitored and measured as to the effects of them as a sociological phenomena providing an articulated documentary of the outcomes for the society subject to them.

 

The Outcomes Stars have been put under copyright in an attempt to “preserve the integrity of the tools and support sector wide measurement and data sharing”. This protects the Outcomes Star name, graphics and scale wording in the tools.

 

This may be problematic if use is monetised or exclusive, creating a rift in access to proprietary instruments for funding or support. The idea of copyrighting may impinge upon public domain and fair use laws which hold greater legal status due to their intrinsic public value.

 

If gaining access to support, or funding to give support, relies on use of a bureaucracy which does not allow its adaptation to the complex individual life circumstances of the client, it becomes instrumental in determining what support the client receives and what support the professional can provide.

 

Principal Agent Analysis

In the Outcomes Star literature, MacKeith talks about the person receiving the service as an active agent rather than a passive sufferer that “the professional with their expertise and knowledge will cure” [1] MacKeith, Joy (2011) “The development of the Outcomes Star: a participatory approach to assessment and outcome measurement”, Housing, Care and Support, Vol. 14 Iss: 3, pp.98 – 106]. This casting of the service user as an ‘active agent’ has interesting implications in terms of principal-agent theory – where a principal is an actor who prompts a contractual relationship with another actor, an agent who carries out the contract.

 

The immediate question which is raised is who, or what, is cast in the role of principal in this framing; and subsequently raises the question of what power the service user has to act as an active agent.

 

A principal is an actor who enters into a contractual relationship with another actor, an agent. The agent is entrusted to take actions that lead to outcomes specified by the principal. For example, doctors act as agents when they prescribe medicines and perform procedures to enhance the lives of their patients (principals), and lawyers act as agents for people accused of a crime. Such arrangements arise when principals lack the ability to achieve their goals on their own [77. William T Gormley Jr and Steven J Balla, ‘Bureaucracy and Democracy; Accountability and Performance’ Third Edition, CQ Press College, ISBN-13: 978- 1608717170, Page 72 – 75].

 

Delegation is a common feature of modern life. Clients grant attorneys the authority to provide legal representation, patients rely on doctors to treat illnesses, and employers hire workers to perform tasks of all sorts. These types of relationships share fundamental characteristics. Clients, patients, and employers all face difficulties in choosing and monitoring those whom they delegate authority to. Principal-agent theory is an approach to exploring and understanding the causes and consequences of these difficulties.

 

Part of principal-agent theory is that self-interest features in the motivation of both principals and agents. Generally principals and agents have different incentives. This divergence means that purely self-interested behaviour on the part of agents may not produce the outcomes desired by principals. For instance, the owners of business firms are often concerned first and foremost with maximizing profits. Although employees share a stake in company performance, their subordinate status shapes their actions in important ways. The workers on assemply lines have diminished reason to work at top speed if the benefits of their efforts accrue solely to corporate executives and shareholders.

 

Problems: Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard

Principals face two specific difficulties when dealing with agents. The first is known as adverse selection. This arises when principals cannot directly observe important characteristics of agents but must rely on rough indicators. Defendants cannot easily find out the true motivations and skills of attorneys and therefore must select legal representation on the basis of factors such as reputations and caseloads. Although such proxies may have merit, they are not foolproof. In the end, principals run the risk of hiring agents not ideally suited for the task at hand [77. William T Gormley Jr and Steven J Balla, ‘Bureaucracy and Democracy; Accountability and Performance’ Third Edition, CQ Press College, ISBN-13: 978- 1608717170, Page 72 – 75].

 

The second difficulty is known as moral hazard. This relates to the fact that agents, once selected, cannot be readily evaluated in their work environments. As a result, principals must make inferences about the degree to which agents are effectively securing the outcomes they were hired to bring about. Potential patients often judge doctors who perform laser eye surgeries by their success rates.

 

Such measures, however, are far from perfect. For example, it may be hard to discern the individual performance of a doctor who works as part of a team of laser eye surgeons. To further complicate matters the outcomes of surgeries are affected not only by the doctors’ actions but also by the patients’ presurgery eyesight conditions (such as how nearsighted or farsighted they were). Because of these uncertainties, agents may find it possible to shirk their duties, or undermine the goals sought by principals, without being detected.

 

It is of paramount importance to understand the concepts and relationships of Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard in the context of carework. The ability of individuals in a disadvantaged position to pick the provider/agent is rare – even more so, the transparency of responsibilities, contractual obligations and performance of a given individual or association – in the care situation.

 

The issue of Moral Hazard is extended and diffuse in the care context as it occurs on multiple levels and through ladders of inference [111. Argyris, C., Putnam, R., and MacLain-Smith, D. 1982. Action Science: Concepts, Methods and Skills for Research and Intervention, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, Page 342] and skilled incompetence [112] Argyris, C., “Skilled incompetence”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 64 No. 5, 1986, pp. 74-9].

 

This complication is rife in the ‘consultancy culture’ which exists where companies collect rent for using a paperwork they have positioned as proprietary, where use of services might favour the employee rather than emancipation from the services, where budgets are pinched at the top for political/financial gerrymandering, where budgets are focused into reduction and services cut for the gain of financial incentives by middle management, where professionals are prejudiced against the people they work with.

 

Loss of Agency and Lack of Opportunity

One of the main lessons of principal-agent theory is that delegation almost invariably leads to agency loss. Agency loss occurs when the behaviour of agents leaves principals unable to achieve their goals in an efficient manner or realize them at all [77. William T Gormley Jr and Steven J Balla, ‘Bureaucracy and Democracy; Accountability and Performance’ Third Edition, CQ Press College, ISBN-13: 978- 1608717170, Page 72 – 75]. Delegation from someone requiring support (the principal) to a support service (the agent) can create added vulnerabilities for people requiring support as there are mandates at work in the relationship.

 

Agency is the capacity of an agent to act in the world. If we take this as the definition of agency, then we can relate to Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum’s work in human development which focuses on the capacities of people to act in terms of the opportunities which are open to them. Simply telling a poor person to sell coffee because it is popular and there is a market for it is indulging in a fantasy that does not represent the capacities of that agent (the homeless person) just as is telling a homeless person to get a job or a drug addict to stop taking drugs.

