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Social Suffering: A New Reference Framework for Economic Analysis
Abstract
Social suffering has become a recurrent theme in various disciplines (sociology, social psychology, anthropology), but remains absent from economic analysis. The aim of our article is hence to reinstate the role of social suffering in economics. We first define the scope of the concept, which should be interpreted as a form of suffering generated by economic systems, particularly the current capitalist system. We then dismiss the objections to this conception of social suffering. In particular, we dismiss the attempt to reduce social suffering to a set of categorical phenomena that can be interpreted independently of the functioning of an economic system. Finally, we point out that lowering social suffering should take precedence over the pursuit of happiness.
JEL Classification: B40, P46, A13
... Next, the articles selected for this scoping review were published between the years 2009 and 2021. In the past 20 years, sociologists and psychosociologists have used "social suffering" to describe various social pathologies (ballet & Mahieu, 2022). To focus on recent trends, the search was limited to the last 12 years (2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017)(2018)(2019)(2020)(2021), considering the escalating nature of contemporary psychosocial sufferings. ...
Critical psychosocial interventions aim to improve and maintain well-being by addressing the individual and the social as a single psychosocial entity. Critical psychosocial interventions can assist in developing a holistic and context-sensitive understanding of suffering which can inform how suffering is addressed. As such, critical psychosocial interventions are informed by and go beyond conventional psychological interventions that locate psychological suffering and healing within the individual subject. Psychosocial interventions range greatly in their aim and scope, and little has been written on their general effectiveness. The purpose of this scoping review is to examine the effectiveness of critical psychosocial interventions. Using particular selection criteria, we conducted an online search of five prominent databases and two search engines. We found that although the particularities of the studies ranged greatly (e.g., their focus and method), there were also several similarities that cut across the different studies (e.g., they responded to a traumatic event and relied on existing resources within communities). In conclusion, we suggest some future directions for critical psychosocial intervention studies, including a stronger political focus, a focus on protracted psychosocial trauma, and a harnessing of resources beyond those that are immediately available.
... In this perspective, the inclusion of the tangible and intangible dimensions of rural development, underlined earlier in this introduction, is key to producing accurate and meaningful insights into rural life. Indeed, rural inhabitants are not only looking for material goods; they are also looking for satisfying socio-psychological needs (Ballet et al. 2004;Ballet and Mahieu 2022). Such a stance is not neutral and involves major changes in policymaking, as exemplified in policies aiming to reduce poverty. ...
São notórias as evidências dos efeitos nocivos do capitalismo, o qual, ao mesmo tempo que produz riqueza, gera pobreza e promove a exclusão de uma parte da população. Esse sistema leva, muitas vezes, à violação de direitos assegurados aos indivíduos, principalmente, daqueles que pertencem a grupos sociais mais vulneráveis, afrontando, por conseguinte, os ditames da Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil de 1988. Nessa perspectiva, este estudo, alicerçado em investigação exploratória e pesquisa bibliográfica, objetiva discorrer sobre a vulnerabilidade socioeconômica que decorre do capitalismo excludente, o qual não assegura o pleno atendimento dos preceitos voltados à consecução dos direitos fundamentais, ocasionando um sofrimento social que impacta sobremaneira a vida das pessoas. Os resultados demonstram que os sujeitos, quando são colocados em posições inferiores na sociedade, não sendo reconhecidos como pessoas merecedoras de direitos e garantias fundamentais, acabam direcionados para a zona de desfiliação social. Essa zona, resultante da violência perpetuada ao longo do tempo, impõe a esses sujeitos um sofrimento que os leva a uma existência de exclusão, ficando à mercê da própria sorte, como uma forma de “condenação social”.
