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Critical Social Policy

http://csp.sagepub.com/content/28/4/438The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/0261018308095279

2008 28: 438Critical Social PolicyLiz Frost and Paul Hoggett

Human agency and social suffering

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438

Critical Social Policy Ltd2008 0261 0183 97 Vol. 28(4): 438 460; 095279SAGE PUBLICATIONS, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC

10.1177/0261018308095279

L I Z F R O S T & P A U L H O G G E T T

University of the West of England

Human agency and social suffering

Abstract

In this paper the authors are primarily exploring the notion of social

suffering within a psychosocial paradigm. A brief outline of Bourdieus

concept of social suffering, and a similarly concise explication of the

psychosocial subject as contemporarily theorized are given. The central

section of the paper looks at some understandings of social suffering that

are experienced internally as well as within structural inequalities and

power relations. The concept of hurt is considered, offering the interna-

lized injuries of class as an example. Loss is then examined in relation to

the severing of, for example, communities and the losses of social recog-

nition and internal esteem. The complex concept of double suffering, in

which hurt accrues more hurt and is re-experienced, is then discussed.

The welfare subject of contemporary policy and practice is, finally, briefly

revisited.

Key words: Bourdieu, double suffering, hurt, loss, recognition

Introduction

Enlightenment liberalism bequeathed a particular view of a rationaland autonomous human subject from which both traditional socialpolicy and progressive alternatives drew. The aim of this paper is tochallenge this model by placing emotional life at the heart of socialpolicy and welfare practice whilst retaining a critical perspective onissues of power. In the UK this emerging approach is termed psy-chosocial (Clarke, 2006; Frosh, 2003). We also propose to use hereBourdieus (1999) concept of social suffering to undertake a psychoso-

cial analysis of the welfare subject.Pierre Bourdieus conceptualization of social suffering draws atten-

tion to social misery: not just the unequal distribution of material goodsin society, as welfare policy has tended to emphasize, but also peoples

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F R O S T & H O G G E T T S O C I A L S U F F E R I N G 4 3 9

lived experience of domination and repression, including feelings humiliation, anger, despair, resentment that may accompany, forexample poverty, class or race. In this paper the notion of suffering

denotes the intermeshed components of thinking, feeling, responding,acting. We are also concerned with suffering as both a reflexive andnon-reflexive phenomenon: as something which at times can be thoughtabout, critically and creatively, and at times is embodied, enacted orprojected precisely because it cannot be thought about.

First we will briefly outline the post-liberal subject of welfare thepsychosocial position from which we are working here. Then the paperconsiders the central theme of the relationship between psychosocial

understandings of subjectivity, the non-unitary self and the implica-tions for human agency. Next, through a discussion of hurt, we willconsider how psychosocial models of suffering provide a framework forunderstanding the experience of welfare subjects and how their agency isexpressed. We then consider the notion of loss, using examples of loss ofrecognition in ageing and gendered losses. Finally the notion of doublesuffering and its manifestation as enactment, embodiment and projec-tion is discussed, with some thoughts also on loneliness and foreclosure.

A post-liberal conception of the human subject

The notion of the liberal subject as addressed by much welfare policy iswell known and needs scant reiteration here. Very briefly we are usingthis term to mean a person with autonomy, a unified consistent coherentidentity, rationality and agency. Against this version of humanity, the

welfare subject is invariably construed within a deficit model, as lack-ing these enlightenment traits: as dependent, unpredictable, unable toact in their own best interests, lacking agency. However Anna Yeatman(2007) and others have recently argued that a post-liberal subject isnow emerging. Drawing on feminism and non-positivist approachesto knowing about human relations, this perspective emphasizes relatio-nality not autonomy and insists that reason, passion and embodimentare integrally related not in opposition (Ahmed, 2004; Clarke, Hoggett

and Thompson, 2006; Emirbayer and Goldberg, 2004).Both the new social movements and psychoanalysis offer a fun-damental critique of the human subject of classical liberalism. Cen-tral to this is an alternative vision of the subject as a unique centre of



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440 C R I T I C A L S O C I A L P O L I C Y 2 8 ( 4 )

subjective experience. Both perspectives are concerned with forms ofhuman suffering, as a consequence either of the exigencies of humanrelationships or of oppression. Within this psychosocial paradigm the

subject can be understood as ambivalent and emotionally driven, exist-ing outside (but defined within) processes of language (Frost, 2008).Here the psychosocial subject is being theorized psychoanalytically aspossessing an unconscious dimension of subjectivity. Equally impor-tantly the subject here is a social subject in a world of power relationsand status hierarchies: a social subject with agency, though not neces-sarily in a position to exercise this reflexively.