 

Hunting down these fantasies in policy implementation is as important as identifying the next pragmatic improvement relevant to the client (principal) which they can reach for. Here we can understand the client as Principal who has reached out and engaged with social support services; and the social support services as the agents who are contractually engaged to help them take their part in civil society. This can be examined as a part of a social contract [129. Keith Rankin, A Code of Social Responsibility as a Social Contract, Social Responsibility Conference, Massey University, Albany Campus, 12-15 February 1998, Accessed online 21/06/2015: http://keithrankin.co.nz/krnkn_SocResp.html]

 

Principal agent theory can be applied to policy making in bureaucracies. Administrative agencies are agents to whom policy making authority is delegated. This authority originates with principals such as chief executives, legislatures, and judiciaries. The act of delegation brings each of these principals face-to-face with particular manifestations of adverse selection and moral hazard [77. William T Gormley Jr and Steven J Balla, ‘Bureaucracy and Democracy; Accountability and Performance’ Third Edition, CQ Press College, ISBN-13: 978- 1608717170, Page 72 – 75].

 

Bureaucracies are valuable to government actors pursuing specific self interested goals. Legislators build their cases for re-election in part by helping constituents overcome bureaucratic ‘red tape’. Thus, the motivation behind the delegation of authority to the bureaucracy cannot be meaningfully separated from effectiveness of agency.

 

Strategies Toward Contract Certainty

The most common method to mitigate the agency loss associated with adverse selection is by using screening mechanisms. Typically principals induce agents to reveal their motivations and skills before hiring them. For example, employers make judgements on the qualifications of applicant through apprenticeships and examinations [77. William T Gormley Jr and Steven J Balla, ‘Bureaucracy and Democracy; Accountability and Performance’ Third Edition, CQ Press College, ISBN-13: 978- 1608717170, Page 72 – 75].

 

The problem of moral hazard can be approached in two distinct ways. The first is institutional design where principals place agents in situations in which they find it in their self interest to work toward outcomes favoured by their principals. Corporations for instance sometimes provide workers with a financial stake in company performance through devices such as stock options or pay generous wages (efficiency wages) [113. Lawrence F. Katz, Efficiency Wage Theories: A Partial Evaluation, NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1986, Volume 1, Stanley Fischer, editor, MIT Press, ISBN: 0-262- 06105-8, Pages 235 – 290] in good working conditions which allow people the security to pursue their vocation [114. Daniel H. Pink (2010), ‘Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us’, Canongate Books, ISBN: 184767768], embody their life values and develop collaborative aspirations.

 

A lack of the wages necessary to live a sufficiently comfortable lifestyle disincentivizes people doing their job properly or caring about it; because they get fatigued, the lack of reward is a lack of societal reciprocity and there is a danger that they become the employed counterpart to the homeless, unemployed, the mad, the criminal, the dispossessed.

 

The second approach is the overseeing of agent actions. By monitoring agents at work principals aim to identify and redirect behaviour inconsistent with their objectives. Principals can also use oversight as a deterrent. The mere possibility of being monitored may compel agents to avoid activities that do not serve principals well [77. William T Gormley Jr and Steven J Balla, ‘Bureaucracy and Democracy; Accountability and Performance’ Third Edition, CQ Press College, ISBN-13: 978- 1608717170, Page 72 – 75].

 

A lack of transparency can be a massive barrier to clients in support, especially when the bureaucracy has no provision for appeal to a higher authority – which serves in some cases as a monitoring apparatus. With partnership working becoming less and less common due to Payment by Results driven division of outcomes, there is also a loss of positive network effects.

 

In a humane support system, people need to be fully involved to the level of their capabilities; individuals need to have access to the relevant knowledge (taught professional language, knowledge of the system), and their situated knowledge has to be embraced by the specialist (the system adepts) as a different kind of expertise for there to be any advance.

 

The individual, on both sides of the juncture – both client and professional – must be acknowledged and reinforced in terms of agency. The mutual establishment of shared and negotiated values needs to be enabled in terms of knowledge which sits beyond the roles that define the juncture of the two; in other words they need to generate the language that they require to articulate and communicate the situational problems they are mutually attempting to resolve.

 

Only then can a dialogue be manifest through conversation allowing the necessary human empathies to be tapped into and utilized to recognize areas for change/growth. This perspective suggests bringing the qualities of the informal into the traditionally formal setting, as only they have the capacity to achieve complex outcomes.

 

Examining Tangled Hierarchies and Self Referencing Paradox

The principal must be defined if this language is to be meaningful and hold explanatory power. The principal commissions the act which the agent undertakes; in many circumstances, found in the life situation of an individual receiving support. This language can result in the generation of unhelpful binary perception.

 

The way we construct the language and meaning we use to have conversations about questions of support, agency and principality carries with it constraints about the ways we are able to think about what these questions involve. In her work on policy and practice, Professor Penny Jane Burke suggests it is important to develop a theoretical framework that enables the destabilization of regimes of truth, which constitute subjects through symbolic and discursive recognitions and misrecognitions.

 

Pierre Bourdieu has developed a particularly compelling and sophisticated language for thinking through power in multivalent ways allowing us to explore how material and cultural differences also become embodied dispositions or ‘habitus’. Bourdieu argues that the dominant groups in society have the power to impose meanings and to render these as legitimate.

 

Foucault’s conceptualization of power destabilizes simplistic binary notions of the oppressor and the oppressed, the advantaged and the disadvantaged, of agency and structure, which has shaped discourses, and ultimately the way we approach complex situations.

 

Burke argues that such perspectives lock us into ways of thinking which reproduce rather than challenge the status quo and the way we act on encountering inequities. She suggests that developing an understanding of power as relational, discursive, productive whilst simultaneously regulatory and constraining is useful for thinking through the complexities of inequalities [115. Penny Jane Burke, (2013) Re/conceptualising Widening participation, The Right to Higher Education: Beyond Widening Participation, Routledge, ISBN: 1136450963, Pages 33 – 39].

 

Thus when we move from the simplistic binary of the situation to the more nuanced deconstruction of situation, we can start to perceive the client as both the agent and principal; in that the client both engages support services in the role of agent – thus acting as principal – whilst being instructed by the support services to be an active agent [1. MacKeith, Joy (2011) “The development of the Outcomes Star: a participatory approach to assessment and outcome measurement”, Housing, Care and Support, Vol. 14 Iss: 3, pp.98 – 10 – which thus casts the service as principal].

 

Simultaneously, the civil service acts to mandate certain activities through the support services – i.e. employability work related activity, implementing the bedroom tax – creating them as principals at this point in process relative to the client, and the support workers also act in the role of agent relative to the mandates which come down from and through the civil service. In systems such as these we can see a signature emerge where throughout the hierarchy people have power over other people’s actions but none over their own. It is a mysterious world of policy and mandate where workload is downsourced in a web of double binds, where individuals at the bottom have the least cultural and linking social capital; in an inverse relationship to individuals at the top.

