US Welfare Reform: Rewriting the Social Contract

2009 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
NEIL GILBERT
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
Public Assistance ◽  
Welfare Policy ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Deficit Reduction ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Right ◽  
Temporary Assistance ◽  
Welfare Reforms

AbstractThis paper analyses recent developments in US welfare policy and their implications for future reforms. The analysis begins by examining how the enactment of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programme in 1996 changed the essential character of public assistance and the major social forces that accounted for this fundamental shift in US welfare policy. It then shows how the most recent welfare reforms under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 broadened and intensified the TANF requirements, leaving four avenues along which issues of conditionality and entitlement are likely to be played out in future welfare reforms. Finally, the discussion highlights how a new social contract is being forged through progressive and conservative proposals, which shift the focus of public assistance from the right to financial support to the right to work and earn a living wage.

scholarly journals Psychoanalysis and Deconstruction, A Love Story

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-44
Author(s):  
Kelly Oliver
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Love Story ◽  
The Social ◽  
Origin Story ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Voice

In The Right to Narcissism: A Case for Im-Possible Self-Love, Pleshette DeArmitt opens the space for an alternative to origin story so popular with political philosophers, namely, the social contract, which assumes a rational and self-identical subject.  She does this obliquely by deconstructing narcissism as love of the self-same, or, love of what Kristeva might call “the clean and proper self.”  Like Echo interrupting Narcissus’s soliloquy of deadly self-absorbed pleasure and his solitary auto-affection upon seeing his own reflection, Pleshette interrupts the seeming proximity of self-same, the closeness of near, and the propinquity of proper by deflecting the image of Narcissus onto the voice of Echo, who comes into her own by repeating his words.  How, asks Pleshette, can Echo’s reiteration of the words of another be anything more than mere repetition or reduplication?  Echoing Derrida, she answers that it is through a declaration of love.  Echo’s repetition of the words of Narcissus take on new meaning, and allow her to express herself, and her love, through the words of the other.  After all words are words of the other.  Language comes to us from the other.  Echo becomes a self, a “little narcissist,” through an address from and to the other, through the appropriation and ex-appropriation of the other’s words. 

The ‘Right of the Stronger’: Hobbes contra Spinoza

2020 ◽  
pp. 280-306
Author(s):  
Alexandre Matheron
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Short Discussion ◽  
Real Effects ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Social ◽  
Moral Power ◽  
The Right

Many agree that Rousseau’s The Social Contract takes Hobbes as its target. Does his critique of Hobbes also apply to Spinoza? In this essay, Matheron systematically compares Hobbes and Spinoza’s respective political philosophies with an eye to Rousseau’s criticism of the notion of the ‘right of the stronger’. As Matheron shows, Rousseau’s critique misses the mark in both cases, but for different reasons. The core of Spinoza’s innovation with respect to both Hobbes and Rousseau is his rejection of the idea of right as a moral power distinct from physical power and his identification of right with power. Power, for Spinoza, is not simply corporeal power, but rather the capacity to produce real effects in nature. But whereas Hobbes’s view appealed to the use of reason to determine what is best for preserving ourselves, Spinoza sees all human action as expressions of greater or lesser degrees of power governed instead by desire. Matheron concludes with a short discussion of the right to revolt in Hobbes, Spinoza, and Rousseau.

The Gilets Jaunes and the New Social Contract

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Devellennes
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Fundamental Challenge ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Impact

This book provides a detailed account of the gilets jaunes, the yellow vest movement that has shaken France since 2018. The gilets jaunes are a group of French protesters named after their iconic yellow vests worn during their demonstrations, who have formed a new type of social movement. They have been variously interpreted since they began their occupation of French roundabouts: at first received with enthusiasm on the right of the French political establishment, and with caution on the left. They have provided a fundamental challenge to the social contract in France, the implicit pact between the governed and their political leaders. The book assesses what lessons can be drawn from their activities and the impact for the contemporary relationship between state and citizen. Informed by a dialogue with past political theorists — from Hobbes, Spinoza and Rousseau to Rawls, Nozick and Diderot — and reflecting on the challenges posed by the yellow vest movement, the book rethinks the concept of the social contract for contemporary societies around the world. It proposes a new relationship between the state and the individual, and establishes the necessity of rethinking the modern democratic nature of our representative polities in order to provide a genuine process for the healing of social ills.

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program: Time for Improvements

2019 ◽  
Vol 686 (1) ◽  
pp. 286-309
Author(s):  
Ron Haskins ◽  
Matt Weidinger
Keyword(s):  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Women's Employment ◽  
Women’S Employment ◽  
Working Families ◽  
Low Income Women ◽  
The Right ◽  
Temporary Assistance ◽  
Welfare Reforms ◽  
Welfare Caseload

