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Eight What counts as ‘counter-conduct’? A governmental analysis of resistance in the face of compulsory community care

  • Hannah Jobling
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Social Policy Review 28
This chapter is in the book Social Policy Review 28

Abstract

In this chapter the findings of an ethnographic study of Community treatment orders (CTOs) in action are reported on, focusing on how individuals made subject to CTOs perceive the role the CTO has in their lives, and their subsequent responses to its imposition. Individuals’ conceptions of self in relation to disciplinary policy interventions can lead to complex, ambiguous and perhaps unexpected responses to compulsion, which are not easily categorised into binary forms of compliance and resistance. The analysis of CTOs underlines the value of a governmentality perspective that eschews simple linear understandings of how ‘target’ groups will respond to policy interventions.

Abstract

In this chapter the findings of an ethnographic study of Community treatment orders (CTOs) in action are reported on, focusing on how individuals made subject to CTOs perceive the role the CTO has in their lives, and their subsequent responses to its imposition. Individuals’ conceptions of self in relation to disciplinary policy interventions can lead to complex, ambiguous and perhaps unexpected responses to compulsion, which are not easily categorised into binary forms of compliance and resistance. The analysis of CTOs underlines the value of a governmentality perspective that eschews simple linear understandings of how ‘target’ groups will respond to policy interventions.

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