Background. Shift work is characterized by employees working outside the standard hours of 7:00 am to 6:00 pm. Because shift work includes night work, the normal sleep-wake cycle (circadian rhythm) is disrupted, with potential consequences for shift workers' physical and mental health.Objectives. To assess the pooled effects of shift work on mental health and to evaluate whether these differ in men and women.Search Methods. We searched PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases for peer-reviewed or government reports published up to August 2018Selection Criteria. To be included, studies had to be longitudinal or case-control studies of shift work exposure associated with adverse mental health outcomes. For subanalyses, we grouped these outcomes as anxiety symptoms, depressive symptoms, or general poor mental health symptoms.Data Collection and Analysis. We followed the Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology Group guidelines. We extracted adjusted risk estimates for each study to calculate pooled effect sizes (ESs) using random effect models and metaregression analysis to explore sources of heterogeneity.Main Results. We included 7 longitudinal studies, with 28 431 unique participants. Shift work was associated with increased overall risk of adverse mental health outcomes combined (ES = 1.28; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.02, 1.62; I2 = 70.6%) and specifically for depressive symptoms (ES = 1.33; 95% CI = 1.02, 1.74; I2 = 31.5%). Gender differences explained more than 90% of heterogeneity, with female shift workers more likely to experience depressive symptoms than female non-shift workers (odds ratio = 1.73; 95% CI = 1.39, 2.14).Authors' Conclusions. To our knowledge, this is the first meta-analysis to investigate the pooled effects of shift work on the risk of poor mental health, including subanalyses by type of poor mental health and gender. Shift workers, particularly women, are at increased risk for poor mental health, particularly depressive symptoms.Public Health Implications. Depression accounts for 4.3% of the global burden of disease and incidence, with mental disorders worldwide predicted to cost US $16.3 million by 2030. With 1 in 5 people in the United States and Europe doing shift work, and the increased risk of poor mental health among shift workers, shift work industries are a priority context for reducing this burden. Workplace health promotion programs and policies are needed to minimize shift workers' risk of poor mental health. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print September 19, 2019: e1-e8. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2019.305278).
Undergirded by the perspective of historical materialism in dialogue with black Marxism and Marxist feminism, this article constructs an account demonstrating the significance of racism to the making of modernity. The analytic returns of unthinking Eurocentric sociologies in favour of a more unified historical social scientific approach include the unmasking of the intimate relationship between capitalism, class struggles and racism, particularly how capitalist rule advanced through a process of differentiation and hierarchical re-ordering of the global proletariat. From the 17th-century colonization of Virginia to Victorian Britain and beyond, racism formed an indispensable weapon in the armoury of the state elites, used to contain the class struggles waged by subaltern populations with a view to making the system safe for capital accumulation. Additionally, situating an account of racism within the unfolding story of historical capitalism as against the postcolonial tendency to locate it within the civilizational encounter between the West and the Rest helps make transparent the plurality of racisms, including the racialization of parts of the European proletariat. This explanation of the structuring force of racism and the differentiated ways in which the proletariat has been incorporated into capitalist relations of domination has important implications for emancipatory politics. A race-blind politics risks leaving untouched the injustices produced by historic and contemporaneous racisms. Instead, an alternative approach is proposed, one that invites movements to wilfully entangle demands for economic justice with anti-racism and thereby embrace and demystify the differences inscribed into the collective body of the proletariat by capitalism.
This article will attempt to recount the history of the emergence of this theme of ‘la souffrance au travail’, highlighting its role in laying bare transformations and fault lines in French society today. The article will explain this role by providing a detailed description of the ‘managerialist turn’ and the new methods of management that characterise it. It will show how such methods transform relationships between employees, eroding links of cooperation, solidarity, and collaborative life. These corrosive effects seem to confirm the hypothesis of the ‘centrality of work’ in the formation of the polity and of citizens. The article will examine the controversies sparked by this hypothesis of ‘the centrality of work’, detailing the hostilities it has provoked, as much amongst the trades unions as amongst academics, before emphasising the role played by artists, filmmakers, writers, legal experts, and journalists who have managed to put work at the centre of public debates in France. By way of conclusion, the article will try to explain why this has proved to be the case in France more than elsewhere.