 

This is not to say that people at the top necessarily have any more control than those at the bottom, it is just that they are less financially and culturally disadvantaged. In situations of shareholder primacy – corporations – if people do not serve the fiduciary responsibility (the responsibility to increase the dividends paid to the shareholder), they are externalized (they are sacked). If they do not advance the system’s bottom line on the balance sheet, they are regarded as not a part of the system and extruded. They are dismissed because they are cast as counter efficient.

 

We can cast the people who inhabit these antithetical positions as special agents; situationally they are contracted to fulfill tasks whilst having the means to fulfill the tasks withheld; their agency is conditional and held in a double bind. Mathematically this is known as a type of Strange Loop managerialism.

 

A Strange Loop arises when by moving only upwards or downwards through a hierarchical system, one finds oneself back where one started. A system which embodies such strange loops is referred to as a ‘tangled hierarchy’ [116] Douglas R Hofstadter, (2000) ‘Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid’, Penguin; 20th Anniversary edition, ISBN: 0140289208].

 

The mathematical concept was proposed and expounded by Douglas Hofstadter and helps elucidate self-reference and paradox. A Strange Loop hierarchy (also known as a tangled hierarchy, and a ‘heterarchy’) is one in which there is no well defined highest or lowest level; where moving through the levels, one eventually returns to the original starting point. Self-referential system is one of self-creation; also known as autopoiesis, which refers to a system capable of reproducing and maintaining itself.

 

An application of this concept of self reference (autopoiesis) to sociology can be found in the work of Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory which has been adapted by Bob Jessop in his studies of the capitalist state system. He develops the discussion of capitalist society without imposing that the economy is the ultimate determinant and generator of societal dynamics [117]. Edmund Burke warned us when he said that “the bonds of community are broken at great peril for they are not easily replaced” [118] Ray Oldenburg, (1999) ‘The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community’, Marlowe & Co; 3rd Revised edition, ISBN: 1569246815].

 

Niklas Luhmann is a social theorist who’s work focuses on the operations of the legal system. It has similarities with complexity theory. He describes his theory as non-linear and states that it should avoid simplistic misunderstandings. Luhmann’s systems theory repeatedly returns to three themes: – Systems as society – Communication – Evolution

 

He states that social systems are communication. A system is defined by the boundary between itself and its environment, which divides it from an infinitely complex exterior. Communication within a system operates by selecting only a limited amount of all information available outside. The criterion according to which information is selected and processed is meaning. Each system has a distinct identity that is constantly reproduced in its communication and depends on what it considers to be meaningful and what is not.

 

If a system fails to maintain that identity, it ceases to exist as a system and dissolves back into the environment it emerges from. Luhmann called this process of reproduction from elements previously filtered from an over-complex environment ‘autopoiesis’. Autopoiesis refers to networks of processes that reproduce themselves, however Luhmann extended its use as a concept to communications which are reproduced by humans. He relates the operation of autopoiesis (the filtering and processing of information from the environment) to a program making a series of logical distinctions.

 

Luhmann’s work on self reference relates to the thought of Gregory Bateson’s double binds [119. Gregory Bateson, Don D. Jackson, Jay Haley, and John Weakland, ‘Toward A Theory of Schizophrenia’, Veterans Administration Hospital, Palo Alto, California; and Stanford University, Behavioral Science [1956] 1(4): 251- 254] and proposes that auto-referential communications systems continuously present the dilemma of disintegration or continuation in identity terms.

 

Bateson presented a theory of schizophrenia based on communications analysis, and specifically on the Theory of Logical Types. The theory was developed from observations of schizophrenic patients and Bateson derived a description, and the necessary conditions for the situation which he called the “double bind”. This is a situation in which no matter what a person does, they “cannot win.” The hypothesis was that a person caught in the double bind may develop schizophrenic symptoms [119. Gregory Bateson, Don D. Jackson, Jay Haley, and John Weakland, ‘Toward A Theory of Schizophrenia’, Veterans Administration Hospital, Palo Alto, California; and Stanford University, Behavioral Science [1956] 1(4): 251- 254].

 

Bateson surmised that people habitually caught in double binds in childhood would have greater problems—that in the case of the schizophrenic, the double bind is presented continually and habitually within the family context from infancy on. By the time the child is old enough to have identified the double bind situation, it has already been internalized, and the child is unable to confront it. The solution then is to create an escape from the conflicting logical demands of the double bind, in the world of the delusional system [119. Gregory Bateson, Don D. Jackson, Jay Haley, and John Weakland, ‘Toward A Theory of Schizophrenia’, Veterans Administration Hospital, Palo Alto, California; and Stanford University, Behavioral Science [1956] 1(4): 251- 254].

 

A solution to a double bind is to place the problem in a larger context, a state Bateson identified as Learning III, a step up from Learning II (which requires only learned responses to reward/consequence situations). In Learning III, the double bind is contextualized and understood as an impossible no-win scenario so that ways around it can be found. In the case of bureaucracies and vertical command and control organisations, this thinking has interesting implications both for describing the behaviours of the ‘hardest to reach’ and for possible routes for re-establishing engagement.

 

Dependency and the Creation of Scarcity

In tangled hierarchies, Liebig’s Law helps us constitute an understanding of structural problems which people face. Liebig’s Law – or the law of the minimum, is a principle developed in agricultural science by Carl Sprengel (1828) and popularized by Justus Von Liebig. It states that growth is controlled not by the total amount of resources but by the scarcest resource, which is the limiting factor.

 

Suitably we can understand this principle at work in a care setting; it is not the total amount of services which are available which defines growth for an individual; but a structural lack of the scarce resource (i.e. time, opportunity, money, agency) which limits the individual to their circumstance. It is the institutional structural problems which grossly rate limit the development of individuals and set up cultures of dependency. As the scarce resources are often the spaces where people or services professionally create their niche capitalizing on the need for their own personal security.

 

It is at these bottlenecks that Moral Hazard can be examined by understanding the dependencies which are engendered, and going on to distinguish scarce resources from the creation of scarcity. An example of this might be the creation of a proprietary paperwork which collects a rent for its use, without which, funding and services will not be issued, leaving clients and frontline workers in a double bind with the imperative to engage.

 

Social Justice Issues and Governance Structures

Corporate society presents us with the problems of a huge system of production, distribution, and service provision depending on the detailed cooperation of millions of people, most of whom have no part in determining their actions or the conditions of their actions [108. Young, I. M. (1990)].

 

Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, ISBN: 9780691152622, Pages 41 – 76]. The welfare capitalist society aims to embody values for formal equality and proceduralism as against more arbitrary, personalized forms of authority and more coercive forms of inducing cooperation. Large bureaucratic organizations conduct most collective activity in modern societies.

