scholarly journals MODEL INSTITUTIONS AND THE GEOGRAPHY OF SOCIAL REFORM IN EARLY VICTORIAN BRITAIN

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 789-812 ◽  
Author(s):  
TOM CROOK
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
The State ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Sharp Focus ◽  
Victorian Period

AbstractThis article reconsiders the nature and novelty of social reform in Britain during the early Victorian period. Historians have long ceased to debate the period in terms of a ‘revolution in government’, or the beginnings of a welfare state. Instead, the current consensus presents a picture of only modest, fitful change. Neither the state, nor the overall ideological landscape, was radically transformed. This article seeks to reinject a sense of transformative change back into these decades. It does so by examining a neglected facet of this otherwise richly served period of social reform: the formation and functioning of a series of self-styled ‘model’ institutions that spanned the fields of education, prisons, housing, and sanitation. In particular, what the use of these model institutions brings into sharp focus are the radical changes that occurred in the geography of social reform, which at this point began to develop according to multiple spatial relations, extending at once within and beyond Britain. Between them, they helped to engineer a truly cosmopolitan culture of social policy-making, which was both multi-directional – policies flowed outwards and inwards – and composed of multiple relations, national, imperial, and transnational.

Social Work and Social Welfare: The Organization of Philanthropic Resources in Britain, 1900–1914

1977 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Social System ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
The State ◽  
Charity Organization ◽  
Transitional Era

Late Victorian and Edwardian social reform has been studied in recent years in order to clarify that important transitional era when new state resources were being called upon to help redress the most glaring abuses which comprised the condition-of-England question. Most of these studies have emphasized the politics of social policy and have also subsumed the tangled and competitive world of philanthropy. But philanthropists were prominent in the politics and practice of social welfare. In his study of Edwardian social policy, Bentley Gilbert distinguishes three organizations as characteristic of “scientific social reform”: settlements (inspired by Canon Samuel Barnett), the Fabians, and the Charity Organization Society. His analysis of each concluded that “professionally-minded social work,” as represented by the C.O.S., least typified the transition from old to new attitudes about social policy. David Owen's examination of English philanthropy supports Gilbert's conclusions concerning the C.O.S., and less detailed surveys of social policy also cite that agency as representative of a philosophic individualism which rejected the policies necessary for reform. All agree that the charitable community called attention to many defects in the British social system, but they leave readers with the impression that it generally opposed state sponsored remedies for those ills.It is the concern of this essay to show that the “professionally-minded” world of Edwardian philanthropy was, like the state, developing new agencies and reorganizing its resources to help meet the massive and diverse welfare needs of the twentieth century.

Neo-liberalism as an ideology, an elite project and its impact on austerity

2020 ◽  
pp. 13-26
Author(s):  
Nigel Malin
Keyword(s):  
Economic Evaluation ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Audit Culture ◽  
Competition State ◽  
Social Agenda ◽  
The Social

This chapter discusses the relevance of neo-liberalism as both an ideology and as a pragmatic approach, defined as a re-making of the state, where the state is not rolled back as such but is re-shaped, re-configured to better serve the demands of capital. Neo-liberalism represents an attempt to replace political judgement with economic evaluation, including, but not exclusively, the evaluations offered by markets. Writers on this subject such as Davies, Gough, Garrett, Peck, Mirowski and Shaxson are referred to where they address globalisation and audit culture, the logic of markets and economic evaluation. It was believed that the economic pressures generated by neo-liberal globalisation would inexorably lead to welfare state entrenchment or its dissolution and replacement by a lean ‘competition’ state. Yet the global rediscovery of poverty and the challenges to territorially-based conceptions of social rights posed by the increasing flow of migrants have put social policy issues on the social agenda.

Social Steering and Household Strategies: the macropolitics and the microsociology of welfare states

1989 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Göran Therborn
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The State ◽  
Individual Action ◽  
Public Provision ◽  
Ordinary Life ◽  
Household Data ◽  
Analytical Perspective ◽  
The Welfare State

ABSTRACTAn analytical perspective for grasping how welfare states relate to the ordinary life-pursuits of their population and how the latter relates to the welfare state is needed. What welfare states do is distinguished into social administration, social education, social reform, and social steering. Steering reaches furthest into people's lives. As such it is problematic both to integrative and aggregative theories of democracy; it can also include the possibility of calling forth more signals from the population than less ambitious democratic policies. A systematic overview of aggregate Swedish household data the major activities of households provides a basis for analysing how the population is affected by and affects the welfare state. The state appears as an important provider of work, housing, childcare, and leisure; the most effective signals from households to the state come forward when public provision and subsidy have created tight markets. From the household perspective, signals to government through individual action of various sorts, direct or mediated, appear crucial even in very organized Sweden.

Retrenched, Reconfigured and Broken: The British Welfare State after a Decade of Austerity

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-96
Author(s):  
Kevin Farnsworth
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Public Expenditure ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Crisis Events ◽  
Financial Base ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

This article is an attempt to take stock and critically reflect on the UK’s decade of austerity and social policy hostility over the past decade. It distinguishes between economic and political austerity and digs deeper into the data on expenditure in order to examine the impact of austerity on British public expenditure and politics. It argues that the decade of austerity was a hostile one for British social policy which not only undermined the financial base of key parts of the welfare state, it reshaped it and redefined its priorities, setting in train a series of subsequent events that would further change, not just British social policies, but British economics, polity and politics. And, as subsequent crises – notably Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic – testify, crisis events tend to be linked, and each one shapes and influences the ability of the state to respond to the next.

scholarly journals DIGITAL ECONOMY AS A FACTOR IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SOCIAL STATE

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 155-162
Author(s):  
Alla Silenko ◽  
Vira Bezrodna ◽  
Olga Nikogosyan
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Development Trend ◽  
Digital Economy ◽  
Living Conditions ◽  
The State ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

The digital economy is becoming a development trend in most modern countries, the basis for sustainable economic growth and living standards of the population. In this regard, it seems relevant to consider the significance of the impact of the digital economy on the welfare state. The purpose of the article is to study the influence of the digital economy on the quality and living conditions of citizens in a welfare state. Methodology. The study is based on a systemic approach, within which the digital economy has been viewed as an external phenomenon (input) that has been able to affect the welfare state system (output). Results. The hypothesis of the study that the digital economy improves the quality and living conditions of citizens in a welfare state was partially confirmed. However, it became clear that in addition to positive, the digital economy has negative consequences for people. For example, the digital economy improves the ability to solve many social problems, but at the same time creates new problems. For example, it creates new jobs, new professions, as a result of which workers in traditional professions become unclaimed. The digital economy not only solves and creates problems, but also exposes them. So, it has clearly outlined the problem of social inequality in Ukraine. Undoubtedly, the digitalization of public social services makes life easier for people, but only if they are prepared for this process. Digital illiteracy of the population, characteristic of countries lagging behind in technological development, including Ukraine, is an obstacle to the introduction of digitalization into the social sphere. At the same time, the state is not ready for the active introduction of digital technologies into the system of social policy yet due to the lack of necessary resources. Digitalization will not improve people’s lives until the state has funds for social policy. And yet, some measures are being taken in this direction.

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