Connective Labor Theory of Poverty Governance: Horizontality, Harm Reduction, and the Mending of the Safety net

• In Event: 50211 - Community Responses to Drug Use: Grassroots Movements, Mutual Aid, and Harm Reduction

Abstract

Not all that is human melts into AI. Rather, certain jobs demand human connection, and value of this labor emerges from face-to-face encounters. What role does human connection play in the management of social problems? This article situates Pugh’s (2022, 2023) theory of connective labor within a relational analysis of poverty governance (Lara-Millán 2021; Seim 2020; Seim and DiMario 2023). In doing so, I broaden Pugh’s notion of connection beyond the cultivation of recognition between worker and subject to make sense how other workers, organizations, and institutions may be objects of a “horizontal” kind of connective labor. Drawing upon an ethnographic study of a harm reduction organization in Los Angeles, my findings illustrate how much of the work employees conduct involves “connecting” with other actors, organizations, and institutions involved in governing their clients: unhoused people who use drugs. I examine three strategies of horizontal connective labor harm reductionists use to attempt to mend a fragmented safety net. These strategies include forging link and fostering collaboration with other organizations, building rapport by reducing the labor other actors must undertake, and leveraging their own intimate understandings of their clients to negotiate how they are treated by other institutions. In each case, horizontal connections remain fragile, as they are often mediated at an individual rather than organizational level. Consequently, useful horizontal connections may evaporate because of personnel, policy, or procedural changes.

Author

• Anthony DiMario, University of California San Francisco