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SOCIAL POLICIES AND POLICIES OF EMOTIONS IN THE PRESENT PERIPHERAL
REGIME OF ACCUMULATION: THEORETICAL APPROACHES.
Autors: Adrián Scribano, Angélica De Sena & Rebeca Cena
The authors declare that the submitted article is not under review at any other journal and hasn’t
been published yet in English.
Adrián Scribano
Ph.D. in Philosophy, University of Buenos Aires. MA (Master of Arts) in Developmental Science,
ILADES, Santiago, Chile. BA in Political Science, Catholic University of Córdoba. Diploma in
Human Rights from the Human Rights Institute at Complutense University in Madrid, Spain.
Principal Researcher at CONICET // Director of the Centre for Research and Sociological Studies
(CIES), Argentina (estudiosociologicos.com.ar).
[email protected]
Angélica De Sena
PhD Degree in Social Sciences, Master’s Degree in Methodology of Social Research, Bachelor’s
Degree in Sociology. Researcher at Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Sociológicos.
Undergraduate students’ professor at Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata and Universidad de
Buenos Aires and graduate students’ professor at Universidad del Salvador. Contact e-mail:
[email protected]
Rebeca Cena
Social Sciences PhD student, beneficiary of a doctorate scholarship from Consejo Nacional de
Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (National Scientific and Technical Research Council,
CONICET). Member of Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Sociológicos. Bachelor’s Degree in
Sociology and Master’s Degree in Human Rights and Democratization. Professor at Universidad
Nacional de Mar del Plata. Contact e-mail: [email protected]
ABSTRACT
This article aims at making a conceptual analysis of the links between social policies, emotions and
World Images. It tries to frame the theoretical and epistemic plots of subjacent assumptions that
involve (and activate) State interventions on "the social.” The following is the argumentative
strategy that has been chosen: firstly, we will account for the links between social policies and the
capitalist regime of accumulation; secondly, we will explain the proposed theoretical links between
World Image and policies of emotions; thirdly, we will offer some arguments which show the
analytical richness of linking social policies and policies of emotions through the concept of World
Image; fourthly, as an example, we will frame the massiveness of social policies as a World Image
that transmits emotionalities linked to the reproduction of the regime of accumulation. Lastly, as a
conclusion, we ask and warn about some components of social policies which make them stand as
tools for coloniality
KEYWORDS: Social policies, Emotions, World Images, Argentina
INTRODUCTION
In Latin America, 129 million people1 are beneficiaries of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs
(CCT). These State interventions are one of the bridges/mediators for the production of particular
forms of sociabilities, experiences and sensitivities in present peripheral capitalism.
CCT Programs started to be implemented in Latin America, as recommended by the World Bank
and the Inter-American Development Bank, in the mid-90s in the 20th century. The first expressions
1
“Most countries that started CCT programs maintained and substantially expanded them over the period of
analysis. For example, between 2001 and 2010, the number of beneficiaries grew from 22 to 52 million in
Brazil, from 16 to 27 million in Mexico, and from 0.4 to 12 million in Colombia” (Stampini and Tornarolli,
2012: 6).
appeared in Brazil and Mexico: “Bolsa Éscola” (1994) in the former and “Programa de Educación,
Salud y Alimentación Progresa” (1997) in the Mexican case. According to data provided by
Cecchini and Madariaga (2011), if we make a space-time comparison, by 1997 CCT Programs were
present in 3 countries, whereas in 2010 they extended to more than 18. At the same time, the
amounts offered, their reach and geographic extension have increased: in 2010 they reached more
than 25 million Latin American and Caribbean families, covering 19 % of the population and
investing 0.40 % of the region’s GDP.
In general terms, CCT Programs have been defined as State money transfers calculated on the basis
of the number of children under 18 years old and directed to households living in poverty. In return,
there are several conditions required that aim at strengthening what has been called family human
capital.
Although at first these interventions were focalized, at present they have been extended to a massive
number of beneficiaries. In this regard, even though they do not represent universal interventions,
they are a kind of intervention that, due to the characteristics of the social aspect in Latin America,
concentrates an increasing number of people2.