Most importantly to the whole concept, though, is that the psycho

and social elements are not two parallel paradigms, but represent awhole epistemological shift into theorizing the passionately rationalsubject, one which is saturated by, impacting on and impacted by itssocial world. As Wendy Hollway and Tony Jefferson describe:

Subjects whose inner worlds cannot be understood without knowledge

of their experiences in the world, and whose experiences of the world

cannot be understood without knowledge of the way in which their

inner worlds allow them to experience the outer world. (Hollway andJefferson, 2000: 4)

This, then, captures the notion of the post-liberal, the psychosocialsubject as currently emerging in social science theory. It is this welfaresubject with whom this paper is concerned. Social suffering lies at theheart of this subjective experience, the lived experience of the socialdamage inflicted in late capitalist societies on the least powerful and the

intra-psychic and relational wounds that result. In other words, bothinner worlds of psychic suffering and outer worlds of social structuraloppression are constitutive of such subjects,their capacity for agency,and the forms of agency that are possible.

Social suffering

Traditionally, social policy has understood the well-being of citizensin terms of the distribution of material goods and services rather thanin terms of the lived experience of domination and exclusion and thefeelings this produces. Bourdieu uses the concept of social suffering



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to draw attention to this. As he says, using material poverty as thesole measure of all suffering keeps us from seeing and understanding awhole side of the suffering characteristic of the social order (Bourdieu,

1999: 4). In other words, social suffering draws attention to the livedexperience of inhabiting social structures of oppression: and the painthat arises from this.

Social suffering draws attention to what those without powerendure: to abjection, and to the nature of the self as object (Hoggett,2001). In societies like Britain and the United States, where it has beenargued that globalization requires flexibilization, the consequences ofthe neo-liberal belief that there is no such thing as society are being

experienced. Trade unions appear to be rendered impotent and tradi-tional communities fragmented, and social inequalities increase as asuper-rich prosper in the absence of government intervention. The kindof collective agency that was possible to those lacking economic andcultural capital even twenty years ago rent strikes, consumer boycotts,industrial action now seems a thing of the past. Furthermore the self-organization of minority groups has been enlisted into a new politicsof particularism leading to intergroup rivalry rather than solidarity.

In these circumstances second order agency (Hoggett, 2001), that isagency which brings about a change of pattern in the life of an indi-vidual or group, becomes increasingly difficult to achieve, hence theinappropriateness of the rhetorics of empowerment and choice. Thisis not to say that the welfare citizen is without agency, but that thisagency is invariably primarily about coping and surviving.

The stress and coping model

One source of evidence of the relation between social inequality andsocial suffering lies in the vast body of research literature which hasbeen influenced by the stress and coping paradigm originating in thework of Leonard Pearlin and his colleagues in the USA (Pearlin et al.,1981). This looks at the incidence of personal stress in relation to indi-cators such as social class, ethnicity, and so on, and individual capacityto cope (to exercise some form of first order agency and/or control)in the face of such stresses. Most of this literature uses quantitative

methodology and a positivist epistemology in which, for example, adependent variable (e.g. the incidence of depression) is understood interms of the presence/absence of independent variables (perhaps socio-economic status) and mediating variables (e.g. social support) (Turner



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and Lloyd, 1999). TheJournal of Health and Social Behaviourhas featuredthis research for over twenty years now and, as discussed later, the evi-dence of a clear positive relation between mental health morbidity in

children and adults and indicators such as poverty and ethnicity is over-whelming.

This research has also made progress in revealing the factors whichmediate the impact of inequality, often construed as coping resources(personal and social) which contribute to resilience. Resilience clearlyinvolves agency (as a refusal to accept ones fate) but the action thataccompanies resilience is often primarily internal rather than external,for example, the refusal of self-pity.

However given its epistemological and methodological approach,little of the stress and coping research provides insights into the actualsubjective experiences and lived lives of those concerned. Moreover,by neglecting the personal meanings through which individuals makesense of such things as close relationships or personal control, formsof cultural bias may well creep into the resulting analyses wherebysuch things as these become self-evidently good (Williams and Popay,1999). Nevertheless the stress and coping literature provides irrefut-

able evidence of the massive psychical effects of social injustice.

The psychical effects of social injustice

As we have noted, abjection concerns being done to. It is importantto remember that in unequal societies some are done to more thanothers. Our hypothesis is that social suffering refers to the hurt andloss accompanying the abjection that is a consequence of the continuedexistence of domination in democratic societies. Because the exercise of

power over others appears natural and legitimate, the hurt that pro-duces shame and humiliation and the losses that lead to grief becomedetached from the social relations which generate them. The sufferingthat then results becomes individualized and internalized built intosubjectivity. Secondary damage is experienced when the defences anindividual deploys to cope with hurt and loss have destructive conse-quences for self and othersand therefore further separates the personfrom their sense of relatedness/belonging to the group. This (artificially,

here) staged process (in reality inchoate, multiple, multidirectional) isdiscussed below.