 

Bureaucracies are distinguished from other forms of social organization in that they try to operate according to impersonal rules that apply the same way to all cases. In the simplistic ideal people within them are perceived to have or lack status, privilege, power, or autonomy by virtue of their position in the division of labour, and not by virtue of any personal attributes of birth, family connection, and so on. According to the values of bureaucratic organization, positions should be assigned according to merit.

 

These achievements of bureaucracy are important positive developments in the history of social organization [108. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, ISBN: 9780691152622, Pages 41 – 76]. However, in these matrices of power, even relatively enabled people are subject to the unreciprocate authority of others. They find their actions constrained by structural or bureaucratic imperatives that often seem to result from no one’s decisions and which serve the interests of a small specific set of agents.

 

People experience bureaucratic domination not only as workers, but also as clients and consumers subject to rules they have had no part in making. Rules which are designed largely to convenience the provider or agency rather than the consumer [108. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, ISBN: 9780691152622, Pages 41 – 76].

 

This refers back to the discussion of down sourcing from a disproportionately paid managerial class who externalize the work and involvement, whilst internalizing the gains from private dividends, gatekeeping funding, cultural capital and the power to assert terms and conditions.

 

Domination consists in institutional conditions which inhibit or prevent people from participating in determining their actions or the conditions of their actions. Welfare capitalist society creates specifically new forms of domination. Increasingly the activities of everyday work and life come under rationalized bureaucratic control, subjecting people to the discipline of authorities and experts in many areas of life [108. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, ISBN: 9780691152622, Pages 41 – 76].

 

Corporate administrative workplaces are hierarchically structured, in that most workers in them are subordinate to the authority of others. If people have decision making power, it is generally over others’ actions rather than their own. This structure of hierarchical authority re-establishes the personal domination that bureaucratic organization was suggested to have eliminated. However explicitly a bureaucracy formalizes rules and procedures, it still cannot eliminate individual and subjective choices.

 

Heads of divisions and departments, for example, normally have a great deal of discretion in making, interpreting, applying, and enforcing rules according to their particular understanding of the goals of the organization and their choices of priorities [108. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, ISBN: 9780691152622, Pages 41 – 76].

 

The formal characteristics of bureaucratic rules produce within the bureaucracy an experience of personal dependency and necessary submission to arbitrary will. The formalism, universality, and impersonality of the rules are supposed to protect persons from the arbitrariness of whim and personal likes and dislikes.

 

In the ideal, everyone is to be treated in the same way, impersonally and impartially, and no particular values should enter. People applying the impersonal rules must make judgements about how they apply to each particular case and in their application the decision makers feelings, values, and particular perceptions inevitably enter [108. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, ISBN: 9780691152622, Pages 41 – 76].

 

The systematic character of oppression implies that an oppressed group need not have a correlate oppressing group. While structural oppression involves relations among groups, these relations do not always fit the paradigm of conscious and intentional oppression of one group by another. Foucault suggests that to understand the meaning and operation of power in modern society we must look beyond the model of power as “sovereignty”; the binary relation of rule and subject.

 

Instead we must analyze the exercise of power as the effect of often liberal and “humane” practices of education, bureaucratic administration, production and distribution of consumer goods, medicine and so on. The conscious actions of many individuals daily contribute to maintaining and reproducing oppression, but those people are usually simply doing their jobs or living their lives, and do not understand themselves as agents of oppression [108. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, ISBN: 9780691152622, Pages 41 – 76].

 

Iris Marion Young contextualizes the theory of which I am drawing from: “I do not mean to suggest that within a system of oppression individual persons do not intentionally harm others in oppressed groups. The raped women, the beaten Black youth, the locked-out worker, the gay man harassed on the street, are victims of intentional actions by identifiable agents. I also do not mean to deny that specific groups are beneficiaries of the oppression of other groups, and thus have an interest in their continued oppression. Indeed, for every oppressed group there is a group that is privileged in relation to that group.” [108. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, ISBN: 9780691152622, Pages 41 – 76]

 

The point is not that substantive personal values enter bureaucratic decision making when they ought not to; on the contrary, the entrance of particular substantive values into decisions is inevitably and properly part of what decision making is about. The scientific ideology of bureaucratic administration, however, suggests itself to remove all particular values from decisions. Generally the justification of hierarchical decision making is manifested by the claim that any professional with the proper knowledge acting impartially would come to the same decision.

 

Personal judgement inevitably enters many important decisions. Those subordinate to the decision maker experience themselves as subject to the arbitrary will of a superior on whom they are personally dependent [108. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, ISBN: 9780691152622, Pages 41 – 76].

 

Life under and inside the bureaucracy thus becomes a quagmire of “impression management” and power politics. To attempt to remove the subjective judgement superiors are able to exercise with respect to subordinates, bureaucracies often institute detailed, formalized, apparently “objective” methods of supervision and surveillance.

 

These only increase the sense of domination, since they apply more detailed rules more frequently to the behaviour and performance of subordinates, and subjective judgement inevitably enters in the application of these rules as well. There is thus stipulation for increasingly colonizing the experience of the subordinate.

 

Domination in corporate society extends beyond the workplace to many other areas of everyday life. In the phenomenon that Habermas refers to as the “colonization of the life world” [124. Jurgen Habermas (Author), Thomas McCarthy (Translator), ‘The Theory of Communicative Action Volume 2; Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason’, Beacon Press Boston, ISBN: 0-8070-1400-1, Page 305], both government and private agencies subject clients and consumers to meshes of microauthority.

 

The colonization of the life world means that life activities formerly subject to traditional norms, spontaneous action, or collective decision become commodified or are brought under the control of state institutions, and thus become normalized, universalized, and standardized. Clients and consumers submit to the authority of hospitals, schools, universities, social service agencies, government offices, banks, fast food restaurants, and countless other institutions.

 

Officials in these institutions not only prescribe much of the behaviour of clients or consumers within the institutions, but perhaps more importantly, through social scientific, managerial, or marketing disciplines, they define for the client or consumer the very form and meaning of the needs the institutions aim to meet [108. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, ISBN: 9780691152622, Pages 41 – 76].

 

Persons within corporate society often do not challenge these forms of domination and depoliticization, partly because they are tacitly proposed to be the price of the material comfort the majority of people have. Those without material comfort are even less likely to challenge the authority of institutions which define their behaviour and needs, because they are more dependent on them than others. Other forms of domination legitimate the structure of corporate society and make it difficult to challenge the ideology of expertism because of their vertical and self referencing nature. In corporate society knowledge is power.