These programs have implied conditionalities subject to, on the one hand, the increase of “abilities”
and “talents” of subjects through formal education and job training and, on the other hand, health
controls related to compliance with vaccination required by the State. The intervention on these
population sectors in denial conditions exceeds what is materialized in the cash transfer and
comprises a series of rules and roles that enable/prevent certain emotional behavior. In this sense,
2
“It is necessary to take into account that these ‘new’ focalizations also lead to a ‘substitution of social
citizenship in the universalist model by a precarious citizenship [which] is mainly related to two processes:
the loss of centrality of work as a social integration mechanism and the implementation of a new pattern of
social policies” (cited in De Sena, 2011: 57).
and this will be the argument of this manuscript, CCT Programs make up one of the basic nodes of
body/emotions management3 .
In addition, all social policies, and in this case CCT Programs, have a certain World Image which,
as a way of classification and division of the world contained in social policies, makes particular
elements of the social aspect come to light. In this sense, if we tried to reconstruct a certain World
Image contained in social policies, we could say which is the aspect recognized by the State as a
problem, which are the causes which resulted in the situation defined as a problem, which are the
offered solutions, who are responsible for dealing with the problem and which are the
accountabilities.
This article aims at making a conceptual analysis of the links between social policies, emotions and
World Images. It tries to frame the theoretical and epistemic plots of subjacent assumptions that
involve (and activate) State interventions on "the social.”
CAPITALISM AND SOCIAL POLICIES
Current regimes of accumulation require certain mechanisms, associated to the social and political
regulation mode, that control each one of the agents’ behavior with the aim of making the regime
long-lasting. From the institutions which materialize, produce and reproduce said mechanisms,
social policies constitute a central aspect. They do not only affect material reproduction processes,
having a direct impact on action possibilities through the distribution of socially available nutrients,
but they also affect the production and reproduction of perceptual schemes that will enable some
but not other social practices. In other words, they affect the way in which actors behave in different
ways. Mainly, enabling/preventing certain energies socially available for action (availability and
unavailability of body energies and nutrients) and through the production and reproduction of a
3
Scribano (2012a).
series of signifiers and classification devices with the ability to impose perception schemes on
subjects in deprived conditions.
All regime of accumulation (Harvey, 2004) is made up by a certain social and political regulation
mode. In order to last in time, it requires a regulation mode that establishes the parameters inside
which the actors “can” wish, yearn for, act, like, etc. In other words, it is about guaranteeing certain
predictability in actors’ behavior, predictability that adjusts to the norms and rules that allow for the
regime’s validity.
Regulation modes go beyond the formal terms the regime can establish and settle in institutions,
religion, habits, socially expected conduct, education and the generation of certain feelings; i.e., the
prevailing ideology asserts its dominant role and pervades all aspects of the lives of men and
women with the aim of guaranteeing unity to the regime of accumulation of each time (Harvey,
2004).
This regime is made up of a set of regularities that ensure certain capitalist accumulation conditions.
A regime of accumulation is understood as "the mode of joint and compatible transformation of the
norms governing production, distribution and use. In other words, a regime of accumulation
permits, during a long time period, adjusting the transformations of production conditions and the
changes in consumption conditions” (Bustelo Gómez, 2003: 147). It has to do with the stabilization
of the relationships between consumption -wage-earners’ reproduction- and capital accumulation
over a long period of time. And it implies the adaptation modes that occur between the
transformation of production conditions and wage-earners’ reproduction possibilities.
The existence, permanence and reproduction of a regime of accumulation persist as long as its
reproduction scheme is coherent. “However, the problem lies in introducing the behavior of all
kinds of individuals […] in some shaping that maintains the regime of accumulation working.
Therefore, there must be “<<a materialization of the regime of accumulation that takes the form of
norms, habits, laws, regulation rules, etc., that ensure the unity of the process, that is to say, the
convenient consistency of individual behavior with regard to the reproduction scheme. This body of
internalized rules and social processes is called regulation mode>>” (Harvey, 2004: 143-144).
The social and political regulation mode “promotes, channels and limits individual behavior,
socializes the heterogeneous behavior of economic agents and conditions the adjustment
mechanisms of markets according to organization rules and principles without which it cannot
work. But this is produced without ever reaching the point of denying the relative autonomy of
State, business and individual strategies or the heterogeneity in the behavior of economic agents
that can be framed inside the same institutional form” (Neffa, 1998: 281).
