Abstract
The present volume examines the political, epistemic, and economic structures through which modern welfare states produce, stabilize, and functionalize social vulnerability.
The point of departure is the observation that poverty, institutional marginalization, and epistemic invisibility cannot be understood merely as accidental side effects of social systems, but frequently arise from specific administrative logics, knowledge orders, and labour regimes.
The first contribution develops the concept of povertism as an analytical category describing mechanisms through which poverty is not merely administered but actively produced and deployed as an instrument of social discipline. Using the German Hartz IV and Bürgergeld systems as central examples, the analysis shows how administrative procedures, sanction regimes, and categorical classifications generate structural vulnerability while simultaneously delegitimizing the knowledge and experiences of those affected. In this context, a functional concept of right-wing radical effects is proposed that does not refer to ideological self-descriptions but to institutional practices in which human dignity becomes effectively conditionalized.
The second contribution extends this analysis to the political economy of knowledge production. It examines a largely overlooked form of structural exploitation: the exploitation of neurodivergent epistemic labour. Many forms of long-term analysis, theoretical innovation, and cultural production emerge under conditions of institutional distance and material insecurity, while their results may simultaneously circulate within scientific, cultural, or political discourses. This constellation leads to a systematic decoupling of epistemic production from economic recognition.
The volume brings together perspectives from political economy, Critical Disability Studies, theories of epistemic injustice, and critical analyses of state administration. It argues that poverty, institutional marginalization, and epistemic invisibility in modern knowledge societies should not be understood solely as social problems but as structural components of existing orders of power and knowledge.
Against this background, the volume raises the question under which institutional and economic conditions socially necessary forms of work—particularly long-term epistemic labour—can be stabilized. Models of universal social security, such as the Universal Care Income, appear in this context not only as social policy reforms but also as possible infrastructural conditions for sustaining forms of knowledge production that cannot easily be integrated into existing labour and value regimes.
Keywords
povertism, poverty-based discrimination, welfare state violence, structural violence, manufactured vulnerability, political economy of poverty, welfare state governance, Hartz IV system, Bürgergeld system, workfare regimes, administrative power, poverty production, classism in welfare systems, social policy critique, institutional marginalization, neurodivergent epistemic labour, exploitation of knowledge work, epistemic injustice, knowledge production and poverty, neurodivergence and labour, autistic epistemology, critical disability studies, poverty and knowledge systems, political economy of knowledge, epistemic exploitation, institutional invisibility of labour, non-market work, long-term epistemic work, Universal Care Income, post-work welfare systems, social security and epistemic labour
Citation
Speed, Timothy. Povertism, Exploitation, and the Political Economy of Manufactured Vulnerability (Studies in World-Formation, Vol. 16). Zenodo, 2026. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19002300.
Direct access to the full text: Speed_2026_World-Binding-Vol_16_en.pdf