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Hurt

The hidden injuries of class

The positioning of classed subjects in society has both discursive andpre-discursive (i.e. affective) dimensions. It influences what peoplethinkandfeel about self and others. The strong recent emphasis on thediscursive dimension of subject positions has drawn attention awayfrom how class is also experienced in visceral, affective and embodiedterms.

These pre-discursive anchorings of class were touched upon by

Richard Sennett and James Cobb in their groundbreaking Hidden Inju-ries of Class (Sennett and Cobb, 1993). The search for respect and thedamage done to self-esteem by the withholding of recognition wererecurring themes of the working class men in their study. A grow-ing body of recent research does draw attention to the affective dimen-sions of class. Beverly Skeggs (1997) study of working class womenreveals the connections between the absence of respect and the pursuitand subversion of respectability. Diane Reay (2005) notes the every-day humiliations experienced by working class children, leaving themfeeling dumb and stupid. Similarly, a research project in the currentEconomic and Social Research Council Identities and Social Actionprogramme explores the dynamics of shame and pride on a workingclass housing estate (Rogaly and Taylor, 2007).Class and its hurts arehighly complex and fantasized spaces. Theorists suggest that to under-stand class you have to understand patterns of fantasy and defence, hopeand longing in other words what people longed to be and guardedagainst being (Walkerdine et al., 2001: 16).

Within post-industrial, post-collective, consumer capitalism therealization of the distance between actual experience and the popu-lar delusion that there is no class, that with sufficient determinationanybody can be anything, is painful to bear. The reality of class andpovertys cruel limitations on, for example, educational attainment,university entrance, job opportunities, and a respected and comfort-able life are thus masked. Not making it is perceived as ones ownfailure in todays culture one becomes a loser.

The hidden injuries of race

The affective dimension of racial positioning was also obscured by a pur-ely discursive understanding. The psychoanalytic concept of projective



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identification focuses on that which is put into those abjected to suchdiscourses. It describes the process by which the other is coerced intotaking in that which is disavowed in self. To cite Franz Fanon, I was

battered down with tom-toms, cannibalism, intellectual deficiency,fetishism, racial defects, slave ships (Fanon, 1968: 112). As SimonClarke (2003) notes, it is not just that self projects a feared or undesirablequality into another but the other is led to identify with this quality inthemselves. Charles Taylor speaks of this in terms of the internalizationof misrecognition, a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false,distorted and reduced mode of being (Taylor, 1995: 225).

For Lynne Layton (2006) this intersubjective process splits human

capacities into dichotomously defined attributes which are then ascribedto one or another of race, class and gender: the desirable attributes tothe culturally dominant group men are rational and independent,women emotional and dependent, etc. The massive over-representationof young African Caribbean men in the most custodial and oppressiveparts of the mental health system can be related to the ascriptions ofnon-rational, out of control, violent and threatening (discourses ofyouth and of black men ageism and racism). More frequently com-

pulsorily, rather than voluntarily, admitted to hospital and secure units,administered excessive use of major tranquillizers, and so on the mostcoercive, and dehumanizing extremes of this system are the end resultof being the constructed black other of racist projections of the public,the police, magistrates and mental health staff (Cope, 1989; Fernandoet al., 1998; Mohan et al., 1997; Nazroo, 1997).

Zizek (1993) draws attention to a further dimension of these affec-tive dynamics when arguing that the object of racial or ethnic hatred is

construed by the perpetrator as having deprived him of his satisfaction,of having stolen the possibility of his own enjoyment. Adapting Zizeksideas to the area of social policy we can see how the racialized other isthen positioned as the source of injustice and an object of grievance(theyve taken our jobs, our schools, our homes . . .), a kind of favouredchild towards whom the state is seen as acting unfairly.

Hurt: Sociological accounts

Symbolic interactionism, from Irving Goffman to Anthony Giddens,has theorized the subjective experience of social hurt, in terms of stigma(Goffman, 1968) and shame (Giddens, 1991). Goffman, for example,whose notion of social identity is always embodied and visual, describes