In this sense, the educational system, the training, the persuasion, the inspiration of certain social
feelings –for instance, work ethics- play a role which is closely related to the formation of dominant
ideologies fostered by the massive media, different branches of the state apparatus (as social
policies), and religious and/or educational institutions. Complementing Harvey’s proposal, late
capitalism societies should also deal with population masses which are not within the formal labor
market and that, if they are working, they do it informally and their income cannot guarantee their
reproduction. They should deal with those sectors that are not able to satisfy their needs, although
they want to, that were part of the labor force but are not anymore and that are part of the
“informal” labor force. Some of the mechanisms or regulation modes of the regime of accumulation
that directly affect these sectors are social policies since they not only allow for the mitigation of
market “flaws” by giving out goods (monetary or in kind) and services to populations to face their
own reproduction, but they also operate as elements which place in agents ways of looking and
thinking about themselves in the world by transmitting certain World images (Scribano, 1997,
1998, 2002, 2004a and 2004b).
WORLD IMAGE AND POLICIES OF EMOTIONS
Every critical reflection about the social aspect implies much more than an immediate
problematization of poverty -or whatever is expressed as a social problem at a particular time-; it
involves the thematization –and significance- of related problems as the explanation for
unemployment, job insecurity, etc. In this sense, “[t]he initial supposition is that every theory can be
analyzed and criticized in different levels […]. Basically, these levels are the substantive theory,
ontological, epistemological, methodological and critical levels. [The importance of the ontological
level lays in the fact that] it is there where the ‘work’ of production and reproduction of world
images can be seen” (Scribano, 2002: 100). These images correspond to structures which "adapt”
facts in a certain way. In other words, they constitute ways of classifying and explaining social
phenomena, their causes, appropriate solutions, the place of agents, etc. which define the ways in
which what is identified as a social problem is and “should” be dealt with.
World Images are closely related in one way or another to daily life; i.e. to the everyday knowledge
that subjects share and which is always at hand to explain the social world. “In this context, world
image will be initially understood –in relation to social science theories- as the set of suppositions
about the existence mode of agents, time, space and their relationship with the social reality that the
theories in question constitute” (Scribano, 2002: 100).
The way in which we conceive and interpret the reality around us always comprises a form of
contact with phenomena and, therefore, the transformation of this reality. In this point, the analysis
of social policies involves an effort to clarify and explicit the different “models” through which said
interventions are sustained. As of the world image that belongs to every intervention, it means
making things happen and take some kind of shape, from some interpretative scheme which is
assumed as representation of the reality that wants to be modified. These perceptual frameworks
make different aspects of this world "come to light.” From this perspective, the denaturing task,
from the analysis of world images of different explanations about the social aspect –social theoriesand of their intervention modes –social policy-, means to identify from which place and under
which suppositions the social aspect is being shaped. This means asking which world we are trying
to represent and intervene in:
“[F]rom world images it is possible to see the assumptions of this visibility and the ‘values’
they involve. It is through the analysis of those images that ‘values’ and ‘subjectivities’ are
transformed into potential ‘analyzable’ elements and, therefore, every theory assumptions
become debatable in a rational manner. The value of each value is related to its framework
of meaning and, once this link is analyzed, it can be turned into an interpretation context of
the reasons that are the basis of interpretation and the visibility context […]. Trying to ask
why these values are worth implies accepting that these values assert themselves and that the
scientific task ends or begins due to its political consequences. What is achieved, in
analytical terms, is very simple: the chance that the will to power is unveiled and that, free
from the garments of rationality, it accepts the ever problematic displacement to struggle in
order to conserve and transform some, but not other, regions of the social world” (Scribano,
2004b: 7).
Analyzing the world images of social policies allows us to understand those structures that bear, in
the form of suppositions, governmental intervention; it allows us to give an account of the
perceptive schemes from where said theory is constructed and, exploring the shaping of these
structures, to have access to the visibility grade they allow or prevent. From this perspective, every
social policy is affected by a particular policy of emotions that will make up the modes in which
actors in denial conditions feel, experience and act in poverty contexts. If, as we have previously
mentioned, social policies occupy a central place in guaranteeing the regime’s reproduction,
policies of emotions let us begin to elucidate some of the regime’s strategies –presented as the most
intimate, individual and subjective- for its reproduction at the expense of a growing number of
populations living in denial conditions and that do not represent a threat for systemic purposes.
Perceptions, sensations and emotions constitute a tripod which allows us to understand where
sensitivities are grounded. Social agents experience the world through their bodies. What we know
about the world is because of and through our bodies. A set of impressions have an impact on
"exchange" ways with the socio-environmental context. The impressions of objects, phenomena,
processes and other agents structure the perceptions subjects accumulate and reproduce. Therefore,
a naturalized mode of organizing the set of impressions obtained by an agent is formed.
