Internalising discourses of blame: Voices from the
field...
This
paper discusses how a discourse of parental blame becomes intertwined with
current roll-backs of state support and services in two of Ireland’s most
socially marginalised and economically disadvantaged communities. In the course
of fieldwork conducted to explore narratives of community safety, we were
struck by the unprompted emergence of a divisive belief that community problems
could be primarily traced to ‘bad parents’ and ‘bad parenting’. This was
expressed by diverse members of the communities involved as well as by representatives
of state agencies and community workers.
This
willingness to position people and parents living in extremely challenging
conditions as being responsible for the creation, maintenance and continuance
of these conditions is deeply problematic. Here we demonstrate the way in which
this internalisation of a discourse of blame works to absolve the state of all
responsibility for the conditions in which marginalised communities are forced
to live. We discuss the way in which it legitimises current and future cutbacks
by portraying such communities as irresponsible and as the creators of their
own problems; how it distorts and distracts discussion away from necessary and
critical questioning of state accountability by promoting a reductive,
individualised understanding of what are complex, collective responsibilities;
and, how it encourages people to blame each other for local problems,
intensifying and deepening community divides and increasing willingness to
allow punitive measures to be taken against ‘bad parents’. The internalising of
discourses of blame operates to the benefit of the state, where ‘bad’ parents
are understood to be ‘undeserving’ citizens, and where those who benefit least
from a society based on the tenets of neoliberalism are further disenfranchised
beneath the cover of a discourse of community and parental empowerment.
Finally,
we argue that the ability of the state to cut back social funding and to roll
back on previous commitments depends, in a large part, on the willingness of the
wider community to believe that responsibility for long term social and
economic marginalisation and associated problems rests, not with the state, but
with ‘bad’ and ‘undeserving’ citizens (Adair, 2005; Edelman, 1998: Lens, 2002;
Welsh & Parsons 2006). Promoting that willingness is achieved through
continual media and public sphere portrayals of the poor, and particularly of
working class parents, as dangerously and overly fertile (Tyler, 2008), as
non-contributors to prosperity and as over contributors to decline (Skeggs
2000:94; Renvall & Vehkalahti, 2002; Hayward & Yar, 2006: Law, 2006;
Levitas, 2003).