The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society

The Weight of the World

The Weight of the World Social Suffering in Contemporary Society

Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Accardo, Gabrielle Balazs, Stephane Beaud, Fran::1>i50e of those things has to come out next to in the shelter. "'»"'""",,, exactly it! It has to be one of those :!l1vtrd,,,eJrs; or one of those rapists; or one of gay men; or gay ~ersons; or drug or stuff like that - rIght next to you. It has to be one of those people. So what h' pens is that you have a mIserable hfe " a Pht there in the shelter, because you're ; pg l' 'ng with that person who's put next to IV! That's what is k'll' 'f d you. I mg my WI e an me. o

I feZt like killing anybody

o

You can't have sex with your wife because they're all there watching. They're ... their bed is right there [pointing to little Yilt in the stroller who was listening intently], next to everybody else's. My wife ... she's a woman of needs. I'm a man in need myself, you know. I don't have no money to go to a hotel, or anything like that; so what does that turn out to be? It turned out to be that I had to go and do something about that. ""50 that's exactly what I did. I decided again to sell drugs. That was my ... my goal to do; to sell drugs: "I'm going to sell drug" .. do whatever it takes to make life better for my wife and my son. Even if it takes me to kill somebody out there, I'll do it. l'llgo for contracting [hired killing]. I'll do anything for money so I could survive." That's what I was thinking. But I suffered for a long time. Those ten long months with my wife and son in the shelter, they wasn't easy. It was very hard. I felt like killing anybody; anybody that was doing good selling drugs; making money; buying cars; buying jewelry. I wanted to blow their head off; just because I didn't got it like that; 'cause I felt selfish. I was a sellish person. I felt so down and out for being in a fucking shelter. And I would look around at all these motherfuckers having jewelry; "~aving cars; and things like that. And me, ltke a motherfucker; broke; with no money; and knowing that I see these people with all these things that I wanted so bad that ! would kill for.

I love my wife, my son, but I had to leave the shelter and I never went back there What happens is that I couldn't take it no more. I had too hard a time in that shelter. We went through five months of snffering and I started to light with my wife. r couldn't take it no more. I took it lor five months until I said: "I ain't going to take it no more." So I left. I said, I'd rather be in the street than be in a place like this! I had a fight with my wife outside the shelter. I had a big fight where I almost choked her. And ah ... I left. I had a big fight. I saw myself that I couldn't live there with her, because I saw that I could've killed her. I love my wife, my son, but I had to leave the shelter and I never went back there. I stood out there on the streets for a week, until I said to myself "I'm going to sell drugs." And that's exactly what I did. When my income tax refund came I invested illy money on drugs, and I started selling them. I spent all my tax money buying drugs. I decided to stay 011 the streets and sell drugs.

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I wasn't going to take no chance in the shelter with my income tax refund, because they're a bunch of thieves in there you know. They will steal your mail or something. Especially if they find out there's an income tax coming. So I picked it up at the office and I had my sister cash my income tax. And then I just went up to the Bronx, and that's exactly what I did. I invested my money in drugs, 400 and something dollars. I only bought 100 dollars worth of drugs first. On 100 dollars I made about 200. And it paid good. I was selling crack. I had to cook it up and everything. And I stood ant there by myself for four months selling drugs. But I didn't get nothing good established; but at least I used to keep money in my pocket; and then when I got paid at my messenger job, everything was a little better off for me. But it wasn't all that easy; it was a hard time. And that's when I ended up having a fight with ... with these people on the block; with the guy that wants to kill me now [picking up the gym bag with his shot-

gun from under the bench; hugging it to his chest; and then drinking from the bottle].

I had to survive Ramon wait, slow down! Start from the beginning. Let me get the whole story. Ramon [Looking almost reproachfully at Julio I But r had to survive. I was practically . . . I was practically living in the streets. I had left my wife and son in the shelter, and I was living in a coke spot - [turning back to mel a coke spot is where a lot of coke is sold; where the customer is served inside the apartn1ent. I took chances by living there, 'cause the cops could've rolled up in there and put me in jail for nothing I didn't do; for just trying to find a place to stay. I was working with the Super of the building. I was in an apartment where they had already evicted the people that lived there before. The marshall came and he took everybody out of there - at the time my family was already at the shelter.

So that apartment was supposed locked. But the Super took a Lll,me:e, know; opening the door for me and me in - being that I was a nice because I wanted a place to sleep. I was paying him 40 dollars a week; r stood there for two extra months.

