Working to Feel Better or Feeling Better to Work? Discourses of Wellbeing in Austerity Reality TV

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2018

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University of Hawaii at Manoa -- Center on Disability Studies

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By focusing on discourses within the ‘cultural economy’ of reality TV, the following considers the wider positioning of waged labor as essential for mental health during a period of austerity. The findings suggest that discourses of mental health and wellbeing construct figures of a ‘good’ welfare-recipient as one who achieves wellbeing through distancing themselves from the welfare state and progress toward waged work. Framed within the landscape of ‘psycho-politics’, wellbeing and unemployment are arguably entangled to legitimize current welfare policy, placing responsibility on individuals for economic and health security and dissolving concerns over austerity’s systemic impact.

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austerity, mental health, reality TV

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Sandle, R. V., Day, K. & Muskett, T. (2018). Working to Feel Better or Feeling Better to Work? Discourses of Wellbeing in Austerity Reality TV. Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal, 14(2).

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