This framework of impressions sets up the sensations that agents “obtain” about that which can be
named as internal and external worlds, social, subjective and “natural” world. This shaping consists
of a dialectic tension between impression, perception and the result of these, which gives sensations
a "sense” of surplus. In other words, it locates them closer and further from the aforementioned
dialectics.
Sensations, as result and antecedent of perceptions, give place to emotions which can be seen as the
puzzle which occurs as action and effect of feelings. They are rooted in the states of feeling the
world that hold perceptions associated to socially constructed forms of sensations.
At the same time, organic and social senses also permit mobilizing that which seems unique and
unrepeatable as individual sensations are, and they carry out the "unnoticed work" of the
incorporation of the social that has become emotion.
Consequently, the policy of the bodies, or in other words, the strategies that a society accepts in
order to give response to the social availability of individuals, is a chapter, and not the least
important, of power structuration. These strategies are tied and “strengthened” by the policies of
emotions that tend to regulate the construction of social sensitivity.
Policies of emotions require regulating and turning into bearable the conditions under which order
is produced and reproduced. In this context, we will understand that social bearability mechanisms
are structured around a set of practices that have become body and that are oriented towards a
systematic avoidance of social conflict. Devices of feeling regulation consist of processes of
selection, classification and elaboration of socially determined and distributed perceptions.
Regulation implies tension between senses, perception and feelings that organize the special ways
of “appreciation-in-the-world” that classes and subjects possess. The mechanisms and devices
pointed out are a practical and procedural hinge where emotions, bodies and narrations meet.
The forms of sociability and experience are strained and twisted as if in a moebius strip with the
sensitivities that arise from regulation devices and the aforementioned mechanisms. Sociability
becomes a way to explain the ways in which agents live and coexist while interacting. Experience is
a way to express the senses acquired by being-in-body with others as a result, on the one hand, of
“experiencing” the dialects between individual, social and subjective body; and, on the other hand,
of the logics of appropriation of body and social energies.
The system’s social bearability mechanisms do not act directly or explicitly as “control attempts”,
or “deeply” as focal and punctual persuasion processes. They operate “almost unnoticed” in the
porosity of customs, in the frameworks of common sense, in the construction of sensations that
seem the most “intimate” and “unique” that every individual possesses as a social agent.
Among them, there are two that, from a sociological point of view, acquire importance: fantasies
and social phantoms. Ones are the complete opposite of the others; they both make reference to the
systematic denial of social conflicts. Whereas fantasies occlude conflict, reverse (and establish) the
place of the private as a universal and prevent the subject’s inclusion in the fantasized lands,
phantoms repeat conflict loss, remind of the weight of defeat and decrease the value of the chance
of counteraction before loss and failure. Fantasies and Phantoms never close; they are contingent,
but they always operate, they become practices. This is how “feeling practices” are made up, which
update/embody in concrete processes the set of sensitivities that make the policies of emotions.
WORLD IMAGES, SOCIAL POLICIES AND POLICIES OF EMOTIONS
The design, implementation and assessment of social policies is supported by certain theories that
include certain world images as a set of suppositions/preconceived notions that hold a look on/an
approximation to the subject, distinction resources among agents, ways of relating of subjects to
objects and the time/space understanding horizons of the relationships in question. This implies a
demarcation and a definition of what in a particular time is understood as a social problem. At the
same time, it comprises a definition of the situation that will be dealt with (and which will be left
out or will not be considered as a public problem), which are the subjects recognized as affected by
this problem (and which are not), which are the identified needs and the ways to meet them (and
which needs will not be of public concern), and who are responsible and to be held accountable for
meeting them (and who are free from giving any kind of answer). In this sense, the World Image
held in social policies supposes an appearance of a group of assumptions that set the limits and
range of the social aspect of the time.
The analysis of the world images of social policies allows us to elucidate the socio-historical (and
unnatural) character of not only the previously mentioned problems as public, but also of the state
or private answers generated around the former. A regime of accumulation includes the ways of
managing the links between State and market, where social policies occupy a central place by
reducing the social conflict levels and guaranteeing its reproduction in the long term. Under this
perspective, systemic reproduction is not only guaranteed by goods transferences that decrease
social conflict levels, but also by the production and reproduction of a certain regime of sensitivity
which social policies expect and impart to those sectors under denial conditions. From this point of
view, social policies are part of the production framework of policies of the bodies/emotions,
creating the conditions for the structuration of sociabilities, experiences and sensitivities of those
sectors.