My brother jerked me At one point, I lost a lot of money woman that I had given a lot of sell. But she had a big habit, like, and smoked it up with friends. But that was money that she was giving away to friends. It took me seven days to get the back from her. She had a lot of People would go there to use her place. smoke, and she could make money out that. She was paying me slowly. I had told her "You better get my If yon don't get my money, going to happen." If I had not been there, she would have paid me. But because I was pressuring her; pressuring her every every day - she knew I would kick her - so she used to give me 10, 15 dollars day. That way she made up for the dollars that she owed. After that I took my money; bought material; but the material wasn't good; gave me less count. So I stopped from my contact. And I went to coke connection . The new coke I invested in was no I blew 60 dollars because I had dee:id"d buy two grams. I lost my money. I was upset. I came and about it. I talked to her - my new - I told her that I wasn't going to buy more drugs from her. But then she gave two grams at 50 dollars. And I invested into 100 dollars. And then I was back ing my material. But I think I went back down one time when I didn't have no money at I had gave some work to my brother; brother jerked me; and then I didn't have money for me to sell with. But I had

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. welry - my bracelet. I took it; and pawned lei IS') dollars', and then I started back up 1t or,

I love my wife a lot; J want to keep us together

again.

During this period I was visiting my wife every week. My wife was seeing me every week; Friday, Saturday, and Mondays, and that's it. The rest of the five days she had to go back to the shelter. I didn't see my wife for five days; and then Monday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday; then I'd see her. And my son too! That's a pressure; you know what I'm saying? 'Cause I've been with my wife for three-and-a-half years, and I love her. We're already used to each other; and for us to be separated, it makes it real hard. Now I can't see her, so it makes it real hard. It makes me want to do anything. It makes me even mess around with other women - which J did. And I didn't want to take it out on her. It's just ... It felt weird. I was really hurting myself. I wasn't hurting nobody but myself. She don't know what I've done. She's not an understanding person. She don't understand. She's too stubborn. I don't tell her nothing. I just keep it to myself. I don't let it go that far. 'Cause J love ... 1 love my wife a lot; I want to keep us together.

through all of this I didn't lose my job

r started

making money; but it took me 'b' t a month and a half; and then from athar au month and a ha If, everyth'mg was going prosperous. . ;; I was doing the process of cookmg up the crack by myself; I was doing my own selling; doing my own cookmg;, buymg. The first time 1 bad to get someoody to cook it for me, so that I could learn how to do it. Sometimes I took my brother to sell with me. I used to tell him "Make some money for me." Sometimes he used to mess-up, but then he had to afford to pay my money back to me. So I never lost money from him. Ever since I pawned my bracelet, 1 never lost money. Plus! was getting paid from my messenger job; and when I get paid, I would take half the check and invest it in coke. So leouid get myself back on my feet like that selling. Because, through all of this I didn't lose my job.! was working. Even when I used to sell drugs and used to break nights [stay awake all night]. ! used to go from where I was seiling straight to work; because I didn't want to lose my job. That way when I'd get paid at work it'd be a little better because I had started making my little extra money on drugs - you know what I'm saying? Then I could do things with my paycheck. But I couldn't afford to lose my job 'cause the business that I was doing with crack wasn't established yet. So I couldn't afford it.! stilL needed my job; so that's the reason Lkepr working, and after work I'd sell drugs. i . , was like a back and forth thing until .fl~ally 'I got this guy working for me that haa clientele. I was making my money. And that's when the system did this to me' it .;happened! I started to be on my own f~et, :bUt I was busted [sniffs and drinks].

I don't exist for welfare I suffered. I worked a year at my job as a messenger. I still be at my messenger job every day. I don't miss a day. Tomorrow I'm on vacation to pick up my son. My son, he's two-and a-half years oldjust like Yilt [pointing to Carmen's little boy strapped into the stroller who had stopped struggling in order to listen intently and admire the flickering lights on my tape recorder1. He's going to school; 1 got to pick him up in school tomorrow in the afternoon. That's vacation without pay for me, because they don't pay no benefits at my job; just the wage . You see my wife, she's on welfare, and she gets Medicaid. She's only paid for one child - my son. They get 144 dollars every two weeks and then in food stamps they get another 129 per month. But that's not