 

Depoliticization of public life succeeds apparently because most people are convinced that issues of legislation, production, and planning are too complex to be understood except by fiscal, legal, and managerial experts. In the ideology of expertism, the knowledgable and only the knowledgable have a right to rule, because they are set forth as masters of the objective and value-neutral discipline applying to the area of social life in question. Thus their decisions are construed as necessary and correct [108. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, ISBN: 9780691152622, Pages 41 – 76].

 

Rule by experts claims to transcend politics, claims not to entail submission by some to the will of others. With the rule of experts we are told that we witness an end to ideology and achieve scientific organization in social life. It is therefore difficult for people to challenge the doctors, social workers, engineers, statisticians, economists, job analysts, city planners, and the myriad of other experts whose judgements determine their actions or the conditions of their actions [108. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, ISBN: 9780691152622, Pages 41 – 76].

 

Within bureaucratic organisations the ideology of merit operates in the same way. A professional acquires the right to rule more persons as they develop greater expertise in their profession, as judged by those already designated experts. Careerism is therefore another legitimating mechanism in welfare corporate society. When there is a commitment to a principle of equal opportunity, when channels of promotion are clear, and when merit criteria are applied impartially, then persons rise in the hierarchy of authority in a manner commensurate with their expertise.

 

Subordinates accept the hierarchical structure and the authority of their superiors because they themselves have legitimate hopes of rising to positions of greater autonomy/authority. Careerism contributes to the privatization of social life. Rather than collectively challenging the legitimacy of the autocracy of experts, people on a career track have their own advancement held in mind. A necessary condition for such advancement, is avoiding politicizing the decision of either the organization or the larger public.

 

We can see the effects of polarizing an issue by looking at the treatment of whistle blowers in the National Health Service. There was documented a range of reactions from an uncomfortable tyranny of silence to threats of physical violence [125] Sir Robert Francis QC, Freedom to Speak Up; An Independent Review Into Creating An Open and Honest Reporting Culture in the NHS, 11 February 2015, Accessed Online 21/06/2015: http://freedomtospeakup.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/F2SU_web.pdf]. This culture of mutual suppression must be accounted for in the analytic literature.

 

The ideological character of the merit principles that both expertism and careerism presuppose, nest tacitly within the ‘lifeworld’ of the individual promoting a type of liminal Stockholm syndrome where people sympathise with a system which keeps them both dependent and constrained – a third scenario in the prisoner’s dilemma [108. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, ISBN: 9780691152622, Pages 41 – 76].

 

In contemporary hierarchies some people have more power than others, in the sense of authority to give orders or make decisions. Many others are powerless. Young proposes that only a democratization of corporate institutions which introduces procedures of collective discussion and decision making about ends and means can bring people some control over their action.

 

Democratization is less fruitfully conceived of as a redistribution of power than as a reorganization of decision making rules. Young argues that democracy is an element and condition of social justice, not just in government institutions, but in principle in all institutions [108. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, ISBN: 9780691152622, Pages 41 – 76].

 

Many discussions of social justice not only ignore the institutional contexts within which such issues occur, but often presuppose specific institutional structures whose justice they fail to bring under evaluation. Some political theories, for example, tend to assume centralized legislative and executive institutions separated from the day-to-day lives of most people in the society, and state officials with the authority to make and enforce policy decisions.

 

They take for granted such institutions of the modern state as bureaucracies and welfare agencies for implementing and enforcing tax schemes and administering services. Issues of the just organization of government institutions, and just methods of political decision making, rarely get raised. To take a different kind of example when philosophers ask about the just principles for allocating jobs and offices among persons, they typically assume a stratification of such positions.

 

They assume a hierarchical division of labor in which some jobs and offices carry significant autonomy, decision making power, authority, income, and access to resources, while others lack most of these attributes. Rarely do theorists explicitly ask whether such a definition and organization of social positions is just. Many other examples of ways in which theorizing about justice frequently presupposes specific structural and institutional background conditions could be cited. In every case a clear understanding of these background conditions can reveal how they affect distribution – what there is to distribute, how it gets distributed, who distributes, and what the distributive outcome is.

 

Decision making issues include raising questions of who (by virtue of their positions) has the effective freedom or authority to make what sorts of decisions, but also what kind of rules and procedures accord to which decisions that are made. Discussion of economic justice, for example, often de-emphasizes the decision making structures which are crucial determinants of economic relations. Economic domination in our society occurs not simply or primarily because some persons have more wealth and income than others.

 

Economic domination derives at least as much from the corporate and legal structures and procedures that give some persons the power to make decisions about investment, production, marketing, employment, interest rates, and wages that affect millions of other people. Not all who make these decisions are wealthy or even privileged, but the decision making structure operates to reproduce distributive inequality and the unjust constraints on people’s lives that Young identifies as exploitation and marginalization.

 

As Carol Gould [126] Carol Gould (1989), Rethinking Democracy: Freedom and Social Co-operation in Politics, Economy, and Society, Cambridge University Press; Reprint edition, ISBN 978- 0521386296, Page 82 – 97] points out, rarely do theories of justice take such structures as an explicit focus. The domination of centralized bureaucracies, whether public or private, over municipal economies tends to dissociate lived or experienced space from the commodified space of abstract planning and calculation.

 

Capitalist bureaucratic rationality fosters bird’s-eye planning which encompasses vast regions including huge metropolitan areas, or even several states together. From this skytop vision, investors and planning bureaucrats determine the placement and design of highways, factories, shopping facilities, offices and parks. They decide the most rational and efficient investment from the point of view of their portfolio and their centralized office operations, but not necessarily from the point of view of the locales in which they ‘invest’.

 

Too often this bureaucratic rationality and efficiency results in a deadening separation of functions, with oppressive consequences. It also often results in abrupt disinvestment in one region and massive disruptive speculation in another, each with significant consequences for the welfare of people in those locales and their communities of practice.

 

Dehumanisation Through Professionalisation

Edmund Husserl was a German philosopher who established the school of phenomenology. Husserl devoted a lot of attention to psychology. The phenomenological movement evolved throughout the 20th century and made substantive contributions to psychology via the work of Karl Jaspers, Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Alfred Schutz, Gaston Bachelard, Gabriel Marcel, Emmanuel Levinas, and Paul Ricoeur.

 

Their works broke new ground in areas of psychology such as perception, imagination, emotions, behaviour, language, and social processes; the greatest impact on psychology has occurred in the area of mental health. This body of work was a protestation against dehumanization in psychology and offered original research and theory with the aim of faithfully reflecting the distinctive characteristics of human behaviour via first-person experience [41. Wertz, Frederick J; Phenomenological Research Methods for Counselling Psychology; Journal of Counselling Psychology Vol 52(2), Apr 2005, 167 – 177]. MacKeith cites Existential Phenomenology in the make up of the Outcomes Star Methodology [1. MacKeith, Joy (2011) “The development of the Outcomes Star: a participatory approach to assessment and outcome measurement”, Housing, Care and Support, Vol. 14 Iss: 3, pp.98 – 106].

