Positive affect as coercive strategy: conditionality, activation and the role of psychology in UK government workfare programmes

A journal article on the use of psychology in workfare to erase the experience and effects of social and economic inequalities and to construct a psychological ideal that links unemployment primarily to psychological deficit. This, in turn the authors argue, authorises the extension of state — and state-contracted — surveillance to psychological characteristics.

“Positive affect as coercive strategy: conditionality, activation and the role of psychology in UK government workfare programmes” appears in “Critical Medical Humanities,” the first special issue of Medical Humanities mh.bmj.com.

In the following podcast, Lynne Friedli (Hubbub) and Robert Stearn (Birkbeck) discuss their research with BMJ Medical Humanities Associate Editor Angela Woods:

https://soundcloud.com/bmjpodcasts/the-role-of-psychology-in-uk-government-workfare-programmes