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enough to live off of. You definitely got to be working. That's why I'm not counted as being married to her. I don't exist for welfare; otherwise they'd take away her money and Medicaid. But when we lost my mother's apartment; in order to get into the shelter with my wife, I had to face welfare. I had to say: "Look, I'm living with my wife now; I'm working and stuff like that." That's why they put me in a shelter with her. But then welfare started to deduct it from her. Welfare said, "You're living in a shelter and they're giving you three meals a day in the shelter, so that's gonna be a deduction from your food stamps." And "you don't pay no rent. You have a place to stay in the shelter. You get free food." So now, instead of 144 dollars every two weeks, she gets 85 from welfare and then only 75 more dollars from food stamps, because they give her the food free at the shelter. She's pissed off, because she can't do nothing with that money. She can't buy no clothes. She only can buy food. But now her food runs out fast because even though she gets free food in the shelter, she wants to get home food and stuff like that for the babylike cereal. She feels bad. Especially because the shelter where she lives now is all the way downtown in Manhattan. It's expensive down there. Sometimes she has to come uptown only to shop [sniffing and drinking].

When my wife finally got the apartment I felt like that was a message for me to get out of selling crack But Ramon you were telling us earlier that your wife might finally be getting an apartment. How's that? Ramon Welfare helped her get an apartment. It's a Section 8, because she's a woman in need; yeah, a woman in need. She stood there in that shelter for nine

months with my two-year-old son. the reason why she got her apartment. Section 8 pays for the apartment. only pays 50 dollars a month, you stand? It comes right out of her salary. not going to have to pay nothing, because they don't know nothing me no more. So being that I'm gonna be working my messenger job that I got, that makes paycheck something. It's 145 a week Maybe it might be a little better for Now there's a chance for me to money and get the things tha t I need. I think that now that my wife has apartment, maybe things could be Now I can, you know, relax; decide I want to do. Now I feel a little better. wife noticed it. And my wife knows that I feel better; I'm healing. When wife finally got the apartment I felt that was a message for me to get out selling crack. Because, you know I had that i·llci,dellt., [pointing to his gym bag containing shotgun at his feet] i had that fight the other seller. The guy wants to kill and stuff like that. So now that my wife got an apanIIltllUj it's like a sign telling me to stay out of streets; not to be there no more lwaving arm at the crack house across the street' as a Jeep Renegade waiting at a blasted "Fight the Power" (the be,;tsellin! rap song of 1989 by the group Enemy) from a high-powered cu.stomi;:el stereo sound system]. It's like telling "You already got a place where you pay 50 dollars a month and you don't no more. Now you just stay and relax go to work. Go home and have kids!" Uulio rolls his eyes at Ramon's re1;oil"ticm and playfully offers him the Ramon pauses to sniff, and co;ntillues more contemplatively1 I don't know, maybe I should go back to dealing. I can sell from out of some place else safer. I don't know. [Finishing the dregs our 40-ounce bottle of Olde English malt brew, Ramon threw it in a wide

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onto the street where it smashed loudly to Utle Yilt's glee. Almost m the same gesture ~e thrust two crumpled dollar bills into Julio's hand motioning him to fetch another bottle at the corner store.]

I just hope that she really does get the apartment Because I just hope that she really does get the apartment. We got the lease and everything, but the landlord is still giving a little hard time to her about getting the apartment. She already did pay a downpayment. That was two days ago - welfare gave her the money for that. She gave a month of rent, and a month's security welfare gave her that - and then Section 8 paid for rhe rest. So everything is covered. The apartment's still gotta be fixed up, but it's livable. All my wife needs is the key. She already called for the electricity - to put in the light and stuff like that. Tomorrow they're putting on the lights: and tomorrow they come and check the apartment to see if it's okay: so tomorrow I find out if I'm gonna have the apartment, or whatever. That's gonna be tomorrow [clenching his fist anxiously]. If I do get it: good! If I don't: then I'm gonna have to wait another month or two to get another apartment. My problem is that I could stay where I'm at now for only so long, because I'm staying with my wife's cousin and he ain't paying rent there no more, and he's going to get thrown out. The most I could stay is for about two more weeks. My cousin knows he's gonna be thrown out. He's working, but he's saving some money to get his own apartment somewhere else - in a better neighborhood, so he doesn't care. And I'm just waiting to see if my wife gets t~is apartment, so I can just move out too: 12ke my things out; and go back to her apartment; and get back together again wlth her and my son. They have to give it to her, 'cause she already signed the lease, she paid a month's

security - a month of rent. The apartment has to be hers. [Clenching his fist again and then reaching back with his fingernail into the pile of cocaine which was now resting on the bench.] The landlord okayed it and everything. - If the apartment doesn't work out, can-'t you stay with someone else in your family?