What realities do questionnaires and surveys, designed to measure stress and suffering at work, bring to light? What realities do they conceal? In this research, we consider self-assessment scales and questionnaires as techniques of visibility that contribute to the construction of knowledge on the ‘suffering subject’ at work. We conducted a qualitative analysis of the questionnaire and survey report conducted by the consulting firm Technologia for France Telecom Orange, after a spate of suicides in 2008–2009.
The results show that: (1) the questionnaire used to measure suffering at work views the subject as someone reflective yet rather passive, and their suffering as resulting from an unbalanced relationship with the work environment, (2) the report further restricts this understanding of suffering to the administrative position of the individual, (3) as a consequence, the political, strategic, ideological dimensions and the economic power struggles affecting work are silenced.
Relying on Foucault’s approach to knowledge ( savoir), we interpret this narrow concept of the subject and their surroundings as resulting from an assemblage between scientific discourses and visibility techniques; a compromise that conceals debates on the strategic orientation of the firm.
In 2012, approximately 40,000 suicides were reported in the United States, making suicide the 10th leading reported cause of death for persons aged ≥16 years (1). From 2000 to 2012, rates of suicide among persons in this age group increased 21.1%, from 13.3 per 100,000 to 16.1 (1). To inform suicide prevention efforts, CDC analyzed suicide by occupational group, by ascribing occupational codes to 12,312 suicides in 17 states in 2012 from the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) (2). The frequency of suicide in different occupational groups was examined, and rates of suicide were calculated by sex and age group for these categories. Persons working in the farming, fishing, and forestry group had the highest rate of suicide overall (84.5 per 100,000 population) and among males (90.5); the highest rates of suicide among females occurred among those working in protective service occupations (14.1). Overall, the lowest rate of suicide (7.5) was found in the education, training, and library occupational group. Suicide prevention approaches directed toward persons aged ≥16 years that enhance social support, community connectedness, access to preventive services, and the reduction of stigma and barriers to help-seeking are needed.
This brief on human suffering adds to understanding of suffering by contextualizing both stories and statistics on pain and suffering, while showing that suffering adds a useful perspective to contemporary thought and research on quality of life, social well-being, and measures of societal progress....
Background:
During the 2007-11 recessions in Europe, suicide increases were concentrated in men. Substantial differences across countries and over time remain unexplained. We investigated whether increases in unaffordable housing, household indebtedness or job loss can account for these population differences, as well as potential mitigating effects of alternative forms of social protection.
Methods:
Multivariate statistical models were used to evaluate changes in suicide rates in 20 EU countries from 1981-2011. Models adjusted for pre-existing time trends and country-fixed effects. Interaction terms were used to evaluate modifying effects.
Results:
Changes in levels of unaffordable housing had no effect on suicide rates (P = 0.32); in contrast, male suicide increases were significantly associated with each percentage point rise in male unemployment, by 0.94% (95% CI: 0.51-1.36%), and indebtedness, by 0.54% (95% CI: 0.02-1.06%). Spending on active labour market programmes (ALMP) (-0.26%, 95% CI: -0.08 to -0.45%) and high levels of social capital (-0.048%, 95% CI: -0.0096 to -0.087) moderated the unemployment-suicide association. There was no interaction of the volume of anti-depressant prescriptions (P = 0.51), monetary benefits to unemployed persons (P = 0.77) or total social protection spending per capita (P = 0.37). Active labour market programmes and social capital were estimated to have prevented ∼ 540 and ∼ 210 male suicides, respectively, arising from unemployment in the countries studied.
Conclusion:
Job losses were a critical determinant of variations in male suicide risks in Europe's recessions. Greater spending on ALMP and levels of social capital appeared to mitigate suicide risks.
