An ethnography of advice: between market, society and the declining welfare state

这项为期两年的人类学研究，建立在主要调查员和其他人早期研究的基础上，承担了对建议的民族志调查。在经济危机持续的情况下，学者和政策制定者不得不重塑他们对社会本质的假设：特别是在谁接受援助、谁资助和安排援助方面。福利和福利的“通常”目标是穷人或赤贫的人，现在他们包括那些工作但无法维持生计的人，以及那些经历越来越多复杂问题而需要建议的人。至少在战后的几年里，这些东西的“通常”提供者是国家，但情况越来越不一样了。随着经济危机的迅速发展，政府的作用正在被削弱，获得专家的建议变得越来越重要。在不预先判断结果的情况下，该项目将调查新的安排及其意想不到的后果。它将探索现有办事处（在比较传统的国家资助制度下）、新来源和新机构（在非政府和市场驱动的计划下）以及社会运动、自助和非正式网络安排提供的咨询方面的创新，许多人越来越不得不向这些组织寻求咨询和支持。该项目建议沿着两条轴线进行深入研究。首先，它详细探讨了英国（特别是英格兰，那里有一套非常特殊的法律/福利安排正在运作）的选定地点和案例，“深入”研究了一系列不同规模和层面的具体制度设置、主题和主题。主题和网站包括住房、债务和移民咨询这三个特定领域，包括在特定机构环境内外，以及诉讼当事人开始从事自我代理的法院。其次，它使用了两个精心挑选的跨国比较，以阐明并获得一个批判性的视角，英国福利相关的建议过程的各个方面，往往被当地政策制定者视为自然/不可避免的。在这些不同的背景下，该项目将：记录法律援助资金撤出对提供咨询的持续影响，包括自我诉讼的增加；探索官僚、中介和自助团体所扮演的新角色，他们在咨询过程中越来越重要；调查资金削减是否导致了咨询师经常被要求提供的被大肆吹嘘的同理心的减少，以及在这个过程中，咨询师在塑造他们所咨询的人的行为方面是否变得越来越不有效；看看这些复杂转变的结果，建议的本质是如何发生变化的；探索选定国家设置之间的差异，以阐明英国建议的变化和上下文依赖特征。

This two-year anthropological study, building on earlier research by the principle investigator and others, undertakes an ethnographic investigation of advice. Under conditions of continuing economic crisis, scholars and policy-makers are having to reshape their assumptions about the nature of society: particularly in respect of who receives assistance and who funds and arranges it. Where the 'usual' targets of welfare and benefits were the poor or destitute, they now include those who work but cannot make ends meet, and who experience increasing numbers of complex problems for which they need advice. And where the 'usual' provider of such things, at least in the post-war years, has been the state, this is increasingly not the case. As the economic crisis proceeds apace and the state's role is being whittled down, access to the counsel of experts is nonetheless increasingly essential. Without prejudging the outcomes, the project will investigate novel arrangements and their unintended consequences. It will explore innovations in advice giving provided by existing offices (under more traditional state-funded regimes), by new sources and novel agencies (under non-governmental and market-driven schemes), and by the social movements, self-help and informal network-based arrangements to which many are increasingly having to turn for counsel and support. The project proposes intensive research along two axes. Firstly, it explores in detail selected sites and cases in the UK (specifically England where a very particular set of legal/welfare arrangements is in operation), 'drilling down' to examine specific institutional settings, themes and topics at a range of different scales and levels. Topics and sites include a focus on the three specific areas of housing, debt and immigration advice, both within and beyond particular institutional settings, and law courts where litigants have started to engage in self-representation. Secondly, it uses two carefully-selected cross-national comparisons in order to illuminate, and gain a critical perspective on, aspects of UK welfare-related advice processes which are often taken as natural/inevitable by local policy-makers. Across these different settings, the project will:document the ongoing effects on advice giving of the withdrawal of legal aid funds, including the rise of self-litigation; explore the new roles assumed by bureaucrats, intermediaries and self-help groups, who are increasingly important in the advice encounter; investigate whether funding cuts have caused the dwindling of the much-vaunted empathy that advice-givers are often required to deliver and whether, in the process, advisers are becoming less effective at shaping the behaviour of those they counsel; look at how the very character of advice is changing as a result of these complex transformations;explore variations between selected national settings, to illuminate the changing and context-dependent character of advice in the UK.