I don't want my mother to suffer Ramon My brother and my sister - they were also staying in a public shelter they're living in a three-room shelter now like my wife was moved to. So they have their own private place and everything in a sheiter. My other older sister is staying with her husband now. Her husband just came out of jail. And now they're staying at a hotel. S My other younger sister is in jail. My youngest brother is also in jail. So it's just me, my older brother, and my older sister who's outside. My mother moved to Queens. She has her own place: she's happy. I make it look like I'm doing good to her and she's happy that I'm doing good. I don't want my· mother to suffer. When I visit her I dress up real nice, and I tell my mother: "Don't worry about it. I'm doing good."

A while back I almost had enough money to get an apartment Julio [Interrupting and passing Ramon the new bottle of beer] Your family be living wrong, boy! Ramon ICracks the seal of the bottle and reflexively pours a few drops onto the pavement in a traditional Puerto Rican gesture that commemorates departed spirits. He then dril1ks only a small gulp, unprepared for how cold the contmts of the fresh bottle would be. Grimacing he passes it em to Iulio, but without looking at him.] It's really been like three-and-a-half years New York City lodges homeless families hotels when emergency shelters afC full.

5

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Homeless in El Barrio

since I've been looking for an apartment. It's been bad luck but I didn't find nothing. A while back I almost had enough money to get an apartment. I had a thousand dollars. I only needed another 200 dollars to get an apartment. But I didn't have it so I had to leave it. Another time I gave this man 400 dollars who said he would get me an apartment. It just happened that I was looking in a building where it said" Apartment for Rent," and when I walked into the building to look at it, beHeve it or not, the guy happened to be coming out from tbat place. He said, "If you give me 400 dollars I will get you this apartment right here." He showed me the rooms and everything. I said, "It's good" - that was in Brooklyn.

And all of a sudden I had the money right there in my hand, you know [cradling an imaginary wad in his palm]. So he said "give me the money, I will write a receipt [scribbling on an imaginary slip of pal)er], I'll write you a receipt." I gave him 400 dollars and he gave me this receipt [fishing a dog-eared scrap of paper from out of his wallet and holding it up] and he signed it and 1 signed the bottom [pointing to a smudged mark in the corner]. Then I was supposed to take this receipt to some office ... to welfare - 1 think ... 1 forgot now. But he broke out with the money. He had a drug habit. I went to his mother and 1 told her "My money better be here because I'm out here sacrificing; looking for an apartment ... out

here on the streets sacrificing for my family; and for some bastard to try to take my money! 1 don't lose my money for nobody. My money better appear or some shit is going to happen in this house." And she knew that I was serious. I said "Anything happens to my money, somebody is going to pay for it. Somebody is going to have to pay for this. I don't care who it is. But I just hope it doesn't have to be you."

Can you believe that bastard actually jeopardized his own mother?

So, ah ... [sniffing] it took her two three days to get my money back. I didn't get it back from him. I got money back from his older brother came in from Staten Island ... from far. He gave his mother the money and again because she called him and eX]}la.inei the situation.

It took a for him. If I If he doesn't kill him; or

few days and I was seen him I probably kill have my money, I'm I send him to the

Either way ... he's going to payoff for money.

Every time that I look at it [1J()ta,'n!! "b' the crumpled "receipt"]' it reminds me, know, how he actually broke out with 400 dollars. I never heard from him [drinking deeply].

Life treated me this way so bad that I don't give a fuck no more - Yo Ramon, this is a great tape making for me. I think J could use it in book, hut I'm getting tired. 1 haven't sniffing like you guys, and I gotta take son to school in the morning. I'm gonna break out. Ramon [Unable to talk because of the mouthful of cold beer he had just gulped, he signaled for me to keel) the tape recorder running. Almost with the same hand motion he dipped into the cocaine pile which was back on Julio's lap and sniffed daintily.] I learned a lot growing up in EI Barrio. I learned ... [sniffing again more deeply, and increasing the tempo and urgency of his diction[ I learned how to survive the danger, you know. Because)

when you was a kid you see people die right in front of you [sniffing again]. Getting their heads blown off. Shot in the face and actually when they get shot they just fall on their face [making the motion of stumbling forward expressionless]. Right there [pointing to the gutter next to little Yilt in the stroller who was watching transfixed]. You see a dead body. You see their brains splatter on the wall [pointing to the bricks of the high-rise pmject behind us].

