Welfare E-Book

Mary Daly

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Key Concepts
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 327

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Welfare is an important concept in the social sciences. It is also challenged and contested not only by alternative concepts but also as a political goal in itself. Using a multi-disciplinary approach, this book takes a fresh look at the continuing relevance of welfare in the context of public policy, recent scholarly developments and changes in popular attitudes and behaviour.

The book connects theory and practice. Tracing the concept's background in economics, political science and social policy, the book juxtaposes welfare with newer approaches, such as subjective well-being, capabilities, care, social exclusion and social capital. The links between welfare and political ideas are also elaborated. The welfare state, as it developed historically in Europe and as it is changing in different countries, is given an important place in the analysis. Drawing on a range of empirical work, the book in its final part considers how individuals and groups attain welfare and how this shapes people's decisions and actions in their everyday lives.

Written in a lively style, the book provides students of sociology, social policy and political science with a valuable point of access to a range of debates and thinking in the field of welfare and related concepts.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Key Concepts series

Title page

Copyright page

Acknowledgements

Lists of Tables, Figures and Boxes

Introduction

1 Founding Ideas and Approaches

Origins and Meanings of Welfare

Welfare in Economistic Thinking

Welfare in Political Philosophy and Political Science

The Social Meanings of Welfare

Overarching Questions about Welfare

The Relative or Universal Nature of Welfare

The Individual or Collective Nature of Welfare

Who is the Appropriate Provider?

Overview

2 Well-being and Other Challenges to Conventional Understandings of Welfare

The Rise and Rise of Well-being

Broadening Well-being in the Direction of Agency and Resources

Care and Personal Relations

Welfare and Society: Sociological Theorisations

Overview

Intermezzo

3 Classic Political Philosophies of Welfare

Main Relevant Philosophical Traditions

Liberalism

Democratic Socialism

Marxism

Conservatism

Models of Organised Welfare

Changing Perspectives and Priorities

Overview

4 The State and Public Welfare

Defining the Welfare State

The Evolution of Welfare and the State

The Structure of the Welfare State

Welfare State Variation

Explanations for Different Models

Change and Reform

Overview

Intermezzo

5 Securing Material Welfare through the Market and the State

Welfare through Markets: Securing Welfare through Paid Work

Income Sources and Income Security

Poverty

The Financial Achievements and Limitations of the Welfare State13

Inequality and Opportunity

Life Courses and Trajectories

Overview

6 The Personal and Social Relations of Welfare

Family and Resource Distribution

Family as Location of Welfare Production

Welfare State and Family

Civil Society, Support in the Community and Social Integration

Overview

7 Conclusion

References

Index

Key Concepts series

Barbara Adam, Time

Alan Aldridge, Consumption

Alan Aldridge, The Market

Jakob Arnoldi, Risk

Colin Barnes and Geof Mercer, Disability

Darin Barney, The Network Society

Mildred Blaxter, Health 2nd edition

Harriet Bradley, Gender

Harry Brighouse, Justice

Mónica Brito Vieira and David Runciman, Representation

Steve Bruce, Fundamentalism 2nd edition

Margaret Canovan, The People

Alejandro Colás, Empire

Anthony Elliott, Concepts of the Self 2nd edition

Steve Fenton, Ethnicity 2nd edition

Katrin Flikschuh, Freedom

Michael Freeman, Human Rights

Russell Hardin, Trust

Geoffrey Ingham, Capitalism

Fred Inglis, Culture

Robert H. Jackson, Sovereignty

Jennifer Jackson Preece, Minority Rights

Gill Jones, Youth

Paul Kelly, Liberalism

Anne Mette Kjær, Governance

Ruth Lister, Poverty

Jon Mandle, Global Justice

Anthony Payne and Nicola Phillips, Development

Judith Phillips, Care

Michael Saward, Democracy

John Scott, Power

Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism 2nd edition

Stuart White, Equality

Copyright © Mary Daly 2011

The right of Mary Daly to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First edition published in 2001 by Polity Press

This edition first published in 2011 by Polity Press

Polity Press

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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