Through this path, there is a set of connections between social policies, policies of the
bodies/emotions, world images, sociabilities, experiences and sensitivities. State interventions in the
social aspect include, in an explicit/implicit way, the set of suppositions of certain "theories" about
social structuration processes. In their design, modes of understanding the State, poverty, the
relationships between social classes, etc. slip in. These modes are involved and re-signified by
practices of management technologies that are applied to the realization of the policies, setting
up/transmitting the world images implied by the theories that “originate” them.
The ways of understanding the world, the classification and the performative establishment of world
division instances and the modes acquired by theories that became body are linked to the production
features of the policies of bodies/emotions. In other words, by creating sociabilities, social policies
also produce experiences and sensitivities in such a way that what is shared unnoticed by
management practices with theory suppositions becomes body. The social aspect that has become
body is knotted and intertwined with the built-in statehood, including in the lives of subjects a
certain experience that comes from the results of the dialectics between state practice and social
practices.
In close relation to the aforementioned, and as metonymic expression of the phenomenon, a strong
link is witnessed: statehood practices are connected to the practices of a society normalized in the
immediate enjoyment through consumption. The explicit intention4 of the economic policies of
current progressive democracies in Latin America is to achieve growth by increasing domestic
consumption where its spreading fulfills a fundamental role. Just for the sake of presenting an
expression of this, in recent increases of the amount of Asignación Universal por Hijo para
4
“[…] In this case, all direct policy beneficiaries highlight the positive influence of AUH (Asignación
Universal por Hijo, Universal Child Allowance) in their lifestyles and in their ways of being at school,
especially as from their consumption growth. If we understand that the appropriation of goods is an action
that integrates and communicates (García Canclini, 1995, 1999), if we think that consumption is an activity
through which we feel we belong, we are part of networks or social groups, it is not possible to dissociate
these practices from citizenship; being a citizen does not only have to do with voting or feeling represented
by a political party, it also has to do with social and cultural practices that develop a sense of belonging and
inclusion (Ministerio de Educación, 2011: 71-72).
Protección Social (Universal Child Allowance for Social Protection)5, state organizations have set
out that:
“These measures represent real steps forward in the aim of achieving the social inclusion of
more Argentinians and, at the same time, they encourage demand, consumption and economic
activity in our country” (ANSES, May, 20136)
“The problem is exactly the opposite: capitalism is consumption and we need to increase
consumption, not adjust it. If there is no consumption, there will be no economic growth, there
will be no development” (Speeches from Argentina’s Presidency7)
Economic policies are “virtuously” coordinated with a set of social policies, in particular with the
CCT Programs mentioned before, in such a way that in the last decade millions of Latin Americans
have been incorporated, through state assistance, into consumption.
This is one of the ways in which theories, through the world images they include, have had an
impact upon sociabilities and experiences. Consumption has become a fundamental link between
State and citizens. The strong link between economic policy, social policy and market becomes a
restructuring factor of sociabilities and creates the conditions for immediate enjoyment of and due
to consumption to become experience. Policies of emotions, since they hold feeling practices, are
affected/penetrated by the consequences of dialectics that updates in world images included in the
social policies and sensitivities constructed by the above-mentioned policies of emotions. The
5
Implemented by Decreto de Necesidad y Urgencia (Decree of Need and Urgency) 1602/09, at the end of
2009.
6
Available
at:
http://www.prensa.argentina.ar/2013/05/31/41229-la-anses-paga-desde-junio-las-
asignaciones-con-aumento.php
7
Available
at:
http://www.presidencia.gov.ar/discursos/25918-almuerzo-en-el-council-de-las-americas-
palabras-de-la-presidenta-de-la-nacion
contradictions that exist between citizen, consumer and right bearer become body in millions of
people8 and, in this instance, different sociability, experience and sensitivity forms are connected.
Social policies create special sociabilities from world images. These are supported by and involve
certain theories that, from the practices they generate, open up one of the possibility conditions for
the market consumption experience to join/articulate with the one proposed by the State. In this
way, consumption sensitivities are proposed/created, at the same time and concomitantly, by the
State and the market. The regime of accumulation has succeeded, it has been efficient in creating
the conditions for capital reproduction.
In what follows, we take the problem of the universal/focalized as a possible example of the links
between social policies and world images.