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I seen that before [Sniffing]. I was in 'h I· I was in junior high school. RIght >C 00, .' 6 R' I h there where the Club IS at. Iglt on t e wall ... not inside the Club, but outside. Right on that wall; next to the fish store. I seen brains splattered nght there [spread. g hisarms open as if admiring an impress' h vista]. I seen peopI e gettll1g sot; mugged; [speaking even faster] mugged in front of my face; people mugging each other and stabbed; stabbed! tn jve

The "Club'; was another crack house located five blocks away, owned by the man who owned the botanica crack house that Julio managed. 6

[Slowing down again[ It·s becoming like nothing to me no more. I don't feel nothing no more. You can come out with a gun at me and I'm just going to tell you "Shoot me!" I don't give a fuck. I never got shot before but ... you don't fear no more when you're living in a jungle; when you)re living in a place where you got to survive. It's either you or me. Either you go, or I go. That's how life treated me. Life treated me this way so bad that I don't give a fuck no more. And I got the temper and everything from here ... from EI Barrio [waving expansively up and down the stl'eet, then sniffing and drinking deeply].

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pierre Bourdieu

The Abdication of the State he perfectly commendable wish to go see things in person, close up, sometimes leads people to search for the explanatory principles of observed realities where they are not to be found (not all of them, in any case), namely, at the site of observation itself. The truth about what happens in the "problem suburbs" certainly does not lie in these usually forgotten sites that leap into the headlines from time to time. 1 The true object of analysis, which must be constructed against appearances and against all those who do no more than endorse those appearances, is the social (or more precisely, political) construction of reality as it appears to intuition, and of its journalistic, bureaucratic and political representations, which help to produce effects that are indeed real, beginning with the political world, where they structure discussion, and extending to the world of science.

T

The State Nobility and liberalism If a good deal of space is given here to the critical analysis of representations, it is not for the simple pleasure of polemics. These collective constructions are part of the reality we are trying to understand, and for which they are in large part responsible. Such is the case with the neoliberal perspective 2 behind the policy measures in the 1970s concerned with governmental housing snbsidies, which have helped create social division, often made material in space, even, as in SaintFlorentin, by a single street rnnning between the owners of small houses and the residents of hnge honsing projects. Bnt when the "Vaulx-en-Velin riots" or the "Saint-Florentin murder" are the lead stories in the newscasts and headlines in newspapers, who remembers the position paper on the HLMs, the Barre or

? The division among djsciplines -

ethnology, sociology, history and economy - translates itself back into separated segments that arc totally inadequate to the objects of study: take the opposition between local monographs incapable of grasping the mechanisms whose effects they record, and analyses that aim at being more systematic but tend to choose morc or less arbitrarily among the complexity of facts to construct "stvlized" models. 2 Liberalism in' the French sense is economic liberalism, the belief in free market, laissez-faire economics. Economic liberalism opposes a long-standing French tradition of state intervention in the economy. [Tf.]

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Nora-Eveno commissions and all the debates on "aid to construction" and to people" that stirred up management circles 15 years earlier under d'Estaing and his Secretary of State for Housing, Jacques Barrot? have a short memory, and the names of al1 those who participated in the co.lle(:tive. development of some of the most decisive postwar decisions have been tnt"\I,, forgotten. 3 By the same token, can one expect journalists, and journalist sophers, who go on and on in their editorials about the "Islamic veil" or "C'Jcn,,," in one or another housing project in the suhurbs of Paris or Lyon, to real1y themselves how journalism helps produce the very "event" that they think they recording and analyzing? The opposition between economic liberalism and statism that preoccupies so many writers these days does not hold up under close observation even fof a second. It becomes clear, for example, that the State shapes the real estate market decisively, particularly through its control over property values and mortgage or rental subsidies. It also helps determine the social distribution of space, or, if you like, the distribution of different social categories in space (on which it also acts through its effect on the labor and educational markets). And it is the retreat of the State and the drying up of public construction subsidies (confirmed during the 1970s when subsidies for the construction of pnblic housing were replaced by allocations to individuals) that is essentially responsible for the appearance of sites of relegation, or dumping grounds, where the economic crisis and unemployment have concentrated the poorest and most disadvantaged populations. So, for housing as for countless other areas, it is impossible to understand the present state of affairs without taking into account the wholesale conversion to neoJiberalism that began in the 1970s and was accomplished in the mid-1980s when Socialist leaders joined the camp. This change was not confined to the ideological shifts touted by media "philosophers" as the "return of the subject" or the "death of '68." It was accompanied by a destruction of the idea of public service, in which the new "leading intellectuals" collaborated through a series of feats of theoretical legerdemain and trumped-up equations, founded on the logic of magical contamination and denunciation to which their Marxist adversaries had so often had recourse in the past. By making economic liberalism the necessary and sufficient condition of political freedom, they assimilate state interventionism to "totalitarianism"; by identifying socialism with the Soviet system, they suggest that since inequalities are unavoidable, the struggle against them is ineffective (which does not keep them from blaming the system for discouraging the best people) and, in any case, can only be undertaken to the detriment of freedom; by associating efficiency and modernity with private enterprise, and archaism and inefficiency with the public sector, they seek to substitute the relationship with the customer, supposedly more egalitarian and more effective, for the relation to the user; finally, they identify "modernization" All the names and above all an analysis of how housing policy was produced m;,lY be found in nos 81-2 of Actes de fa Recherche en Sciences Sociales, published in March 1990 and devoted to "the economy of the house." 3

