The autonomy-fostering state: Citizenship and social service delivery

Abstract

This dissertation argues that the state has an obligation to foster autonomy in its citizens, particularly its most vulnerable. Autonomy is a key requirement for the exercise of full citizenship rights. Therefore, such an obligation exists for states that lay claim to an inclusive and universal notion of citizenship. I further existing feminist conceptions of autonomy as relational – as a capacity that is developed in social relationships. I focus on an important site of state-citizen relationships: social service delivery. Service providers mediate access to citizenship for service users along two axes of autonomy: autonomy as capacity and status. Capacities determine citizens’ abilities to be full participants in social and political life. Ascription of the status of autonomy grants access to relations of recognition that determine inclusion along psychic, institutional, and embodied lines. Drawing on empirical examples of service delivery, I theorize the conditions under which the state structures its relationships with citizens so that autonomy-competency can develop. The cases I consider focus on vulnerable members of society specifically because such cases are theoretically difficult; in particular, they challenge our conceptions of the relationship between autonomy and dependence. Moreover, the cases bring to light the at times conflicting aims of various arms of the state, which complicate but do not preclude a theory of the autonomy-fostering state. The first case explores a model of service delivery for survivors of domestic violence: “coordinated community response” programs. The second case focuses on “harm reduction” services, a philosophy of service delivery for drug users that seeks to minimize harm without requiring abstinence. A third case turns to service delivery programs emerging from a philosophy of “new paternalism,” a directive mode of welfare provision rooted in mechanisms of conditionality. Though no case embodies an ideal example of autonomy fostering, I draw upon both the successes and failures of each to conceptualize the notions of autonomy, state power, and citizenship that underlie the theory of the autonomy-fostering state.

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