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the social hurt of stigma thus: the experience of the individual whocannot produce the normal social identity required, and is aware thatthey do not come up to standard, is that of being discredited, of a

personal failure to pass. Because the opinion formed by those makingjudgements does not stop at presentation, but makes moral judgementsand imputes certain characteristics, the discrediting of the personimpinges on the whole identity. As Goffman points out the stigmatizedindividual shares the same belief system as the rest of their culture sothen the standards incorporated from the rest of society equip him tobe alive to what others see as his failing, inevitably causing him to agreethat he inevitably does fall short of what he really ought to be . . . shame

becomes a central possibility . . . (Goffman, 1968: 18). Because thatsense of inadequacy is internalized within the individuals own meaningsystem shame is experienced privately, personally and as all embracing.The individual lives the sense that they no longer fit the group theyfall short of and are excluded from this possibility. Shame, then, equalsserious identity damage with ramifications for various aspects of self-hood. Similarly to Goffman, for Giddens the self is embodied and thebody is the mechanism and conduit through which social constructs are

made personal and personal constructs, social. Shame is concern withthe overall tissue of self-identity; concern about the body in relationto the mechanisms of self-identity, and crucially feeling that one isinadequate for a respected or loved other . . . trust [is] based on beingknown to the other where self-revelation does not incur anxieties overexposure (Giddens, 1991: 67). This connects also to Honneths (1995)work, discussed later, on recognition, as it compromises the possibili-ties of recognition where someone cannot show or trust exposure. The

co-authors research on embodiment and identity with young womenfound this painfully illustrated. For example a young woman describedher appearance thus:

I feel like it is something I worry about, that people can always hurt me

with, if you have an experience like that [being called ugly] it is some-

thing you will never forget, and it is always there, that somebody is going

to say something like that to you, and it is, it is just so humiliating. (A

quoted in Frost, 2001: 158)

This is the individually experienced hurt of being called ugly theshame and pain of it, in a society in which contemporary youngwomen are positioned by the visual imperatives of consumer capitalism



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(Frost, 2003). Gender and youth are the dimensions of structuraloppression but the broader context, of individualization and consume-rism, renders damage to all contemporary young people. Developing

identity is reduced to adopting market categories shopping for sub-jectivities as it is conceptualized (Langman, 1992): fragile, competi-tive, market-led subjectivities which cannot replace traditional groupaffiliations and collective identifications of, for example, class andwhich connect to poor mental health and high stress levels in the young(Furlong and Cartmel, 1997).

Hurt internalized

Sociological accounts of stigma and shame draw attention to social rela-tions which reproduce psychic injuries but they do not in themselvesenable us to grasp how the subject is constituted by these experiences.A psychosocial approach focuses on the relationship between individualbiographies and social processes and is therefore concerned with themechanisms by which social relations become internalized. This is acomplex issue and one we have begun to tackle in some recent research(Hoggett et al., 2006a). This brief extract from an interview with a work-ing class woman illustrates the way in which the psychic injuries of class,mediated through the family, became constitutive of her subjectivity.

My dad was, he was an odd mixture of kind of Italian macho and being

completely cowed by the world as well. He knew his place and he accepted

his place and would never argue his place. And that was a real tragedy

for me, I think, looking back on it, that he was kept firmly where he was

because he believed in what he was taught he was. Whereas my mums

attitude was completely different. Its interesting, my mum was a wait-

ress for years and years, and my dad used to come and pick her up from

work. And she said youd watch him walking through the restaurant and

she said the only people who went in restaurants in those days were peo-

ple in suits and people with money, you know, that was in the sixties. She

said youd watch him walk through the restaurant, she said, and he was

almost physically shrinking as he was walking through, because he didnt

belong. (Hoggett et al., 2006a: 696)

Here we can see the way in which the identifications this woman makeswith her parents constitute different aspects of herself. Interestinglyenough in her case it is the masculine identification which represents the



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abjected part of the self whereas the feminine identification provides herwith her internal resources for agency, something inside her that refusedto accept her place, a restless desire for something better.

These identifications are deeply internalized: what she elsewheredescribes as that shrinking thing is discursive, affective and somatic.The example also illustrates the non-unitary nature of the self, the wayin which different parts pull the person in different directions, someconstraining agency, others enabling it.

Loss

Particularly during rapid social change powerless people become theobjects of change rather than its agents. Deindustrialization destroyswhole communities and identities, particularly those linked to mas-culinity. Equally the personal costs of forced migration as a result ofwar, famine and ecological disaster can be enormous (loss of family,friends, job, status, identity, etc.) rendering the task of making a newlife extremely challenging.

There is now a history of using concepts of loss, grief and melan-cholia to understand the experiences of those whose communities aredestroyed by processes of urban modernization (Marris, 1974) or, moregenerally, who are the powerless objects of economic and social restruc-turing (Sennett, 1998). The demise of traditional working class labourhas taken with it sources of pride in physical strength, manual skills, hardgraft and a job well done, and communities of labouring men shored upby and shoring up such esteem and recognition (Hollands, 1990).