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ith the transfer into the private sector of the public services with the most profit Wotential and with eliminating or bringing into line subordinate staff in the public ;ervices, held responsible for every inefficiency and every "rigidity."

The State's right and left hands We need only pause right here to see that this whole body of cliches - developed in meeting places specially designed to foster exchanges between "thinkers" longing lor power and people in power longing for ideas (journals, clubs, and colloqnia), and endlessly rehashed in newspapers and news magazines - directly expresses the vision and interests of the higher state nobiiity, a product of Ecole Nationale d'Administration lENA, the elite school for top civil servants] and trained at "Sciences Po" [political science instituteJ.4 These are the new mandarins, hankering for bonuses and ready to jump into the private sector at a moment's notice. Tired of preaching the spirit of "public service" (for everyone else) as they did in the 1960s, or of celebrating the cult of private enterprise, especially after 1980, they claim to manage the public services like a private enterprise even as they protect themselves from the financial or personal constraints and risks associated with institutions whose (bad) habits they ape, especially where personnel management is concerned. These are the people who invoke the imperatives of modernization to attack administrative subordinates, that is, the supposedly "well-off" of the public sector, protected from the risks of free enterprise by the rigid statutes of the corporatist defense of social gains; and these are also the people who vaunt the merits of work flexibility, if they haven't already invoked productivity in order to bring about a gradual reduction in the workforce. It is understandable that minor civil servants, and more especially those charged with carrying out the so-called "social" functions, that is, with compensating, without being given all the necessary means, for the most intolerable effects and deficiencies of the logic of the market - policemen and lower-level judges, social workers, educators and even, more and more in recent years, primary and secondary school teachers - should feel abandoned, if not disowned outright, in their efforts to deal with tbe material and moral suffering tbat is the only certain consequence of this economically legitimated Realpolitik. They experience the contradictions of a state whose right hand no longer knows, or worse, no longer wants what the left hand is doing, contradictions that take the form of increasingly painful "double constraints." How can we not see, for example, that the glorification of earnings, productivity, and competitiveness, or just plain profit, tends to undermine the very foundation of functions that 4 It can be readily verified that the analysis we carried out on the theme of the state nobility and its social conditions of production, well before its triumph, remains completely valid, despite the apparent reprieve that was brought to it by Socialist graduates of the ENA, See Pierre Bourdicu and Luc Boltanski, "La production de I'ideologie dominante," Actes de fa Recherche en Sciences Sociales, no. 2-3 (1976), pp. 1-73.

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The Abdication of the State

depend on a certain professional disinterestedness often associated with UUllI,ln' devotion?5 More profoundly, the very definition of this "street-level bureaucracy" has radically transformed by the substitution of direct aid to individuals for forms of support in the form of access to services (in housing, but elsewhere well, with, for example, a guaranteed minimum income). There is ample eV10e"c" that these two types of aid have totally different consequences. In a perfect with the neoliberal vision, direct aid "reduces solidarity to a simple allocation" and aims solely at facilitating consumption (or inciting to e:n'"tf" consumption) without seeking to orient or to structure that consumption. means that we move from a governmental policy directed at the very structures distribution to a policy that simply wants to correct the effects of the uneqllal distribution of resources in economic and cultural capital. The end result is a state charity, which is destined, just as it was in the good old days of religious philanthropy, for the "deserving poor." In this way, aloug with the weakening of trade unionism and orgauizing groups, the new forms of state activities help turn a (potentially) mobilized /Jeopie into a heterogeneous aggregate of fragmen, ted, isolated poor, "the disadvantaged" as official discourse puts it, who are taken note of mostly (if not exclusively) when they "create problems" or else to remind others who are "well off" of the privilege conferred by permanent employment

