Between Post-Disciplinary Tolerance and Concerted Constraint: Managing Madness for the City and Privileged Family

• In Event: 1444 - Emerging Topics in Deviance and Social Control

Abstract

How do public safety net and elite private psychiatric providers cope with a key dilemma since deinstitutionalization—managing madness when people have the right to refuse care? I observed two approaches to community-based services, one that honors “non-compliance” and deviant choices, and another that attempts to micro-manage daily life. The puzzle, given theories of the paternalistic governance of poverty, is that select poor psychiatric patients are given autonomy while the wealthy are disciplined. What explains this? Drawing on comparative fieldwork in Los Angeles, I show how contrasting ecological pressures and resource bases shape divergent practices. In the context of urban poverty governance, mental health care and low-barrier housing offers a way to remove problem people from public space. This "post-disciplinary tolerance" is linked to limited state capacity and the construction of clients as beyond transformation. In the context of family systems governance, mental health is a project to reform wayward relatives and equip them with respectable futures. A "concerted constraint" of deviance, akin to Lareau’s theory of privileged childrearing, is reserved for those who can afford rehabilitation and conceivably recover. Using these cases, I contribute to theories of social control and inequality in advanced liberal societies.

Author

• Neil Gong, UCLA