The ‘Contained Critique’ of the Anti-poverty Advocacy Community and Ontario’s ‘Inclusive’ Liberal Agenda
Abstract
In the past three decades, governments and many social poverty advocates in Canada, and elsewhere, have embraced an ‘inclusive’ liberal model of social policy, known for its activist, employability orientation. This paper examines how, in this period, the social policy advocacy community in Ontario was involved in advancing this model. It draws from assemblage theory to focus on how their work served to ‘contain the critique’ of neoliberalism, limit the conditions for possibilities of ‘thinking otherwise’, and recasting the meaning of social policy, equity, social justice, and possibilities for meaningful change.
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