School for the subproletariat This detour through the State and its policy decisions is indispensable for under· standing what we observe today "on the ground," that is, the precarious situation of "social workers" mandated by the state (or municipalities) to assure basic public services, health and education in particular, for the most disadvantaged populations in housing projects or slum areas that have increasingly been deserted by the State. These agents of the state are shot through with the contradictions of the State, which they often experience as profoundly personal dramas: contra· dictions between the often endless missions entrusted to them, especially in matters of jobs and housing, and the invariably paltry means granted to them; and those contradictions, no doubt the most dramatic of all, produced in part by their own actions, such as those resulting from the hopes raised and then dashed by the educational system. How could those who must deal daily with the most economically and cultur' ally disadvantaged avoid knowing how could they hide from themselves, the fact It has been observed that people who entcr public service, and most particularly "street~leve) burCU'''' sion, she is discovering right from the start that she is unable to give the that people want and can only offer things they don't want (like the '"tramiee', ships" that are makeshift remedies for unemployment). What conld really LUi",l~:e the situation she is being asked to change does not depend on her, whereas does depend on her cannot really change anything. "I know that what all the people in the neighborhood are after is a job. ( ... ) And that's the one thing they can't be given," and later: "So social work carries its own contradiction, and it is up to the head of the DSQ project to come up with solutions and propose them the different administrations. And there too there is a contradiction, since when yon find something they say: 'it has to fit into the proper category' and the response [of the administration 1 is always: 'financially, it doesn't fall in my category.' " Deprived of the exceptional conditions from which she had benefited in her previous position, Pascale R. runs smack into the two major obstacles encountered by any social work: the resignation of individuals demobilized and demoralized by a long series of failures and disappointments, and the inertia of a fragmented and fragmenting administration, closed off by its rigid routines and assumptions (the "categories") and never as dysfunctional as when it practices democracy under the aegis of a technocratic "social bureaucracy." Social workers can give only what they have: confidence, the minimal hope that is necessary if people are to try to make it out of their difficulties. Social workers must fight unceasingly on two fronts: on the one hand, against those they want to help and who are often too demoralized to take in hand their own interests, let alone the interests of the col1ectivity; on the other hand, against administrations and bureaucrats divided and enclosed in separated universes - to such an extent that, as we see with the RMI [subsistence income for reentry into work], the same services and bureaucrats in charge of paying the recipients are not the ones in charge of their reentry into the workforce. The antinomy between the logic of social work, which is not without a certain prophetic militancy or inspired benevolence, and that of bureaucracy, with its discipline and its prudence, never shows up as clearly as when, obeying "directives from higher up," bureaucrats are converted "to social work from one day to the next," especially when it came to the Tenth Plan: "From a job that works off innovation and conviction and involves relations with people, you reach institutional work; then ... it's a disaster! "

190

An Impossible Mission

Paradoxically, the rigidity of bureaucratic institutions is such that, despite what Max Weber said about them, they .can only functlOn, with more or less diffiCulty, h nks to the initiative, the l11Ventiveness, If not the chansma of those functJOnf aes who arc the least imprisoned in their function. If bureaucracy were left to its a~n logic _ the logic of administrative divisions that reproduce at the local level ~he divisions of the central authorities into separate ministries (precluding effect've action), of dossiers that must be "transmitted, passed on" endlessly, the logiC ~f bureaucratic categories that define what is bureaucratically thinkable ("it's not planned"), of commissions run on prudent judgments, censorship, and control then bureaucracy would paralyze itself. And it is undoubtedly these contradictions emanating from bureaucratic divisions that open up a margin of maneuver, initiative and freedom which can be used by those who, in breaking with bureaucratic routines and regulations, defend bureaucracy against itself.

interview with a project head in the north of France interview by Pierre Bourdieu "I knew too much" Pascale R. I spent six, almost seven years in

T., and when I left it was precisely because I was becoming completely depressed: I had made connections with people little by lit· tle, because there was time to do it and there was a whole dynamic, a whole big group of residents' representatives, men, women, retired people, young people, even

working people - it is very difficult for a working person to spend time on things

l1ing; we had a group that was already set up to work together."]

