TY - JOUR

T1 - Welfare commonsense, poverty porn and doxosophy

AU - Jensen, Tracey Louisa

PY - 2014/8/15

Y1 - 2014/8/15

N2 - This article critically examine how Benefits Street - and the broader genre of poverty porn television - functions to embed new forms of 'commonsense' about welfare and worklessness. It argues that such television content and commentary crowds out critical perspectives with what Pierre Bourdieu (1999) called 'doxa', making the social world appear self-evident and requiring no interpretation, and creating new forms of neoliberal commonsense around welfare and social security. The article consider how consent for this commonsense is animated through poverty porn television and the apparently 'spontaneous' (in fact highly editorialized) media debate it generates: particularly via 'the skiver', a figure of social disgust who has re-animated ideas of welfare dependency and deception.

AB - This article critically examine how Benefits Street - and the broader genre of poverty porn television - functions to embed new forms of 'commonsense' about welfare and worklessness. It argues that such television content and commentary crowds out critical perspectives with what Pierre Bourdieu (1999) called 'doxa', making the social world appear self-evident and requiring no interpretation, and creating new forms of neoliberal commonsense around welfare and social security. The article consider how consent for this commonsense is animated through poverty porn television and the apparently 'spontaneous' (in fact highly editorialized) media debate it generates: particularly via 'the skiver', a figure of social disgust who has re-animated ideas of welfare dependency and deception.

KW - Classificatory Politics

KW - Welfare Reform

KW - Worklessness

KW - Poverty Porn

KW - Doxosophy

KW - Media Culture

U2 - 10.5153/sro.3441

DO - 10.5153/sro.3441

M3 - Journal article

VL - 19

JO - Sociological Research Online

JF - Sociological Research Online

SN - 1360-7804

IS - 3

M1 - 3

ER -