Researching governmentalities through ethnography: the case of Australian welfare reforms and programs for single parents

Abstract

In this article I argue that the spaces of freedom and constraint that personalized planning programs targeted at Australian single parents open up and close down are distinctly different when viewed from a top-down perspective of governmental rationalities as compared to a bottom-up perspective, or what Foucault referred to as the ‘witches’ brew' of actual practices. Around 90% of single parents with dependent children in Australia are single mothers, and around 80% of these single mothers receive single rate Parenting Payment. Changes to this payment (and its precursor, Sole Parent Pension) over the last 25 years have recognized this gendered composition by focusing on issues of mothering and the intensive activities of care that continue to be carried out most commonly by mothers. While the existing literature argues that the 2005 Welfare to Work package sharply broke with this practice by not focusing on gender and the unique features of mothers' life courses, I find that these considerations have remained a key part of the ‘witches’ brew' of actual practices. Given this finding, a key argument is that studies of governmentalities which combine sociologies of actual practices together with studies of official governmental rationalities can make important critical contributions to understanding the heterogeneous logics and practices through which welfare reform policies occur.