Modifying relations among people Pascale R. So after several years, with work that relied on unpaid workers or militant volunteers among those who worked, you make ties and then at last you can put prob· lems on the table. But only after several years: it doesn't work right off the bat ...

other than work and family, it's difficult,

Even the first year now at E, I'm just getting

but there were also - there were social workers against whom, a priori, I was in

to know people on new basis, but I know perfectly well that they don't have the can· fidence in me they'll have at the end of four, five years. It takes time. The way I got to know the real problems was because, on behalf of the HLM office at T, I was actu· aUy running the operation I was in charge of; it was a "major" renovation; we were forced to have everybody move out. The first thing I had to do was to find housing for each of the families, and suddenly this

opposition: I was representing the HLM the HLMs give out housing, the social workers ask for it and represent the bad tenants, ..

[The first encounters with the social work· ers were difficult but soon improved during the Ninth Plan. The social workers con· cerned were often volunteers who f)aI·tici· pated in the project on their own time: "So we had a selection of people in the begin·

gave me a particularly important role since

191

An Impossible Mission I knew the families directly ( ... ) I knew who lived in the family, I knew what type of housing they had before, into what type of honsing they had been relocated, so I knew people. And then I knew the social workers, the employees at the welfare office, the tenants' representatives who talked to me about people whom most of the time I knew myself.

r... ] Yes, weIl, I am going to give you an interesting example. At T. we finally got around a table, once a month, the HLM representatives, including me, and residents' representatives who were volunteers and whom we trusted, because not everybody can

belong to a group where you talk about people's private lives, so these were some residents who we could be sure weren't

going to repeat things to everyone, people whom we really trusted. Then social workers, who can't confide in everybody because they know the families, they are there to support them and especially they are not there to divulge their weaknesses or else they risk losing any chance of getting financial aid or an HLM residence, things like that. $0 finally we manage to meet, to put cards on the table, to discuss a casco So the example of behavior: it's someone who was the object of petitions because her place waS full of cats, cats and dogs who pissed, and it stunk up the whole hallway. ( ... ) And then this woman had asked to move, maybe to be near a friend, I don't really remember what the reason was, it wasn't important or perhaps it was, but yes, the reason was ... [laughs] .. . important: it was that her home had become unsanitary! r ... J And it comes from the people, it's their way of living in the residence. Of course there's the question of finances. To not spend money on fuel, they insulate and don't heat, and they do it so well that air doesn't circulate: humidity takes hold. They have no money, they don't repaint or repa-

per, and little by little the whole envelope comes unstuck, the wallpaper comes unstuck, the paint blisters ... It reaches

such a state you see entire ceilings

bling because the plaster or the cob waterlogged and then, at some point whole thing falls, it just crumbles. are really financial reasons. You have know about it, and take account of it. then there is lifestyle. How did they get that point? Sometimes, over several someone who had a husband who died then lets herself go, or it's the other round, or there was a breakup, a d,,'or,cp someone lost a job, someone lost a and then let everything go and at that it is the behavior that changes. There are no financial reasons for it, but they don't keep track of their budget, they let everything go. Then you have certain families. Here it's more difficult because it goes back to the grandparents, the parents, the children ate brought up like that and then you doti't really see how you can change things.

r... J So the woman was told [the woman with the cats] "it's okay to move, but you have to

put the apartment you have now back in shape before leaving." It's difficult to undet· stand because when they want to leave ifs because the place is unlivable and they are told "you have to put it back in shape." ( ... ) And this is part of the tenant's duties; when they move into an apartment, it's in a state to be lived in, so when they leave it, it should be in a state to be lived in or else YOll easily get to a 15,000 francs bill. Con· sequently the move is refused ... $0 for this person, we asked her, we made her admit - it's the social worker who was with her who could transmit the message because if it was someone from the HLM, it would have been the "cop" who had found a "pretext" to refuse her what she wanted; coming from the social worker who is there to help her, it's something else, she comeS to help her, so it was more an advisor in social and family economics, you could say precisely that, who made her understand that she had to put her apartment in order and since she couldn't do it alone, we got some young people from the neighborhood to come, who were already employed for

192

An Impossible Mission

work. They painted and hung for her. was a whole network, seven

neighbors, the superintendent, local _ so neighbors but attenl1ve about _ the social workers, HLM staff, the allocation sector of the HLM, in on it to get this person to

.\i$~~ii;"rybohde:YrVlwTaaLSy of living there. And then we her to give up some of her animals.