Social Policies and Emotions

This chapter seeks to introduce readers to the book’s framework. On the one hand, it outlines the connections between social policies and politics of sensibilities from the Global South. On the other hand, the information presented in the chapters make visible the connections between policies and emotions. Taking as a starting point the empirical data on Argentina and the information associated with the problems of social policies in Latin America and the rest of the world, the book presents an elaborate view of the Global South. The chapters make it clear how the elaboration of sensibilities through social policies are part of a double process of coloniality: (1) the one carried out at the global level results in colonial time/space enclaves that constitute the Global South, and (2) the one carried out on a personal level is a coloniality of the inner planet (sensu Melucci). It is from this double perspective that many of the consequences of social policies appear colonial. Within this framework, the first chapter seeks to lay the foundations for the conceptual and empirical itinerary of the book as a whole.

The analytical framework and the practical scenarios of the problems analysed in this book take for granted a set of articulations, of proximities/distances and assumptions characterized by theoretical approaches on what will be understood as the State, public policy, “social issue” and social policies. This chapter points out how the social policies are closely related to the Welfare State, political regimes and forms of social structure. From their contemporary configuration, the aforementioned policies imply the acceptance of some modality between capital and labour. The design and implementation of these moulds the social issue and therefore elaborates sociabilities and sensibilities.

This chapter aims to provide the reader with a synthetic approach on how the connections between emotions and social policies are understood. In order to achieve the stated objective, the following argumentative strategy has been followed: first some of the central approaches of the sociology of emotions are summarized, then our gaze on the bodies/emotions is synthesized, and we finish by explaining what are the social connections between emotions and policies that the book as a whole supposes.

This chapter adds to the aforementioned framework the emergence of three verifiable characteristics of those social processes, namely, the structuring of a Logic of Waste (LoW), the elaboration of Perversion Policies (PP) and the Practices of Banalization of Good (BoG). The aim is to make evident the emergence of a “new” position of subject and citizen in the context of the society standardized via immediate enjoyment through consumption: the assisted citizen. One of the main consequences of the connections between social policies and the politics of sensibilities is the “creation” of a modality of subjectivity based on the close relations between consumption, assistance and enjoyment.

This chapter synthesizes a set of inquiries that we have been making at the crossroads between the sociology of social policies and a way of understanding the sociology of bodies/emotions. The argumentative strategy that we have selected is the following: (1) the conceptual starting point on the crossings between social policies and sensibilities is outlined, (2) a schema of the connections between consumption and enjoyment is presented, (3) some results of the inquiries that have been used as the basis of the analysis are shown and (4) a concept of compensatory consumption as a result of the argument is synthesized. Our essay concludes by proposing the possibility that compensatory consumption is today perhaps, the “social policy” taken up from and to the market.

The main aim of this chapter is to point out, at least initially, how the “place” and the “value” of education have become difficult issues in social policies. And in the same vein to how the education continues to be the central axis in organizing the articulation of emotions and politics. We want to show how complex are the relations between poor women who live in the shantytown of Buenos Aires, and the result of the “dissolution/transformation” of educational policies as a “path” to obtain social mobility. To achieve our goal, we have built the following argumentative strategy: (a) we offer an introduction about how the situation of women in Latin America can be characterized, (b) we synthesize the school experiences of poor women giving some clues to understand the place of educational practices in the management of sensibilities and (c) as a final opening, we propose to see school practices as a basic component of the management of compensated sensibilities.

This chapter reflects on social policies in Latin America and Argentina, focusing on those related to promoting micro-entrepreneurships and analysing them as a targeting strategy implemented for at least three decades in Argentina. As an argumentative modality, we begin by reviewing the labour issue and the different social policies which were designed to improve the situations associated with poverty and unemployment. Then, we analyse how several of those implemented programmes—aimed at a particular type of population, with certain characteristics—were focused and intervened upon the effects of the problem and not its cause. Therefore, the last point explores the conceptions regarding universal targeting or massiveness of the policies, the latter as a modality that emerges during the last decade. Finally, the case of the National Plan for Local Development and Social Economy, “Hands to Work”, is taken as an example of occluded targeting.

This chapter seeks to make evident the connections between food policies and predation in the Argentine case since the 1980s, which have, as a direct consequence, the dispossession of bodily and social energy through the management of the body and emotions in politics. We conclude that, since the 1980s at least, there are food programmes in Argentina that have expanded their coverage in one way or another, reaching more children and mothers. These programmes have achieved relative success in helping to reduce infant mortality and maintaining the reproduction of the physical life of millions of people. However, none of the contents, volumes and deliveries of the aforementioned plans have been effective in ensuring satisfactory nutrient intake for adequate development.