Social Suffering in the Neoliberal Age: Classificatory Logic and Systems of Governance: Book of Abstracts

This symposium examines neoliberal systems of governance and its daily practices of managing, regulating and subordinating individuals, peoples and communities. While it is well established within the international and national research that neoliberal systems of population management target the poor, the marginalised and the stigmatised, there has been a comparatively smaller body of research examining its interlocking practices for those who occupy the fringes or margins of multiple disadvantage. In Australia and other Anglophone countries, research is beginning to attend to people defined as homeless, disabled, and unemployed – and as often occupying more than one of these categories. Yet, to date, there has been little critical examination of the ways in which these ‘identity categories’ intersect, interplay, overlap; governed at distinct policy crossroads in the social security system (for example, some Indigenous Australians are simultaneously governed by disability, income management and the Community Development Programme). Increasingly, and precisely through such classificatory procedures themselves, such persons emerge as a sub-class within the general logic of neoliberal classification regimes. This two-day symposium aims to bring together, for the first time in Australia, divergent research, scholarship and narratives that have been critically engaging in this area. The national symposium provides a unique opportunity to work across disciplinary and categorical boundaries, and examine research narratives in collaboration with community members. Symposium website: https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/ics/events/social_suffering_in_the_neoliberal_age_classificatory_logic_and_systems_of_governance