Since 2008, a deep financial crisis, which started in the United States, has widely spread around the world. Scientists expressed their worry about this crisis by pointing out that potential negative health effects can be created by collective fear and panic.OBJECTIVES: The main purpose of this cross-sectional study on the fear of the crisis has been to examine its impact on mental health through the use of structural equation modeling. In the trial a new model of economic stress we were also interested in identifying if fear of the crisis has an indirect relationship with employees' health (e.g. related to a poor social support or to work-related stress). Furthermore, this study aimed to examine whether a full or a partial mediation model best fits the data.
Data collection took place between 2010 and 2011. During this period several private organizations that comprised of 1236 employees participated in the study.RESULTS: It was found that social support and job stress fully mediated the relationship between fear of the crisis and health, with all fit indices meeting their respective criteria, and with all path coefficients being significant.
Implications for discussion of the crisis among employees were presented. In conclusion, fear of the crisis appeared to be an important innovative construct for organizational wellbeing.
This book is about the duty to relieve suffering. Jamie Mayerfield argues that this duty is far stronger than most of us acknowledge—an argument with far-reaching implications for how we should live. He begins by offering an account of the meaning of suffering. From there he moves on to a discussion of the measurement and moral significance of suffering. Mayerfield argues that the prima facie duty (which may be overridden by other duties) to relieve suffering arises directly from the badness of suffering. The alleviation of suffering, he claims, is morally more important than the promotion of happiness. He goes on to examine the proper resolution of trade-offs internal to the duty to relieve suffering: e.g., what should we do when we can eliminate the suffering of one group of people or another, but not both? Finally, Mayerfield addresses the question of how to identify those occasions when the relief of suffering is not morally required or is indeed wrong.
This book is concerned with the social science of poverty and covers topics ranging from the intricacies of measuring poverty using objective quantitative, income-based measures, to the interrelationships between structural violence, poverty, and social suffering; capability deprivation as the basis for analyzing poverty; ideologies and beliefs about poverty; how politics and institutions shape poverty and inequality; and the effects of poverty on child development. The book also explores the link between gender and poverty; the historical origins of poverty in developing countries; poor neighborhoods in the metropolis; how segregation perpetuates disadvantage; the association between nonmarital family structures, poverty, and inequality; whether social ties matter for poor people who are seeking employment; the link between poverty and education; intergenerational mobility; hunger and food insecurity; and the relation between crime and poverty.
A Passion for Society explores the historical development and current condition of social science, focusing on how it has been shaped in response to problems of social suffering. Following a line of criticism offered by key social theorists who were unhappy with the professionalization of social science, this book provides a critical commentary on how studies of human social life have moved from an original concern with social suffering and its amelioration to dispassionate inquiries into society for their own sake. It offers a standpoint on the potential for terms of social investigation and social research to be informed by the humanitarian impulse and by care for humanity. The overall aim is to show how social care can be and is being developed in social science as a powerful revitalization and remaking of the discipline.
Marxism is a materialist theory that centers economic life in its analysis of the human social world. This materialist orientation manifests in explanations that take economic class to play a fundamental causal role in determining the emergence, character, and development of race-and sex-based oppression—indeed, of all forms of identity-based oppression within class societies. To say that labor is mediated by class in a class-based society is to say that, in such societies, the class-based division of that activity which produces and reproduces the human species is the definite form in which labor appears, and that the human life which is the product of that self-making activity bears its stamp. Marxism’s emphasis on economic factors as central in the constitution and development of human life has been seized upon as evidence of its alleged “class reductionism”—its supposed tendency to think of all aspects of human life as direct and simple expressions of a class relation. No such thing follows; quite the opposite, a correct understanding of the relationships among capitalism, racism, and sexism only further highlights how central the struggle against each is to the struggles against any of the others.