 

Different practices build their own textual realities. Each stream of bureaucracy shows “reality” experienced and understood differently, from different sites in an organisation. Timothy Diamond writes about this:

 

“The very rationality they confront is itself mired in contradiction, forcing disjunctions between everyday life and administrative reality. Because the managerial drive is toward corporate balance sheets and government regulatory procedures, it distorts the central rituals of everyday life. Medical and corporate rationality negate residents’ emotional expressions, like anger and grief, and redefine them as part of diagnostic categories, in effect denying their existence” [50. Timothy Diamond, 1992, Making Grey Gold: Narratives of Nursing Home Care. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Page 233].

 

Smith introduces the notion of bifurcated consciousness, using as example, references to herself as a mother and alternatively as an academic. She writes on how, as a graduate student, it was possible and necessary to move between the worlds of looking after a baby and that of the discursively organised university; entering and acting with each on its own distinctive terms. She studied the disjuncture between the two [54]. For carers, they must work in a similarly bifurcated mode in the workplace where they are immersed in the everyday world of physicality and at the same time they are moved into the work of abstracting, recording and translating their ‘caring’ into organisational texts, the aim of which are to articulate those bodily concerns and tasks to the conceptual order of the institution [54. Marie L. Campbell, Institutional Ethnography and Experience as Data, Qualitative Sociology, March 1998, Volume 21, Issue 1, pp 55-73].

 

“They construct their knowing of bodies into discursive mode, bifurcating their own consciousness. In other words, they know their patients in two distinctive, and often contradictory, ways – as real people with bodily needs; and as text based objects of professional attention. The latter may, and under modern managerial technologies, often does mean that the bodily knowing is subordinated to the text based or discursive [54. Marie L. Campbell, Institutional Ethnography and Experience as Data, Qualitative Sociology, March 1998, Volume 21, Issue 1, pp 55-73]”.

 

There exists a dichotomy in terms of literacies and literatures. For some, there is a problem with reading, for others, there is a lack of substance to read and engage with. The idea that those who require help lack the ability to digest and understand literature is a common stereotype that infantilises intelligent individuals who are entirely capable of complex thinking and analyses. It is easy to think of the disempowered as people who suffer from intellectual, moral or behavioural deficits rather than beings of sentient cultural capables that have worth.

 

Another juxtaposed critical point to understand the determinisms of systems is that many of the people who have been deprived of opportunities and resources do not possess basic education and literacies. Despite this, various government initiatives to increase efficiency and cut costs have the focus to digitise the social service interface between the public and benefits. The problems with this ‘magical thinking’ are manifold [106. Eubanks, V. (2012). Digital dead end: Fighting for social justice in the information age. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press].

 

Professor Virginia Eubanks discusses digital literacies in these terms aiming to deconstruct the perceived ‘digital divide’ and myths surrounding competencies. Many people in poverty traps and in need of support are forced into skilled low quality jobs with no security and exploitative conditions; this results in compounded social problems and a further loss of agency. The rise in the culture of zero hour contracts is one symptom of this social disease. In her work Professor Eubanks shows that information technology is both a tool of liberation and a means of oppression [106. Eubanks, V. (2012). Digital dead end: Fighting for social justice in the information age. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press].

 

She documents how the high-tech jobs for women are data entry positions that pay insufficient wages. At work, their supervisors monitor every keystroke. The state offers limited social service benefits in exchange for high-tech monitoring and surveillance of their lives, families, and communities. In her book ‘Digital Deadend’ Eubanks details the ‘magical thinking’ which runs through the rhetoric of introducing digital technologies as a liberating machinery, and dispells the myths perpetuated around the ‘digital divide’ [106. Eubanks, V. (2012). Digital dead end: Fighting for social justice in the information age. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press].

 

Digitalized bureaucratic interfaces further remove people from any responsive possibilities with the systems which govern their lives. A major problem with various bureaucracies is the esoteric and standardising nature of their design meant, in aspects, to keep people from understanding the systems they operate within. For as long as there is an esoteric and exoteric experience of the system, there exists a portion of people who have agency taken from them, and ultimately an underclass bereft of cultural capital. Bureaucracies create a chasm between thinking and doing. It is in these circumstances that responsibility is taken from people and they learn that they are helpless.

 

They learn that they are against a gradient and that their efforts have a level of futility which – once ingrained in their understanding – manifests as ‘learned helplessness’ [92. Maier, Steven F. Seligman, Martin E. Learned helplessness: Theory and evidence, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol 105(1), Mar 1976, 3-46]. One must ask if a system is there to promote upward mobility in these circumstances, or to manage people into situations which support other jobs (professional dependency maintained through failure demand). One must be capable of asking the question, ‘who guards the guards ?’ and subject the system one exists in to its own precedents.

 

Professionalisation comes about through the division of labour in modern societies, and as Durkheim suggested, demands that attention be paid to the individual [107] Emile Durkheim, Prospects: the quarterly review of comparative education (Paris, UNESCO: International Bureau of Education), vol. 23, no.1/2, 1993, p. 303–320. UNESCO: International Bureau of Education, 2001; EMILE DURKHEIM (1858-1917)].

 

This gives rise to individualist ideologies, which in turn result in the emergence of human rights and institutions to protect these rights. It is key to note that the just process of law requires positivistic evidencing which is – as mentioned – precluded on clientside by many bureaucratic and administrative circumstances. Professionalisation results in the development of group behaviour and dehumanisation through derivatisation which will be dealt with in the coming chapter. Safe guards must be built in to protect against the dehumanising effects of professionalisation.

 

The stratifying effect of professionalisation opens the individuals involved to all sorts of discriminatory behaviours typically noted for ingroup and outgroup associations. Strict professionalisation can be a roadway to dementalisation of whole sections of the population. Dementalisation is a process where the attribute of intelligence and the ability to cognicize information is withheld from a human, devaluing them in the scale of humanisation. Examples of this are gender and racial prejudices.

 

There are well documented tracts describing how women do not have the mental capacity for intellectual activity throughout the Victorian times and leading well into the twentieth century. Similarly, imperial and colonial attitudes towards non-British people dementalized those not of the same cultural background, similarly dehumanizing them. Sociological forms of this process of dehumanization are active in our culture and work themselves into the social structures we build and reinforce. This is particularly so in terms of career, education and social status and must be doubly guarded against as depersonalized bureaucracies gain influence in the way we engage with our world.