¿UNIVERSAL OR FOCALIZED? ¿AN UNSETTLED DISPUTE? MASSIVENESS,
WORLD IMAGE AND SENSITIVITIES
Social policy became a specialized field of university education along with the formation of a field
of study and research on this topic. Both processes are understood in the context of the
extraordinary socio-political and institutional transformation of capitalist societies which took place
as from the mid-70s and of which the “Welfare State” is a basic part, but not the only social policy.
The problem it deals with is social reproduction, in societies troubled because of, on the one hand,
freedom and formal equality of individuals and, on the other hand, the “real” life conditions
imposed by the commodification of the labor force which is permanently recreating the dependence
and subordination of people due to and under several ways.
8
See about an approach to rights, Pautassi (2010a).
In this context, we think it is important to take up again some of the central ideas of the debate
about focalized social policies as an example of the development of a certain world image when
they become massive.
During the 80s the sphere of competence of social policies as subsidiaries in matters of poverty was
set up, consolidating the substitution of the idea of universality by the idea of focalization, leaving
aside the focus on the causes and turning to the symptoms; this tendency was legitimated the
following decade (Sojo, 2007). In this way, we witness the chance to define social policies as a
combination between public and private, where the State is in charge of “fighting”9 against poverty
and the individual is alone and responsible in the market and with the resulting contempt for the
principle of financing solidarity. “From there it can be established an analogy with the focalization
reductionist proposals advocated from the 1980s and which from the point of view of poverty stated
a similar paradigm in terms of social policies” (Sojo, 2003:134).
In this way, during the 80s, there was a stronger emphasis on the proposals in favor of “focalizing”
or “focusing” social expenditure in poor populations, in comparison to the “universality”, and
generating the dilemma of universal or focalized policies. The decision means a change in
understanding and implies at least economic and political elements which will determine the setting
up and consolidation of a certain social structure, they make society (Adelantado et. al, 2006).
If poverty is considered as an element that comes with the concentration of wealth, lack of skills,
lack of physical capital and of complementary assets in a population sector, then action must be
taken on employment and income distribution, and the State should reassign public investment with
the aim of allowing the ”poor” to have access to assets. This means asset redistribution policies in
9
Scribano (2008) states that in the different ways of labeling poverty, the subject is always seen from outside
as lacking or incomplete and he establishes three metaphors used in the representation and intervention of
poverty: a) the military, whose actions refer to combat; b) sickness, whose actions refer to removing and
mitigating, and c) as natural phenomenon, which should be reached or covered.
factor markets, personal income taxes and “wealth” taxes, supply of goods for public consumption,
goods market and intervention in technological development. In relation to public services, the poor
should get better participation and not be discriminated against in policy formulation; they should
have access to services and, therefore, be able to increase their productivity. In this way,
universality essentially implies that the State should really guarantee basic rights, distributing the
available resources among all citizens, but this does not preclude the recovery, by way of taxes, of
funds which come from those who have the highest incomes.
However, focalization essentially comes from multilateral credit organisms, mainly the World
Bank, which state that in order to reduce poverty it is necessary to design well-focalized programs
(Sojo, 1990, 2003, 2007, Vargas s/f). The World Bank (Banco Mundial, 1988a: 13, cited in Sojo
1990) proposes focusing on vulnerable sectors and generalizing the focalization of public
expenditure. To do this, every country should a) contribute to solve the State’s tax crisis through
social policies, b) concentrate social expenditure in the most vulnerable population groups through
“focalization” policies, c) limit the State’s action in social policy matters, d) abandon universal
policies, and e) relatively privatize social policies. “The World Bank states that universality
generates inequality and proposes, in some occasions, privatizing services or modifying public
services fees, making them different in order to favor groups considered to be top priority. The
proposal is generally associated to a limitation in State’s actions directed to groups considered top
priority and with preference for a private system that offers services to sectors with capacity to pay
and even vulnerable groups” (Sojo, 1990: 189).
In this perspective, in a world with limited resources, focalizing appears as the most attractive
alternative for focusing benefits on those segments of the population “which need it the most.” The
main idea refers to selectivity of social expenditure taking into account that resource concentration
increases the efficiency of transfers destined to fight poverty. Focalization also refers to assets as
determining factors of income; they are an objective group, with specific characteristics and/or
attributes, which is also internally homogeneous in relation to the effect that a certain set of political
instruments can have on it. In this way, the concept does not focus on the causes, but on the
symptoms of poverty. Then, the efficiency argument is convincing for the critics of universal
policies. It is about the expression of a society that recognizes those with less chances and worries
about equity.