There is a rich literature on the emergence of new public management in the 1980s yet surprisingly little about the historical and social lineages of this movement. The scholarship on public management generally suggests that it was born out of the neoliberal critique of the state. The public sector would have thus borrowed corporate practices concerned with performance in order to instil market-like competition and make efficiency gains. This article challenges this reading by showing that concerns with performance management emerged instead from new planning technologies developed in the US military sector. I argue that these planning practices, initially developed at the RAND corporation, would radically transform governance by changing the way in which decision makers consider data about performance and use it to develop strategies or policies. I then explore the impact of this new approach on both corporate and public governance. I show how these ideas were translated for business studies and public administration in order to radically transform both fields and ‘make them more scientific’. As I show, this process contributed directly to the rise of what became called public management and provided new planning tools that radically transformed how we think about governance.
The indebtedness and possible over-indebtedness of households have attracted attention in academic research and in society at large. In this chapter, we summarize current research on indebtedness and over-indebtedness with especial emphasis on efforts and attempts to derive a more precise and applicable definition of the concept of over-indebtedness. With a more nuanced definition of the concept that can be operationalized in practice, one can more accurately estimate the societal costs of over-indebtedness. Particularly important, it makes it possible also to conduct more in-depth studies about the implications of indebtedness and over-indebtedness for the physical and psychological wellbeing of young adults. Relying on the distinction between active and passive over-indebtedness, we argue that the causality between indebtedness, over-indebtedness, and health is not necessarily unilateral.
Objectives:
To examine whether stressful job exposure to the public could be associated with having long-term benzodiazepine use.
Methods:
From the participants included between 2012 and 2016 in the French population-based CONSTANCES cohort, 13 934 men and 19 261 women declared a daily job exposure to the public and rated the frequency of stressful exposure. We examined benzodiazepine long-term use by using drug reimbursement administrative registries. Logistic regressions provided odds ratios (ORs) of benzodiazepine long-term use, with stratification for gender and adjustment for age, education, and area deprivation index. Occupational grade, job strain, depression, self-rated health, and alcohol use disorder were additional stratification variables.
Results:
Benzodiazepine long-term use was positively associated with stressful exposure to the public ("often or always" vs "rarely or never") in men (OR = 2.2; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.8, 2.8) and women (OR = 1.6; 95% CI = 1.4, 1.9), with dose-dependent relationships (P trends < .001). Adjustments and analyses in subgroups without other individual or environmental vulnerability factors led to similar results.
Conclusions:
Stressful job exposure to the public increases the risk of benzodiazepine long-term use. Prevention programs aiming at reducing the burden of benzodiazepine long-term use would benefit in targeting this specific population. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print November 29, 2018: e1-e7. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2018.304734).
The use of credit by households has expanded in South Africa. This has led many households to become over-indebted. The research analysed the causes and consequences of household indebtedness using both South African and international literature. The causes of household over-indebtedness include both demand and supply-side factors. In addition, there are internal and external factors that lead to over-indebtedness. Household over-indebtedness can have negative implications at household and macro-economic levels. There is a positive relationship between household over-indebtedness and an increase in insolvencies. One of the major risks associated with the rapid increase in household debt is the decrease in savings. Recommendations on how to reduce household over-indebtedness include preventive, alleviative and rehabilitative measures.
Objective:
Prescription opioid and benzodiazepine drug use, which has risen significantly, can affect worker health. Exploration of the scientific literature assessed (1) interrelationships of such drug use, occupational risk factors, and illness and injury, and (2) occupational and personal risk factor combinations that can affect their use.
Methods:
The scientific literature from 2000 to 2015 was searched to determine any interrelationships.
Results:
Evidence for eight conceptual models emerged based on the search yield of 133 articles. These models summarize interrelationships among prescription opioid and benzodiazepine use with occupational injury and illness. Factors associated with the use of these drugs included fatigue, impaired cognition, falls, motor vehicle crashes, and the use of multiple providers.
Conclusion:
Prescription opioid and benzodiazepine drugs may be both a personal risk factor for work-related injury and a consequence of workplace exposures.