The 1996 welfare reforms imposed major changes on the nation’s means-tested benefits, including a requirement that states place at least half of their cash welfare caseload in work or related activities. Congress also increased both cash and in-kind subsidies for low-income working families. Between the mid-1990s and 2000, work and wages among low-income women increased and poverty declined. The recessions of 2001 and 2007–2009 caused rising employment to falter, but after 2014, women’s employment rose again, and poverty declined. The impacts of welfare reform on these outcomes have been disputed, with many on the Left charging that states have used welfare funds inappropriately and many on the Right arguing that welfare reform played a major role in the improvements in work, wages, and poverty. We review reforms that have been proposed by one or both parties in recent years, including focusing spending on benefits and work. We conclude with lessons of these reform experiences for future reforms of entitlement programs.

scholarly journals Issues and Challenges of Mangrove conservation in the Anthropocene

2014 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariel E. Lugo ◽  
Ernesto Medina ◽  
Kathleen McGinley
Keyword(s):  
Mangrove Forests ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Effective Management ◽  
Ecological Analysis ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Current Movement ◽  
Mangrove Conservation

This essay addresses the conservation issues facing mangroves in the Anthropocene, defined as the era of human domination over the world. We review the laws, policies, international agreements, and local actions that address the conservation of mangrove forests in the Neotropics and relate them to the Anthropocene. Collaboration between governments, non-governmental organizations, and communities that depend on mangroves for their livelihood will be critical in the Anthropocene. The essay also reviews recent developments in mangrove ecology and ecophysiology that enlighten how mangroves might respond to changes in temperature and rainfall, sea level rise, and other anthropogenic and natural disturbances. Mangroves in the Anthropocene will also face changes in their species composition given the current movement of mangroves species across continental barriers as a result of human activity. These trends will lead to novel mangrove forests and in some cases expand the range of mangroves worldwide. The solution to mangrove persistence in the Anthropocene is not to isolate mangroves from people, but to regulate interactions between mangroves and humans through effective management. We will also have to expand the scope of the ecological analysis of mangrove ecosystems to include the social forces converging on the mangroves through an analytical approach that has been termed Social Ecology. Desafíos de la conservación del mangle en el Antropoceno Este ensayo aborda los problemas de conservación que enfrentan los manglares en el Antropoceno, definido como la época de la dominación humana sobre el mundo. En él repasamos las leyes, políticas, acuerdos internacionales y las acciones locales que se ocupan de la conservación de los bosques de mangle en el Neotrópico y se relacionan con el Antropoceno. La colaboración entre gobiernos, organizaciones no gubernamentales y las comunidades que dependen de los manglares para su sustento será decisiva en el Antropoceno. El ensayo también incluye comentarios sobre los avances recientes en ecología de manglares y en ecofisiología que explican cómo los manglares podrían responder a los cambios de temperatura y precipitación, el aumento del nivel del mar y otras perturbaciones naturales y antropogénicas. Los manglares en el Antropoceno también enfrentarán a cambios en su composición de especies, dado el actual movimiento de especies de manglares a través de barreras continentales como resultado de la actividad humana. Estas tendencias conducirán a nuevas formaciones de manglares y en algunos casos ampliarán la presencia de los manglares en todo el mundo. La solución a la persistencia de manglares en el Antropoceno es no aislar a los manglares de la gente, sino regular las interacciones entre los manglares y los seres humanos a través de una gestión eficaz. También tendremos que ampliar el alcance del análisis ecológico de los ecosistemas de manglar para incluir las fuerzas sociales convergentes en los manglares a través de un enfoque analítico que se ha denominado Ecología Social.

The Right to Be Punished: Autonomy and Its Demise in Modern Penal Thought

1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Dirk Dubber
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Rational Deliberation ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Life Plans ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
Ordinary Person ◽  
The Right

The Enlightenment was the age of empathy and abstract identity. The common man no longer was to be pitied for his unfortunate plight. Instead, enlightened gentlemen and reformers strove to empathize with the ordinary person—identify with him—precisely because he was identical to them in some fundamental sense. That sense differed from Enlightenment theory to theory, but the identity remained central. So Bentham insisted that every member of the utility community was like any other because every member's pain and joy equally affected the utilitarian calculus and thus the common good. Contractarians like Beccaria or Fichte portrayed all citizens as identical insofar as they were all signatories to the social contract, a contract grounded in the shared rationality of its signatories who surrendered some of their external freedom to pursue their life plans protected from the chaos of the law of nature. And Kant and Hegel stressed the common capacity for rational deliberation shared by all humans as rational beings.

On Kant’s Duty to Speak the Truth

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Mertens
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Positive Rights ◽  
The Social ◽  
Legal Duty ◽  
The Right

AbstractIn ‘On the Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy’, Kant defends a position that cannot be salvaged. The essay is nonetheless important because it helps us understand his philosophy of law and, more specifically, his interpretation of the social contract. Kant considers truthfulness a strict legal duty because it is the necessary condition for the juridical state. As attested by Kant’s rejection of Beccaria’s arguments against the death penalty, not even the right to life has such strict unconditional status. Within the juridical state, established by the social contract, the (single) innate right to freedom is transformed into a bundle of merely positive rights, including the right to life. Understanding the reason for the rejection of ‘the right to lie from philanthropy’ thus helps us understand the, in a sense, ‘positivist’ character of Kant’s legal philosophy. In conclusion, some suggestions are made to bring his position closer to our common moral understanding.

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