 

Abstraction as Objectification

What is important to retain is that we should not separate a given experience from the concrete context of the person (or thing in observance) because we lose the meaning that the person is affirming or the context which generates the meaning [63. Introduction to Giorgi’s Existential Phenomenological Research Method; Alberto De Castro; Psicologia desde el Caribe Universidad del Norte; volume 11; Pages 45 – 56]. Sokolowski says “There is always a danger that we will separate the inseparable, that we will make the abstractum into a concretum, because in our speech we can talk about one moment without mentioning what it is founded upon” [59. Sokolowski, R. 2000, Introduction to Phenomenology, New York: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0 521667925, Page 24-26].

 

If we start to confuse the abstract for the concrete, we put ourselves in a situation where we start talking about experiences and categories that do not really exist in the daily life for the person who lives that experience [63. Introduction to Giorgi’s Existential Phenomenological Research Method; Alberto De Castro; Psicologia desde el Caribe Universidad del Norte; volume 11; Pages 45 – 56]. A principle discussed by the economist John Maynard Keynes examined the problems which arise around corporate behaviour and the distance between the owner and enterprise:

 

“The divorce between ownership and the real responsibility of management is serious within a country, when, as a result of joint stock enterprise, ownership is broken up among innumerable individuals who buy their interest today and sell it tomorrow and lack altogether both knowledge and responsibility towards what they momentarily own” [93. John Maynard Keynes, “National Self-Sufficiency,” The Yale Review, Vol. 22, no. 4 (June 1933), pp. 755-769].

 

This line of thinking I draw upon to examine the distances placed between the policy and the reality via the creation of bureaucracies. The further the textual expression is moved from the authentic situated expression of the individual, the less representative it is of the complexities which make up the situation, the more objectivised the individual becomes who is subject to the ruling bureaucracy. Real life, sentient, thinking human beings become derivatives of bureaucracies rather than administrative systems being derived from the realities of individual human beings.

 

This abstraction is where the co-researcher is seen as a mere object, the effect of which is impoverishing and dehumanising [63. Introduction to Giorgi’s Existential Phenomenological Research Method; Alberto De Castro; Psicologia desde el Caribe Universidad del Norte; volume 11; Pages 45 – 56]. McCall says “To Husserl, no matter how refined the measurement or how ingenious the experimental techniques employed by empirical psychology, all its efforts are meaningless without a clear grasp of what it is that is being measured and correlated in the first place” [56].

 

The goal of the Existential Phenomenological psychologist is to comprehend human experience as it is actually lived in the daily life and not in an artificial environment [63. Introduction to Giorgi’s Existential Phenomenological Research Method; Alberto De Castro; Psicologia desde el Caribe Universidad del Norte; volume 11; Pages 45 – 56].

 

De-Individuation Through Abstraction

In 1969 Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues developed a landmark study which set the scene for the Stanford Prison Experiment two years later. They created an experiment which tested the degree to which de-individuation – the loss of a person’s sense of individuality and personal responsibility – played a role in antisocial behaviour and violence [78. John M Rector, The Objectification Spectrum; Understanding and Transcending Our Diminishment and Dehumanisation of Others, Oxford University Press, ISBN-13: 978- 0199355419, page 177].

 

They recruited 40 female college students, grouping them into 10 groups of four women. The groups were told that they were to deliver painful shocks to pairs of women under the pretense of a study analyzing creativity under stress. Half were described as “very nice” and half were described as “bitchy” [78. John M Rector, The Objectification Spectrum; Understanding and Transcending Our Diminishment and Dehumanisation of Others, Oxford University Press, ISBN-13: 978- 0199355419, page 177].

 

They were asked to periodically administer painful shocks to two subjects while an experimenter in the next room administered a creativity test to the subjects. Actors played the role of learners being shocked (unbeknownst to the subjects), and no shocks were actually given. One of the key experimental variables was the condition of either anonymity or individuation [78. John M Rector, The Objectification Spectrum; Understanding and Transcending Our Diminishment and Dehumanisation of Others, Oxford University Press, ISBN-13: 978- 0199355419, page 177].

 

The findings of the study suggested that anonymity, a sense that our reputation is not on the line, or that no one knows or cares to know who we are, dramatically reduces the effectiveness of the limits we have on our capacities for immoral behaviour [78. John M Rector, The Objectification Spectrum; Understanding and Transcending Our Diminishment and Dehumanisation of Others, Oxford University Press, ISBN-13: 978- 0199355419, page 177].

 

It’s as if our sense of accountability or concern about personal reputation engages our deeper tendencies to expand our inherent sense of “I am not that” which we feel in reference to others. This makes it easier to engage in immoral acts. This is especially so when either the situation at hand or some institutional influence gives us permission or encouragement to behave immorally [78. John M Rector, The Objectification Spectrum; Understanding and Transcending Our Diminishment and Dehumanisation of Others, Oxford University Press, ISBN-13: 978- 0199355419, page 177].

 

Immoral behaviour becomes much more likely when others are perceived as mere shadows of themselves – as objects, rather than as Subjects with interior depth, possessing both an imminent physical dimension of the body, and a transcendent spiritual dimension of the psyche integrated together as a whole. The psychological process of seeing human beings more as objects than as Subjects, and treating them as accordingly is known as ‘objectification’ [78. John M Rector, The Objectification Spectrum; Understanding and Transcending Our Diminishment and Dehumanisation of Others, Oxford University Press, ISBN-13: 978- 0199355419, page 177].

 

John Rector suggests that Objectification is best understood as a spectrum of misapprehension. When we objectify others, we misapprehend them as being less than they are in their totality. This spectrum ranges from mild to severe and influences us in all parts of our lives where we come to share an interaction or space [78. John M Rector, The Objectification Spectrum; Understanding and Transcending Our Diminishment and Dehumanisation of Others, Oxford University Press, ISBN-13: 978- 0199355419, page 177].

 

At the mild end of the spectrum, objectification is typified by casual indifference, in which individuals experience minimal affective connection between themselves and others, especially those outside their immediate circle of family and closest friends [78. John M Rector, The Objectification Spectrum; Understanding and Transcending Our Diminishment and Dehumanisation of Others, Oxford University Press, ISBN-13: 978- 0199355419, page 177].