This article asks: How can understanding the relationship of exploitation and oppression inform the study of digital labour and digital capitalism? It combines the analysis of capitalism, patriarchy, slavery, and racism in order to analyse digital labour. The approach taken also engages with a generalization of David Roediger’s wages of whiteness approach, Marxist feminism, Angela Davis’s Marxist black feminism, Rosa Luxemburg, Kylie Jarrett’s concept of the digital housewife, Jack Qiu’s notion of iSlavery, Eileen Meehan’s concept of the gendered audience commodity, and Carter Wilson and Audrey Smedley’s historical analyses of racism and class. The article presents a typology of differences and commonalities between wage-labour, slave-labour, reproductive labour, and Facebook labour. It shows that the digital data commodity is both gendered and racialized. It analyses how class, patriarchy, slavery, and racism overgrasp into each other in the realm of digital capitalism. It also introduces the notions of the organic composition of labour and the rate of reproductive labour and shows, based on example data, how to calculate these ratios that provide insights into the reality of unpaid labour in capitalism.
This volume offers a detailed analysis of how the current phase of capitalism is eating away at social, interpersonal, and psychological health. Drawing upon an interdisciplinary body of research, Bruce Rogers-Vaughn describes an emerging form of human distress―what he calls ‘third order suffering’―that is rapidly becoming normative. Moreover, this new paradigm of affliction is increasingly entangled with already-existing genres of misery, such as sexism, racism, and class struggle, mutating their appearances and mystifying their intersections. Along the way, Rogers-Vaughn presents stimulating reflections on how widespread views regarding secularization and postmodernity may divert attention from contemporary capitalism as the material origin of these developments. Finally, he explores his own clinical practice, which yields clues for addressing the double unconsciousness of third order suffering and outlining a vision for caring for souls in these troubling times.
A materialist critique of the politics, poetics and economics of suffering in liberalism that argues for attention to the labour of suffering of the victim in many well-meaning but flawed politics of redress, and imagines forms of representation, solidarity and justice that better honour the history and materiality of this labour.
Objectives:
Previous research suggests that psychosocial job stressors may be plausible risk factors for suicide. This study assessed the relationship between psychosocial job stressors and suicide mortality across the Australian population.
Methods:
We developed a job exposure matrix to objectively measure job stressors across the working population. Suicide data came from a nationwide coronial register. Living controls were selected from a nationally representative cohort study. Incidence density sampling was used to ensure that controls were sampled at the time of death of each case. The period of observation for both cases and controls was 2001 to 2012. We used multilevel logistic regression to assess the odds of suicide in relation to 2 psychosocial job stressors (job control and job demands), after matching for age, sex, and year of death/survey and adjusting for socioeconomic status.
Results:
Across 9,010 cases and 14,007 matched controls, our results suggest that low job control (odds ratio [OR], 1.35; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.26-1.44; p < .001) and high job demands (OR, 1.36; 95% CI, 1.26-1.46; p < .001) were associated with increased odds of male suicide after adjusting for socioeconomic status. High demands were associated with lower odds of female suicide (OR, 0.81; 95% CI, 0.72-0.92; p = .002).
Conclusions:
It seems that adverse experiences at work are a risk factor for male suicide while not being associated with an elevated risk among females. Future studies on job stressors and suicide are needed, both to further understand the biobehavioral mechanisms explaining the link between job stress and suicide, and to inform targeted prevention initiatives.
Publisher Summary
This chapter discusses the association of income and happiness. The basic data consist of statements by individuals on their subjective happiness, as reported in thirty surveys from 1946 through 1970, covering nineteen countries, including eleven in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Within countries, there is a noticeable positive association between income and happiness—in every single survey, those in the highest status group were happier, on the average, than those in the lowest status group. However, whether any such positive association exists among countries at a given time is uncertain. Certainly, the happiness differences between rich and poor countries that one might expect on the basis of the within-country differences by economic status are not borne out by the international data. Similarly, in the one national time series studied, for the United States since 1946, higher income was not systematically accompanied by greater happiness. As for why national comparisons among countries and over time show an association between income and happiness that is so much weaker than, if not inconsistent with, that shown by within-country comparisons, a Duesenberry-type model, involving relative status considerations as an important determinant of happiness, is suggested.