Recently there has been an interest in understanding the role ofloss in the formation of subaltern identities. Speaking of such loss

Judith Butler lists the loss of humanness under slavery; the loss thatis undergone with exile . . . the loss of culture that is performed by themandatory production of the colonized subject . . . and perhaps mostdifficult, the loss of loss itself; somewhere, sometime, something waslost, but no story can be told about it; no memory can retrieve it (Butler,2003: 467). Much of this literature takes Freuds seminal textMourning

and Melancholia (Freud, 1917)as its starting point and now applies it tothe broader experiences of race, class and gender. Loss is constitutive ofsubaltern identities the loss of ones own history (as history is largelynot written by the powerless), the loss of a sense of the achievements



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of ones group or class, the loss of valued role models, icons and heroespresent or past, the absence of culturally desirable human qualities inthe identity of black, working class, woman or queer. Thus for Butler,

ungrieved and ungrievable loss constitutes the formation of what wemight call the gendered character of the ego (Butler, 1997: 136).

Butlers arguments illuminate aspects of identity formation ofmany of the subaltern groups who are welfare service users. For exam-ple, research focusing on the relation between structural oppression andold age (Dykstra et al., 2005; Jones and Moore, 1989) reveals the nearimpossibility of mourning or even recognizing the experience (the lossof loss). No role models, no icons, no social recognition exist for the

very old; only the denigrating projections of our own terror of ageingand death. Old age in Western consumer societies is only defined as adeficit (of all things youthful the inability to approximate a youthfulsubjectivity). This is othering in the extreme: the denial of any worth-while subjectivity.

The terrifying experiences of physical loss of capacity and depen-dency and the psychic re-experiencing of powerful and primitive pro-cesses around these are lived out (impacted on and impacting on)

in a social context of mass denial and denigration. This may have alsosome gender dimensions. For example Caroline Jackson argues physi-cal breakdown is a terrible experience for many men because it connectsthe masculine body with weakness, dependency and passivity all thesupposedly feminine qualities they have spent a life-time definingand defending themselves against (Jackson in Hearn, 1995: 106). Butin contemporary societies where the visual is often privileged as a wayof knowing, youthful bodies are adored and fetishized and bodily weak-

ness and imperfection are reviled. The loss of a socially and psychicallyvalued or recognized self is replaced by inhabiting a reviled subjecti-vity: a subjectivity that is the repository of the social terror of ageingand death, and therefore a place where ones own lived reality has tobe constantly and insecurely denied. Splitting and denial are intrinsic;psychic well-being becomes very difficult to achieve.

The individualization of such experiences of hurt and loss can leaveindividuals feeling very much alone; shame in particular can lead to awithdrawal from intimacy, networks, connectedness. This can furtherlimit the subjects capacity to move purposively and confidently in theworld and to influence, to effect, to realize.This will be consideredmore below.



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Double suffering

Some experiences threaten to go beyond our capacity to digest them

because we lack the resources to symbolize and give meaning to them.They are more likely to be experiences that have been forced uponus rather than ones we have freely chosen: those we face as powerlessobjects rather than as active agents. If we try to eat something that wecannot digest then these items will get stuck in the system or we willevacuate them. According to the psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion (1962) soit is with noxious experiences, they get stuck in our system as psychictoxins (most vividly in terms of traumatic repetitions).

It follows that if experience cannot be thought about (symbolized)then we will have an unreflexive relation to it. But why cannot someexperiences be thought about? Judith Butler (1997) uses the psycho-analytic concept of foreclosure here. Jean Laplanche and Jean PaulPontalis (1973) define foreclosure as not symbolising what ought tobe symbolised . . . it is a symbolic abolition (p. 168). Butler addsthe social dimension: what if society prevents us from thinking aboutwhat we ought to think about? Referring specifically to the experience

of loss, Butler argues that in such situations the possibility that experi-ence can be worked through is foreclosed because there is no public rec-ognition or discourse through which it might be named and mourned(Butler, 1997: 139). Not only gender but ageing, for example, as con-sidered above, would epitomize this.

Butlers work, then, is part of a body of literature which deploysFreuds analysis of melancholia to explore forms of suffering which can-not be worked through psychically as there are no available means for

articulating and symbolizing them (Eng and Kazanjian, 2003). Theidea that social suffering has a melancholic dimension is also helpfulbecause by drawing attention to that which cannot be worked throughwe are reminded of the ways in which suffering must then be somatizedand embodied (an important factor accounting for the social inequa-lities of health), enacted (acting out under the old social pathologyparadigm, repetition according to Butler) or projected (onto partners,children, neighbours, strangers, etc.). These reactions to a suffering thatcannot be thought about and whose sources remain unknown have thecharacter both of dysfunctional defences and of adaptive forms of cop-ing. To the extent that the former dominates, like in alcoholism or drugabuse, the individuals response to suffering causes further suffering toboth self and others. This is why we call it double suffering.