This perspective can produce a strong restructuration and redefinition in the sphere of social rights
through normative development of a “remercantilising” nature. This aims at wiping out universal
policies and setting up those focalized in groups, social strips and segments excluded from labor
markets which substitute social and economic rights for welfare-based support measures. In this
way, the “corporatization” and private supply of welfare services have been integrated in the
economic circle in a way that many social rights are becoming merchandise (Adelantado et. al.,
2006). There is a change in meaning: physical assets are now marginal and human capital is
considered as the minimum point for need satisfaction.
Focalized policies are object of criticism in the following aspects:

The technocratic increase and administrative and information costs;

The necessary definition and redefinition of the poverty line;

The chance to generate new sources of poverty from “unserved” intermediate population (not
necessarily poor according to statistical definitions);

They threaten equity goals by serving a particular population, since people require attention in
multiple situations (education, health, food, etc.), and hindering the development of social
investment;

Selectivity is not perfect since the information about eligible beneficiaries is never complete;

“They generated a certain privatization of social services and a welfare philosophy; this
generated stable and permanent conditions for the dualization of society among those who can
access market mechanisms and those who will always have to be “assisted” by the State
(Garretón, 1999: 502);

They devised the figure of the poor as “beneficiary”, generating a cultural change (Garretón,
1999);

They fragment communities and erode social ties since there is a difference between those who
receive/have access to a particular program or social plan and those who do not;

Social assistance becomes a gift, something which is given under the conditions set up by a
“giver” who is the one who decides what, when and how, inviting those defined as the poor to
accept by limiting their own rights;

They stand in the way of democracies because they encourage political clientelism since
stockpiling of state resources by political parties where client-based ties are predominant are
basic for the reproduction of inequality (Adelantado et. al., 2006);

They require someone to act as a mediator, to determine who deserves or not a certain program,
to certify –in some way- that someone has the necessary attributes to deserve this state
intervention. Therefore, inequality is not just social, but also political (Adelantado et. al., 2006).
Sojo states that the different selectivity criteria should be able to “determine if with the social
policies adopted the aim is to eradicate poverty or that some kind of poverty prevails fighting the
one that exceeds it” (1990: 197).
During the 90s, social policies in Latin America and Argentina underwent a transformation in their
three operation modes: labor, social security and welfare. In relation to the first one, the State leaves
aside its role as guardian and regulator of contractual relationships10; as to social security policies, it
opted for the privatization of employment injuries insurance and a great deal of the welfare system.
10
Due to a combination of a general system deregulation, the development of new flexible hiring forms and
emergency interventions in the shape of active employment policies, among others.
And in the specific field of welfare policies, referred to as money or goods transfers to society
sectors which lack the possibility of meeting their needs through the labor market, there has been a
double process of decentralization and focalization. In this way, in the last three decades state
functions have been redefined and a new perspective on social policies has been consolidated which
is based on destined budget reduction; a come back to the old administrative decentralization; the
focalization of welfare programs in comparison to the universality of the Welfare State and a
constant appeal to civil society (Halperin et. al., 2008).
In the new century the idea of comprehensive social policies starts gaining force 11 (Arroyo, 2006a;
2006b; Clemente 2005 and 2006, Documentos Institucionales MDS, among others), casting a
shadow over the discussion about universality or focalization. Arroyo (2006) emphasizes that an
innovation in the implementation of Plan Manos a la Obra (“Off to Work Plan”) refers to its
“massiveness” as the opposite of isolated and small initiatives, accounting for a “sustained and
massive [management] with resource transfers for those who are outside the formal financial system
and who have associative or unassociative production capacities” (Arroyo, 2006: 20).
Rozenwurcel and Vázquez declare that “in 1996 the first massive income transfer program was
created: Plan Trabajar (“Working Plan”). Its aim was to provide employment to unemployed
people who were not covered by unemployment insurance. The program provided a nonremunerative amount of AR$ 200 for a six month period. Also, in 2000, Plan de Emergencia
Laboral (“Work Emergency Plan”) was created, focused on a group of provinces with the aim of
training and employing workers with employability problems” (2008: 253); then after the
2001/2002 crisis, Plan Jefes y Jefas de Hogar Desocupados (“Program for Unemployed Male and
Female Heads of Households”, PJyJHD) became one of the emblematic programs with respect to
11
It is to be noted that the Director-General of the International Labor Organization (ILO), Juan Somavía,
promoted comprehensive social policies in Latin America beyond the satisfaction that macroeconomic data
can cause. 15/12/2010. http://www.primicias.com.do
massiveness, reaching 2 million beneficiaries according to official data (Documento Institucional
MDS 2004, 2010). It is necessary to take into account that one of its most remarkable points is the
“massive” introduction of a series of beneficiaries to social programs.