The topic of suffering encompasses an enormous range of issues. In this discussion the focus will be is on two key sets of questions: the nature and definition of suffering and the nature of the responses to suffering. At its broadest, suffering is taken to be identical with any negative or “unpleasant” experience, but such a conception suffering gives rise to several problems. On a more nuanced account, suffering is tied to a disruption or potential disruption to the integrity of the person. The differences between these two accounts are themselves tied to differences in responses to suffering and in approaches to the relief of suffering. As it is central to any attempt to understand human being in the world, the topic of suffering is central within bioethics but also a challenge to it.
Édité en anglais (Palgrave McMillan), italien (Castelvecchi) et portugais. Réédition en mai 2007
The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it tests whether an effect of over-indebtedness on self-assessed health exists. Fixed-effects panel regression models based on panel data for 25 European countries show that being in arrears increases the likelihood of reporting bad/very bad health. However, effects are weak in terms of economic significance. The second research question focuses on the effect heterogeneity of overindebtedness among different European countries. It asks whether country-level factors moderate the effect of problematic debt on health. These macro-variables are the accessibility of health services, debt management and debt discharge regulations, dispute resolution with banks/insurance companies, and the social stigma of being over-indebted/in debt. Descriptive analyses showed that some aspects of the legal debt-collection process (e.g., higher costs of debt collection) are associated with a stronger effect of over-indebtedness on subjectively assessed poor health. There is also some evidence that easier dispute resolution with banks and insurance companies is correlated with smaller effects of over-indebtedness on health.
After the financial collapse of 2008 and the bailing out of banks in the US and the UK, the long-term viability of the neoliberal doctrine has come under new scrutiny. The elimination of regulatory control, the financialization of the economy including the growth of increasingly complex financial innovations, and the dominance of a rentier class have all been subject to thorough criticism. Despite the unexpected meltdown of the financial system and the substantial costs for restoring the finance industry, critics contend that the same decision-makers remain in place and few substantial changes to regulatory control have been made. Even though neoliberal thinking strongly stresses the role of the market and market-based transactions, the organization theory and management literature has been marginally concerned with neoliberalism as a political agenda and economic policy. This book examines the consequences of neoliberalism for management thinking and management practice. Managerial practices in organizations are fundamentally affected by a political agenda emphasizing competition and innovation. Concepts such as auditing, corporate social responsibility, shareholder value, and boundariless careers are some examples of managerial terms and frameworks that are inextricably entangled with the neoliberal agenda. This book introduces the literature on neoliberalism, its history and controversies, and demonstrates where neoliberal thinking has served to rearticulate managerial practice, including in the areas of corporate governance, human resource management, and regulatory control of organizations.
This book explores the political, economic and regulatory context in which credit regulation is taking place following the global financial crisis. It suggests that current neoliberal economic policies favour multi-national corporations rather than consumers and examines regulatory responses to the internationalization of consumer finance protection. Detailing how EU consumers have been affected by national economic conditions, the book also analyses the lending regimes of Europe, Australia, the US and South Africa and offers suggestions for responsible lending to avoid over-indebtedness and corrupt mortgage-lending. Finally, new approaches and directions for consumer credit regulations are outlined, such as protection for small businesses, protection against risky credit products, reorganization of mortgage securitization and the possibility of a partnership model to address financial exclusion. The book includes contributions from leading names in the field of consumer law and will be invaluable to those interested in banking, business and commercial law. © Therese Wilson and the contributors 2013. All rights reserved.