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Suffering enacted

Experience which cannot be thought about and voiced will often

find expression in action. The action may be unreflexive; the indi-viduals suffering can speak through their behaviour. Butler (1997)recasts the concept of performativity in this way, de-rationalizingand de-intentionalizing it so that the act contains a thought whichis nevertheless unrecognizable to the one who acts. As Butler puts ita thought that is unthought to itself and thus opaque, but neverthe-less alive and persistent (Butler, 2003: 408) and therefore the sourceof what she terms a melancholic agency, an agency haunted by apast (experience) that cannot be represented.

Trauma is the strong form of such unrepresentable experience and assuch it demonstrates the power of enactment. There is a vast literatureon the re-enactment of abuse: the way in which the victim of parentalabuse often becomes in turn the perpetrator on the next generation(Faimberg, 2005). It is as if the traumatic experience becomes a psy-chical virus, dormant then reawakened. Some observers of the perpe-trators of ethnic violence (such as the Serbs) suggest that collectivelyexperienced trauma (military defeats, subordination by a colonizing

power, genocide, etc.) can be passed on transgenerationally in a similarfashion (Volkan, 1999). Such traumas remind us of the major and rup-tural events that may impact upon individual or collective lives. How-ever, Moglen (2005) has suggested the possible value of Masud Khansconcept of cumulative trauma (Khan, 1974) to describe the effects ofthe continuous everyday impingements, misfortunes and slights thatcharacterize the lives of the powerless.

In the current social policy world one of the most visible forms of

enacted suffering is commonly referred to as anti-social behaviour. Hereis a youth worker talking about some young people he has known overmany years, who had just received ASBOs (anti-social behaviour orders):

Last week I saw all the shops around here have mug shots of the 10 most

difficult young people and I was at a meeting of the shopkeepers and I

saw these, sort of, rows of photographs and theyre a very desperate bunch.

I mean, I was probably the only person in the room who knew all the kids

and its very sad to see this. I know theyre dangerous . . . but there is justa feeling of, is this the right way, but I cant think of another way. You

know, I cant think of another way of getting these kids out of their des-

peration. I mean what struck me most about them is that they are a very



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unloved group, but all we offer them is disciplinary, um, sort of measures

against them . . . My main feeling is, yes, they just have absolutely no love

in their lives and all were doing is punishing them more and more.

The youth worker, who had worked on that same estate for over 20years (and had worked with many of the parents of these kids whenthey themselves were young) knew the vulnerability in their violenceand could see the suffering within their badness. He was both angryfor them and angry with them. Holding these contradictions in mindis part of what we refer to as the dilemmas of welfare work (Hoggett,Mayo and Miller, 2008).

This youth workers thoughts about the absence of love link toMajid Yars (2008) suggestion that the anti-social can be conceptu-alized in terms of failures of recognition. Such failures in early life,compounded by experiences in school and the labour market, convincethe young adult that the environment is untrustworthy. Consequentlythey provoke the environment believing it will ultimately let themdown, a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Denied recognition in home,school and work some people find recognition in drugs, in gang life, in

the projection of hardness and in the enactment of physical and sexualviolence.

Through the enactment of their suffering powerless subjects assertan unreflexive agency and this wounded and unpremeditated response,when collectively undertaken, becomes interpreted by the media andpolicy makers as a social problem. This in turn may kick-start a vari-ety of repressive and/or ameliorative actions, including policy changesat state or local level. Enactment, then, has the capacity to set in motion

a powerful reaction with undeniable impact.

Suffering embodied

As we have seen, the stress and coping literature uses stress as a bio-psychosocial category, in which the psychological aspects of suffer-ing undergo conversion into a physical symptomatology. Stress thenrefers to the realm of the psychosomatic or, more properly, the socialpsychosomatic. To the extent that shame and grief can only be thoughtabout in individualized terms, as further proof of inadequacy, or cannotbe thought about at all, then these affects become embodied in psycho-somatic illnesses or become carved onto the body in terms of posture,facial gestures, pallor and so on.



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The literature of health inequalities has evidenced the direct linkbetween all forms of social oppression and ill health. The Black Report,undertaken for a Conservative government in 1980, charts the extent

to which not just psychosomatic illness but virtually all forms of mor-bidity and higher mortality rates apply to working class people more(Townsend and Davidson, 1988). The class difference is enduring andubiquitous; evident across almost any health measure. In relation tosuch seemingly different kinds of phenomena as ischaemic heart diseasein men and mental health problems in children, for example: in menaged 3565, in social class I there were 90 deaths per 100,000 a decadeago, and 167 in social class V; the incidence of childrens mental health

problems was twice as great in households earning less than 200 perweek compared to those with 500 plus in 1999 (White et al., Meltzerand Watwood, in Graham, 2007). Poverty, and the inequalities whichare associated with it (not just class but gender, race, physical dis-ability and age) guarantee that these populations are more likely toexperience more physical and psychological suffering, from toothacheto suicide.