In this way, there is a new meaning of “massive” as that “for many”, an adjective that means “very
large” and which hides that it is not for everyone. The new concept keeps at bay the debate about
focalization or universality, leaving a clear evidence of the need to “serve the largest number of
people.”
In this context, it is possible to see how “the massive” is part of a policy of emotions and it
considers the construction of a World Image as a basic component of the cognitive-emotional
suppositions of the theoretical horizons and of the intervention of the present social policies, at least
in Argentina.
In other words, massiveness implies the assumption of a normalized society through
biological/environmental “adjustments” of agents thought as people excluded from “development”
who have to mend the defects of the market and the State through consumption. Massiveness
implies that quantity is a social influence that reconstructs the risks of an environment likely to be
managed with increasing interventions leaving “coeteris paribus” the deep qualitative modifications
of the expulsion spheres created by capitalist expansion.
In the same direction, massive interventions imply the perspective of a subject that, being “outside
the system”, becomes an individual whose passivity is taken for granted in the management of
personal and bank transfers.
The main supposition of a massive look on social policies is the acritical acceptance that societies
act in a constantly expanding and differentiating time/space understood as “development.”
In this framework, adaptation and consumption are two privileged resources of massiveness for
action coordination and subject differentiation, giving a fundamental character to subjectivity
configuration.
These four components of the World Image of massiveness are fed and close in such a way that it is
impossible to think about them without their mutual interactions.
According to what we have stated so far, there is a set of questions about which is the status of
social policies in the current capitalism situation. We will deal with that in the following section.
COLONIALITY OF SOCIAL POLICIES
Over the development of this paper, we have seen that the regime of accumulation requires social
policies to last in time. Firstly, because social policies reduce social conflict levels associated to
people who live in denial conditions. Secondly, because they allow for their reproduction in normal
conditions. Therefore, they are a key aspect of present peripheral capitalisms.
As to their role in reducing social conflict, they operate through at least two mechanisms. One of
them is the increase, via a monetary injection, in the consumption level of beneficiaries of, for
example, what has been known as conditional cash transfer programs. The other implies an
alteration of the ways in which subjects perceive the world around them. Here is where the notion
of World Image acquires all its centrality, by making up and being made up by the perception and
world division schemes that make some aspects come to light and others hide.
This World Image contained in social policies works as a perceptual scheme, which enables some
and not other emotional behaviors. The sociology of the body and emotions contributes to the field
of analysis of social policies by allowing the reconstruction of the regime of sensitivity that a
governmental intervention involves by establishing not only which needs will be recognized, but
also which demands will be legitimated, which will be the solutions, who will be responsible and
which will be the accountabilities.
We have also analyzed the particular place of social policies as attempts to mend the defects
produced by inequality, i.e. the “policies” oriented to filling the cracks caused by expropriation, and
how the “revitalizing" of “the expelled” through consumption are the solidary opposites of the
cultural structure of a religion12 that makes merchandise/subject mimesis the main link of a political
economy of morals.
We have also seen how the massiveness of governmental interventions on populations, sustained in
world images, inhabit/create a set of sociabilities and experiences linked to individuals who have to
“mend” the defects of the market and the State through consumption, based on a subject which, by
definition, is considered “passive.”
In relation to the link between social policies, theories and coloniality, there are at least three
characteristics or problems that show up:
a. World images of theories, by colonizing the layout of social policies, imply the use of a
Eurocentric position as criterion for the elaboration of subjectivities and social relations.
b. The current state of regimes of accumulation in the Global South, the compensation and
conflict-avoidance mechanisms that social policies imply generate feeling practices in which
resignation in created as an interaction criterion between State and civil society in a regime
of wait as a civic virtue.
c. The links between sociability, experience and sensitivity that occur in the relationship
between massive social policies and policies of emotions are adapted to the size of a world
of consumption that, in short, implies the triumph of capital reproduction at a global level.
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