Welfare conditionality and social marginality: The folly of the tutelary state?

In a contemporary evolution of the tutelary state, welfare reform in the United Kingdom has been characterised by moves towards greater conditionality and sanctioning. This is influenced by the attributing responsibility for poverty and unemployment to the behaviour of marginalised individuals. Mead (1992) has argued that the poor are dependants who ought to receive support on condition of certain restrictions imposed by a protective state that will incentivise engagement with support mechanisms. This article examines how the contemporary tutelary and therapeutic state has responded to new forms of social marginality. Drawing on a series of in-depth interviews conducted with welfare claimants with an offending background in England and Scotland, the article examines their encounters with the welfare system and argues that alienation, rather than engagement with support, increasingly characterises their experiences.

Overview of Ketone-Based Metabolism

Nutritional ketosis produces a nonpathological hyperketonemia resulting from decreased glucose availability, lower insulin, and increased fat oxidation. However, the restrictive nature of the ketogenic diet (KD) has limited the clinical applicability of therapeutic ketosis, due to practical considerations. Emerging data suggests that many of the benefits of the KD are mechanistically attributable to the ketone bodies or specific medium chain triglycerides, and this has motivated investigators to develop strategies to further augment the efficacy of the KD or use metabolic-based supplements to circumvent the need for dietary restriction to improve compliance and the maintenance of this therapeutic state. This section, “Ketone-Based Metabolism: General Health and Metabolic Alternatives,” includes chapters that discuss the expanding medical and performance applications of nutritional ketosis and the emerging science of ketones and other related metabolites as alternative fuels and potent signaling molecules.