The social and biological processes which explain health inequalities

are a source of debate. Government policy initiatives which attempt tolocate the causes of such difficulties in poor health choices (smoking,alcoholism and obesity all feature more in social class V) have been con-tested, and the environments in which people work and live have beenstudied. Poor conditions, gruelling physical demands and long hourscharacterize working class jobs more than middle class ones. However,it is clear from the research that environmental explanations are limited.For example, the much cited Whitehall Studies demonstrate that within

an identical work environment (Civil Service), senior administrators hadmuch better rates of morbidity and lower rates of mortality (includ-ing suicide) than did clerical and other junior staff (Cockerham, 2007).Cockerham accounts for this by the power of class and uses what isessentially a psychosocial framework to understand the process, listingfactors such as self esteem, status difference, self-direction at work, con-trol in ones environment, social capital and sources of social support asthe key variables which decline in strength as one descends the socialladder (Cockerham, 2007: 94).

Social suffering is inscribed on the body: the low self-esteem, lowstatus, lack of social capital and lack of power to direct ones life. Lack ofrecognition (see above) offers a framework for understanding such states,which, as experienced, can be understood as not feeling good enough



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(as good as others). For theorists such as Wilkinson, class inequalitiesare in themselves unhealthy, not just because of the differing access tothe good life. He argues that high levels of inequality damage social

cohesion, and peoples sense of relative deprivation, insecurity and rela-tive powerlessness impacts badly on their health (Wilkinson, 1996in Busfield, 2000). According to Busfield, the unemployed do notbecome ill because they cannot feed themselves, but because . . . theirsense of self-worth is diminished, and they become more isolated. Themediation is psychosocial, rather than material and bodily (Busfield,2000: 57). Their socially inflicted suffering isolates them from society double suffering as we have described it.

Suffering projected

Heres that youth worker again. Hes referring to a recent incidentin which some youths trashed his club and then three of them twobrothers and their friends cousin turned on each other. The youngerbrother is known to be dangerous and has used knives in the past.

The younger brother and the other protagonist were just yelling abuse at

each other. And they just sounded so hysterical, fragile and upset, I mean

that was quite upsetting, because they were both saying really hurtful

things to each other. I mean when I find this, all of them have actually got

quite a lot of pain in their backgrounds and they scratch at each others

pain, they dont let it, they dont show solidarity for other people. On

these situations they actually pull at the scabs you know, yelling awful

things about their parents, the majority of which were true, you know.

The concept of projection can help illuminate the lack of solidarity,the scratching at the others pain. What I cannot bear in myself I canalways locate in the other, hence the relief and satisfaction to be gainedfrom racism, homophobia, etc. Coping strategies are also mechanisms ofdefence suffering can be dealt with by splitting, projection, idealiza-tion and denigration just as it is by alcohol, drugs or other addictions.As well as agents and victims, the more we suffer the more we may alsoadopt the subject position of our own worst enemy or others worstenemy (Hoggett, 2001). Subjects of social suffering may not draw easilyupon our compassion if they do not present themselves as innocent vic-tims but as aggressive, resentful or suspicious people whose hurt andloss is directed at others rather than at themselves (Hoggett, 2006).



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A further form of double suffering accrues then: the person becomesdisliked perhaps avoided; unwelcome in social groups, struggling toform friendships or to find personal love and esteem. Hurt in this way

produces more hurt: rejection and dismissal, more loss and more suf-fering. Intimate relations and broader social bonds can become hard tosustain, and the person caught up in this may become atomized, anomicand lonely. Honneth argues that there is a primary need for socialrecognition: for love, respect, esteem, and a need for relations of mutualrecognition as a precondition of self-realisation essential for the develop-ment of a persons identity (Honneth, 1995: xi). Anomie reduces thepossibilities for mutual recognition and for securing identity.

That loneliness can be damaging and negating is well documented.For example as research literature in relation to many oppressed groupsevidences, the rupturing of social networks and of friendship, a lack ofinclusion and opportunities for social valuing, can cause lack of mentalwell-being and illness (Goodyer et al., 1990; Kawachi and Berkman,2001; Silviera and Alleback, 2001). This is not just social but psy-chosocial. For example research in a Somali community in Melbourneconnects loss with loneliness and depression: partly because of the lived

experience of fracturing of bonds, but also because what cannot bemourned is fantasized as a lost ideal of social networks/communities(MacMichael and Manderson, 2004). And as the authors found whenresearching children making the transition from primary to secondaryschool, the most feared scenario was being friendless, and it was theloss of old friends that was most mourned (Frost, 2004). The primal,fantasized, abandoned self exerts continuing influence.