This is a revised and expanded edition of a classic in palliative medicine, originally published in 1991, with three added chapters and a new preface summarizing our progress in the area of pain management. The obligation of physicians to relieve human suffering stretches back into antiquity. But what exactly, is suffering? One patient with cancer of the stomach, from which he knew he would shortly die, said he was not suffering. Another, someone who had been operated on for a minor problem-in little pain and not seemingly distressed-said that even coming into the hospital had been a source of pain and suffering. With such varied responses to the problem of suffering, inevitable questions arise. Is it the doctor's responsibility to treat the disease or the patient? And what is the relationship between suffering and the goals of medicine? According to the author of this book, these are crucial questions, but ones that have unfortunately remained only queries void of adequate solutions. It is time for the sick person, the author believes, to be not merely an important concern for physicians but the central focus of medicine. With this in mind, he argues for an understanding of what changes should be made in order to successfully treat the sick while alleviating suffering, and how to actually go about making these changes with the methods and training techniques firmly rooted in the doctor's relationship with the patient. © 1991, 2004 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved.
This article presents a critical review of contemporary research on ‘social suffering’. It dwells substantially upon the ways in which social researchers account for the problem of bringing the lived reality of suffering to public attention. The author considers the possibility that it is the public failure of writers to provide a sufficient account of suffering that, paradoxically, works to convey an essential part of how this takes place in human experience; namely, as a most painful denial of meaning and a terminal struggle for understanding. Such public failing, it is argued, has a positive value insofar as it has the potential to serve as a force of moral inquiry and political engagement.
Purpose
– For the past 50 years, the research literature has shown that employment can contribute to an individual's personal development. Yet, it has also shown that it can become a life-threatening stressor. Reported occupational suicides increased by 22.2 percent between 1995 and 2010, becoming a leading cause of death in the USA. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of six US government reports on employee suicides between 1995 and 2012.
Design/methodology/approach
– Through an interpretive case study approach (Yin, 2003), this study undertook a document analysis of key US government reports examining occupational suicides. Specifically, an analysis of three US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports was undertaken along with other documents, identifying key themes and facts.
Findings
– The analysis of the US government reports reveals a dim legal recognition of employee suicide as an occupational accident. The paper presents the characteristics of suicides as an occupational accident as well as the profile of a typical US occupational suicide victim. Finally, the paper discusses the main causes of employee suicide.
Practical implications
– Organizations have a “duty of care” to their employees, both physical and psychological. Human resource (HR) professionals ought to create preventive policies to minimize work-related suicides and have clear crisis management systems in place, should an employee commit suicide or threaten to do so.
Originality/value
– Occupational distress is not typically apparent or obvious and is not the subject of many studies in the field of HRs. Yet, because of its rampant increase in today's organizations, its direct connection with employee suicide and its impact on organizational revenues, psychological distress in the workplace merits closer attention. This paper is unique as it provides insights for HR professionals based on the analysis of US government reports on work-related suicides.
The experience of Kerala during the past decade shows how and to what extent a traditional export-oriented agricultural sector in a small local economy can suffer due to trade liberalisation sans any safety nets and comprehensive restructuring programmes. With a decline in exports, rise in imports and a consequent drop in prices, coupled with frequent droughts, stagnant production and productivity, farm income declined drastically and increased the indebtedness of farmers. A sad manifestation of the severity of the situation was the widespread suicides by farmers in the state. This article examines the factors leading to the farm crisis, the rise in indebtedness and various dimensions of farmer suicides.
When homelessness reemerged in American cities during the 1980s at levels not seen since the Great Depression, it initially provoked shock and outrage. Within a few years, however, what had been perceived as a national crisis came to be seen as a nuisance, with early sympathies for the plight of the homeless giving way to compassion fatigue and then condemnation. Debates around the problem of homelessness—often set in terms of sin, sickness, and the failure of the social system—have come to profoundly shape how homeless people survive and make sense of their plights. This book depicts the lives of homeless men in San Francisco and analyzes the influence of the homelessness industry on the streets, in the shelters, and on public policy. The book shows some of the diverse ways that men on the street in San Francisco struggle for survival, autonomy, and self-respect. Drawing on five years of fieldwork, this ethnography of men living on the streets of the most liberal city in America, this book, makes clear that the way we talk about issues of extreme poverty has real consequences for how we address this problem—and for the homeless themselves.