Research Task. 'Poverty Porn'
In section 3.5.2 on the eviction industry (see Chapter 3 of the PusH-Textbook) we described two professions (bailiffs and judges) that are involved in the evicting process. According to Cooper & Paton (2019) some television program makers are also making money out of the eviction business. The portrayal of the ‘underserving poor’ (as was evident in the quotes of the judges in section 3.5.2) is reproduced, in a harsher version, in Reality TV programming (Cooper & Paton, 2019). Both the BBC (a public service broadcaster) and Channel 5 (a commercial television station) dedicated a television series on debt recovery and repossession. They film the actions of private companies carrying out evictions. It is a very lucrative form of television as the production costs are very low and the viewer rates are relatively high. The television programmes do not give insights into the complex forces that have led to rising debts. Cooper & Paton (2019) argue that these types of programs stigmatize poor people, while normalising the work the debt recovery and enforcement industry. These programmes can be seen as examples of “poverty porn” television, serving the neoliberal agenda:
“The national abjects[1] of poverty porn serve to transform precarity into a moral failure, worklessness into laziness and social immobility and disconnection into an individual failure to strive and aspire. The recent swathe of poverty porn does not only play on existing shameless curiosity about poverty, it also positions the lives of the poor as a moral site for scrutiny, something to be peered at, dissected and assessed. It reinvents the underclass for the purposes of welfare reform 'debate' which is set to immiserate the most marginalized and precarious of the 'post-working class' even further. It presents the 'others' on the screen as dysfunctional in their choices and behavior, as well as presenting a dysfunctional welfare state which rewards such 'lifestyles'. In such a framework, the poverty porn viewer is compelled to understand social insecurity (her own and that of others) as a problem of self-discipline, resilience and responsibility, rather than as a consequence of the extensions and excesses of neoliberalism” (Jensen, 2014, p. 280)
Answer the following questions (200-400 words per question):
1) Do you know other television programs in your country that are similar to the ones described above?
2) Do you think ‘poverty porn’ is an apt description of these types of television programs. Why (not)?
3) Cooper & Paton (2019) argue that these kinds of television programs serve the neoliberal agenda, as they provides a justification for further breaking down the welfare state (as opposed to structural reforms that would strengthen it. Do you agree with them? Why (not)?
References:Cooper, V., & Paton, K. (2019). Accumulation by repossession: the political economy of evictions under austerity. Urban Geography, 1-20.
Jensen, T. (2014). Welfare commonsense, poverty porn and doxosophy. Sociological Research Online, 19(3), 277-283.
Tyler, I. (2013). Revolting subjects: Social abjection and resistance in neoliberal Britain. London and New York: Zed Books.
[1] Jensen adopts the term 'national abjects' from Tyler (2013) which stand for figures who exist as symbols of marginality, and who are seen to occupy positions.