350 Main Street

Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4470-7

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4471-4(pb)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-3723-5(Single-user ebook)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-3722-8(Multi-user ebook)

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Acknowledgements

I offer my thanks to all those who helped me with the writing of this book. In particular, I thank Barbara MacLennan and David Purdy for their excellent feedback just at the time when it was most needed. I would also like to thank the reviewers for their helpful and thought-provoking comments (and especially the reviewer who read the document a second time). I also thank my colleagues and Head at the School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work at Queen’s University for their collegiality and support. I owe a debt also to Dennis Hogan and the Department of Sociology at Brown University for providing me with a friendly base from which to conduct my research on the US. Finally, it is a pleasure to acknowledge the guidance and support I received from staff at Polity Press. Emma Longstaff helped especially in the early days when I was trying to put the idea for the book together and Jonathan Skerrett was extremely supportive and gave invaluable guidance throughout.

Lists of Tables, Figures and Boxes

List of Tables

2.1 Key features of poverty, social exclusion and social capital

2.2 Emphases and interests of the concepts considered in this chapter

3.1 Relevant emphases of different philosophical traditions

4.1 Functions of state-organised welfare systems for individuals and society

4.2 Characterising the main welfare state regimes

5.1 Composition of gross income in Germany, UK and US (%), 2005

5.2 Indicators of financial well-being inequalities in Germany, UK and US, 2006

5.3 Reduction in inequality in market income and poverty (%) c.2000

6.1 Family and material and relational welfare

6.2 Care provision for children by families, 2004/5

List of Figures

3.1 Main perspectives on organised welfare

3.2 Changing orientations of classic philosophies

List of Boxes

1.1 Three core meanings of welfare in scholarship

1.2 Focus of classic scholarship on welfare

1.3 Enduring questions and tensions in welfare scholarship

1.4 Doyal and Gough’s basic and intermediate needs

2.1 Gross National Happiness in Bhutan

2.2 Dimensions of psychological well-being

2.3 UN’s Human Development Index (HDI)

2.4 Two meanings of care

5.1 Key elements of material welfare

5.2 Examples of funnelling mechanisms in the labour market that limit welfare

Introduction

This book presents an account and analysis of welfare as a concept and a focus of political and social organisation. It traces welfare’s history in academic work and considers different applications and forms of welfare in relation to everyday life. The book is especially interested in offering a social reflection on welfare – this directs it towards the social relations of welfare. Welfare is an old idea, with deep roots in a number of disciplines. In academic work it has a specific history, referring to the satisfactions yielded by economic transactions, or to an ideal form of ethical and political functioning, or to a condition of meeting need and addressing social problems. Welfare has a more general set of uses and applications also. Expressed in popular accounts, it connotes well-being in the sense of having our needs and desires met. All usages of the term tend to have a strong moral content: welfare engages not just with how we ourselves live but with how we think others should live as well. This may be assessed in relation to standards and functioning of everyday life or, more abstractly, in terms of whether and how principles such as equality, justice and liberty are esteemed. There are thorny questions and decisions involved, pertaining to how resources should be shared out, the meaning of community and belonging, and the extent to which individuals, groups and governments have social responsibilities. In effect, welfare rests on contested terrain.

Welfare-related issues have never been more relevant. The kinds of challenge faced by societies are common in several respects: How can welfare be secured in a context of decreasing resources and threats to ecological survival? How are the rising expectations of the populace to be met when decisions about resources seem to be shaped more and more by discourses of scarcity and blame? The changing context predates the latest recession. What one might call ‘the democratic social settlement’ in Europe and other highly industrialised parts of the world – based on the implicit promise of a good job, an improving standard of living, and the security of a peaceful unfolding of a lifetime of achievement and progress – has been coming under increasing pressure for at least a decade or more. And, of course, the last two years of crisis in the global financial and political systems have heightened insecurities massively. However, the erosion of key institutions set in before 2008. Rising levels of poverty and inequality indicate that what we thought were well-established mechanisms of security and mobility – arrangements providing a guarantee of an autonomous future to each generation – have not been as effective in recent decades as they once were.