 

Derivatization represents the vast midrange of the objectification spectrum and is itself best represented by a sub-spectrum of perceptions, feelings, and attendant behaviour. To derivatize others is to perceive them as being primarily derivative of oneself. Aspects of the other person’s being or inner life are “disregarded, ignored, or under-valued”. Derivatization comes in many guises, from the relatively benign to the sadistically violent [80. Cahill, A. J. (2011) ‘Overcoming Objectification; A Carnal Ethics’ New York: Routledge, ISBN-13: 978-0415811538, Page 32].

 

At the extreme end of the objectification spectrum, dehumanization is the psychological phenomenon of viewing others as being completely devoid of a human essence, to the extent that they are seen not only as less than human, but other to human as well. Like the extreme end of derivatization, dehumanization also tends to occur in times of war and is thought by many experts to be a precursor to genocide [81. John M Rector, The Objectification Spectrum; Understanding and Transcending Our Diminishment and Dehumanisation of Others, Oxford University Press, ISBN-13: 978- 0199355419, page 9 – 10.

 

Dehumanization is a strong term and its use must not be taken lightly – this would be a social injustice in itself. With this in mind it is an equal imperative that we not shy away from examining the triage systems which the needy are filed into, the diagnostic overshadowing which displaces rational critique, the infantilization of adults being held without trial, the life threatening medications which are dispensed, and the life saving opportunities that are withheld. We must have some conduit and mechanism for which to ask ‘what social injustices are we as a society normalizing ?’.

 

The Misapprehension of Human Beings

Demarcation points along the objectification spectrum – casual indifference, derivatization, and dehumanization – while certainly different in terms of intensity and the potential for contributing to destructive acts of violence, are in fact all related phenomena which stem from the same underlying process: the misapprehension of what human beings are in their totality. Objectification represents a perceptual error in which the truth of others is either obscured or not honoured. Instead of seeing others as Subjects – worthy of love, respect, dignity, and reverence – we see them more as physical objects divorced to varying degrees from their interior, spiritual dimension.

 

The results of this process span from trivial to life altering [82. John M Rector, The Objectification Spectrum; Understanding and Transcending Our Diminishment and Dehumanisation of Others, Oxford University Press, ISBN-13: 978- 0199355419, page 21 – 32]. The part of the objectification continuum described as ‘derivatization’, stems from the work of feminist scholar Ann J. Cahill (2011). Her thinking aims to solve some of the long standing problems with objectification’s historical Kantian bias about what it means to be a person (i.e. too much reliance is placed on the domain of ‘the head’ – cognition and intellect – and not enough on the sensate realm of the body).

 

Cahill draws on a perspective informed by the theory of “embodied intersubjectivity,” which positions both the psyche and the body as central to personhood. This is an important point. For Cahill (2011), a correct perspective on personhood acknowledges that all human experiences occur in the context of embodiment. The desire to invalidate this fact has played a substantial role in “many systems of inequality” throughout history.

 

To appreciate that human subjectivity occurs within the context of the body is to acknowledge that “agency does not consist in overcoming the body, but rather is constituted by the body and bodily experiences” [80. Cahill, A. J. (2011) ‘Overcoming Objectification; A Carnal Ethics’ New York: Routledge, ISBN-13: 978-0415811538, Page 32]. On this basis, Cahill proposed the concept of ‘derivatization’ as a way to break free from Kantian understandings of objectification. She explains that: “If ‘objectivity’ means ‘to turn into an object’, then ‘derivatize’ means ‘to turn into a derivative’” She continues:

 

“To derivatize is to portray, render, understand, or approach a being solely or primarily as the reflection, projection, or expression of another being’s identity, desires, fears, etc. The derivatized subject becomes reducible in all relevant ways to the derivatizing subject’s existence – other elements of her being or subjectivity are disregarded, ignored or under-valued. Should the derivatized subject dare to demonstrate aspects of her subjectivity that fall outside the derivatizer’s being… she will be perceived as arrogant, treasonous, and dangerously rebellious” [80. Cahill, A. J. (2011) ‘Overcoming Objectification; A Carnal Ethics’ New York: Routledge, ISBN-13: 978-0415811538, Page 32].

 

Our culture sets up ideal circumstances for the dementalisation of individuals due to lack of qualifications, finance or professional status. People are often judged on their lack of achievement rather than on what they have achieved. The lack of ascription of mental ability and experience leads to potentially derivatising that person.

 

Cahill (2011) asserts that derivatization can function in a variety of contexts and situations. She provides some examples:

“Many forms of work, most notably the kind found in the service industries, involve various manifestations of derivatization. The hostess at a fine restaurant must smile and make pleasant talk while escorting the diners to their table…. This is not a matter of sheer usefulness.. but rather, an indulging of the diner’s desires… When sports fans demand of their heroes not only excellent athletic performance, but also the fulfilment of certain moral standards in their personal life, they are requiring those heroes to embody and represent the fan’s desired ideals (regardless of whether the fans themselves live up to those same ideals)…

 

The sexually derivatized subject is not quite a non-person. She may express desires, emotions, and preferences; she may articulate consent or lack thereof; she may even play a role of alleged dominance in relation to the derivatizer… The ethical problem with such behaviours is that feminine subjectivity and sexuality are constructed as wholly derivative of masculine subjectivity and sexuality. The desires, actions, and choices of derivatized women are… to mirror… the desires of men” [80. Cahill, A. J. (2011) ‘Overcoming Objectification; A Carnal Ethics’ New York: Routledge, ISBN-13: 978-0415811538, Page 32].

 

Lang makes the point that a simplistic psychological process can play a monumental role in the perpetuation of extreme violence: habituation, leading to desensitization and emotional hardening [83. John M Rector, The Objectification Spectrum; Understanding and Transcending Our Diminishment and Dehumanisation of Others, Oxford University Press, ISBN-13: 978- 0199355419, page 41].

 

If this spectrum is an accurate depiction of human nature’s propensity for behaving in an immoral way, then it also makes sense to view our capacities for love, compassion, and perceived interconnectedness with the rest of the world as a continuum representing differing levels of humanized conduct at the opposite end of the spectrum [84. John M Rector, The Objectification Spectrum; Understanding and Transcending Our Diminishment and Dehumanisation of Others, Oxford University Press, ISBN-13: 978- 0199355419, page 226].

 

It is this empathic humanizing capacity for love, compassion and perceived interconnectedness which reveals value in a relationship such as is found in the need/support juncture. Not only is it essential for offsetting the abstracting effects of bureaucracies but also for effectively achieving the remit of a career. It is worth noting in a culture which sets up abstraction as a circumstance for derivatisation, that the support worker is equally prone to being reduced to a role by the clientside and managerial system they work in. Without empathic checks and investment/divestment of agency throughout societal structures, we risk creating matrices where our humanity is subverted to the most primitive individualistic means.

 

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