Rethinking the object of social policy

In Western-type democracies the welfare state and welfarism arose as aconsequence of the existence of suffering, particularly social suffering.Much of this system concerns relationships with disadvantaged commu-nities (including racialized minorities) and excluded groups. We suggestthat one of, what Claus Offe (1984) once termed, the contradictions of the

welfare state is that modern democracies are concerned as much with themanagement of social suffering as they are with its alleviation. Not justan issue of resources and demands, this more fundamentally gives expres-sion to both a cultural and a political problem. Politically, the existence of



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social suffering reminds us of the continued existence of social inequality,inequalities which are proving impervious to government interventioneven whilst there is unprecedented affluence for some (Institute for Fiscal

Studies, 2007). Culturally suffering is itself the Other to modernity. Suf-fering gives expression to the passive rather than active voice, to the self asobject, and to what is often chronic and enduring rather than what is opento social engineering and quick fixes. So, for both political and culturalreasons Western-style democracies are partly in flight from suffering andthose who are the subjects of suffering become the Othered of an achieve-ment oriented, change-embracing modernity.

It seems possible then that by adding psychoanalytic insights to

Bourdieus concept of social suffering a new way of thinking about theproper object of welfare practice can come into view.This, then, wouldbe a perspective which could at last do justice to peoples lived expe-rience of powerlessness and material scarcity but in a non-idealizedway. We believe that what we are proposing is a realist perspective.However, we are aware that for some it may seem that our perspectiveis more properly deemed miserabilist rather than realist. By focus-ing upon abjection we recognize that we are deliberately accentuating

negative elements from the complex matrix of internal and externalrelations that make up the self: a non-unitary self with parts whichrefuse, resist, subvert and seek to change. We believe the negative hasan important place, particularly for a critical social policy. We seek todraw attention to what subaltern groups in society have to endure notas a recipe for despair but to illuminate the ugliness of social injusticeand to illustrate just how deeply it affects human experience.

For many practitioners it is this lived reality of suffering that fuels

their anger at injustice and sustains their commitment to their work(Hoggett, Mayo and Miller, 2006b). For the practitioner, this demandswhat Raymond Williams (1977) called felt thoughtfulness a capac-ity both to feel the pain of the other, even in their angry, violent or self-destructive enactments, and to think critically about the injustices thatproduce it. This would be equally useful in terms of policy making,community support and development, and practice with individuals.The tragedy is that none of us automatically responds to hardship,humiliation or the abusive exercise of power through noble resistance,we are just as likely to turn our sense of grievance upon ourselvesor innocent others. This is suffering turned upon itself and it is thisdouble suffering which is often the object of professional practice inwelfare work.



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Press.

Liz Frost is principal lecturer in the School of Health Community and

Policy Studies at the University of the West of England. She teaches, resear-

ches and writes in the following areas: firstly, psychosocial studies, developing

a curriculum and publication in psychosocial theory for social work (Frost,

L. (2008) Why Teach Social Work Students Psychosocial Studies?, Social

Work Education: The International Journal 27(3): 24361). Secondly, young

people in consumer societies, producing work on appearance issues (Frost,

L. Young Women and The Body, Palgrave, 2001) and on children in transition

(Childhoods in Consumer Society: Psychosocial Approaches, Palgrave, forthcoming).

Thirdly, European social work development, producing education/publica-

tion projects, e.g. Frost, E. and Freitas, M. J., eds Changing Social Work Edu-

cation in Europe, Rome: Carroci, 2007. Address: Faculty of Health and Life

Sciences, University of the West of England, Glenside Campus, Blackberry

Hill, Bristol BS16 1DD, UK. email: [email protected]



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Paul Hoggett is professor in the Centre for Psycho-social Studies at the

University of the West of England. He started out as a community mental

health worker in the 1970s and is now a trained and practising psycho-

therapist. His research in public and social policy stretches over 25 years

and includes work on radical decentralization initiatives in the 1980s and

critiques of public service modernization since the early 1990s. With Marj

Mayo and Chris Miller he recently completed an ESRC (Economic and Social

Research Council) project exploring how regeneration workers negotiate the

ethical dilemmas of their jobs The Dilemmas of Development Work (Policy

Press, 2008). He has a long-standing interest in applying insights about our

affective life to political issues and his latest book in this area,Politics, Identity

and Emotion (Paradigm Publishers) will be published in 2008.

frost y hogget

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