Welfare State Romance

2021 ◽  
pp. 189-223
Author(s):  
Benjamin Kohlmann
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Institutional Reform ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Howards End ◽  
Arctic Summer ◽  
Social Ethos

Forster’s works responded to the heated reformist debates surrounding the passing of the 1911 Insurance Act, and they engaged with the question whether a new social ethos of responsibility and care would need to precede, or whether it would flow from, institutional reform. What Howards End calls ‘preparedness’—i.e. the attempt to protect the most vulnerable members of society against the risk of unemployment—is central to the generic instabilities of Forster’s novel. These instabilities are further heightened in Forster’s novel fragment Arctic Summer, which fails in championing the excitements of ‘romance’ over the perceived boredom of a life guarded against risk. We need to read with rather than against the grain of these texts by taking seriously both their progressive aspirations and their reparative attention to subject positions that are excluded from the period’s projects of reform.

Justifications of citizens’ subject positions in public debates on welfare

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janne Mikael Autto ◽  
Jukka Törrönen
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Day Care ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Social Situations ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Welfare State

Foucault’s work has inspired studies examining how subject positions are constructed for citizens of the welfare state that encourage them to adopt the subject position of active and responsible people or consumers. Yet these studies are often criticised for analysing these subject positions as coherent constructions without considering how their construction varies from one situation to another. This paper develops the concept of subject position in relation to the theory of justification and the concept of modality in order to achieve a more sensitive and nuanced analysis of the politics of welfare in public debates. The theory of justification places greater weight on actors’ competence in social situations. It helps to reveal how justifications and critiques of welfare policies are based on the skilful contextual combination of diverse normative bases. The concept of modality, in turn, makes it possible to elaborate how subject positions in justifications and critiques of welfare policies become associated with specific kinds of values. We demonstrate the approach by using public debates on children’s day care in Finland. The analysis illustrates how subject positions are justified in relation to different kinds of worlds and made persuasive by connecting them to commonly desirable rights, responsibilities, competences or abilities.

scholarly journals Reducing loneliness among older people – who is responsible?

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 584-603 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Agren ◽  
Elisabet Cedersund
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Older People ◽  
Severe Problem ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Evolutionary Perspectives ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractIn the Swedish news-press, loneliness among older people is presented as a severe problem that needs to be solved. The issue of who is responsible for reducing loneliness and how this responsibility is designated is, however, rarely discussed. In this study, we have analysed how responsibility is designated and constructed in articles from the Swedish news-press. Focus has been on identifying responsibility in discourses proceeding from the concept of subject positions. This concept has enabled analysis on how responsibility is negotiated and who is positioned as a responsible actor with the ability to perform actions that reduce loneliness. Three dominating discourses were found. In the discourse of responsibility within politics and the welfare state, the responsibility is both self-taken and designated to other institutions held responsible for not initiating sufficient measures to reduce loneliness. In the discourse of responsibility within societal and evolutionary perspectives on loneliness, developments beyond the individual's control are considered to contribute to loneliness. At the same time ‘we’ in ‘society’ are considered capable of reducing loneliness, thereby constructing individuals as responsible actors. Within the discourses of responsibility within senior organisations, both senior organisations and people who participate in activities are constructed as responsible actors. In conclusion, the responsibility for reducing loneliness is, apart from the discourse on senior organisations, designated to those working with older people.

scholarly journals Communities of care: Public donations, development assistance, and independent philanthropy in the Wa State of Myanmar

2020 ◽  
pp. 0308275X2097409
Author(s):  
Andrew Ong ◽  
Hans Steinmüller
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Development Assistance ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The Self ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Rebel Governance ◽  
The Poor ◽  
De Facto States

If there are any charitable, philanthropic, or welfare-state activities in the de facto states of insurgent armies, they are generally interpreted in terms of utilitarian motives and the self-legitimation of military elites and their business associates. However, development and philanthropy in the Wa State of Myanmar have more extensive purposes. We argue that a framing of care rather than of governance allows for ethnographic attention to emerging social relations and subject positions – ‘our people’, ‘the vulnerable’, and ‘the poor’. In this article we describe ‘communities of care’ by analysing public donations, development assistance and independent philanthropy in the Wa State as categories of care that each follow a different moral logic, respond to different needs, and connect different actors and recipients. Zooming in on the ways in which communities of care reproduce moral subjectivities and political authority allows a re-imagining of everyday politics in the de facto states of armed groups, no longer wedded to notions of control, legitimacy, and ‘rebel governance’.

"Rats, Man, and the Welfare State": Comment.

1959 ◽  
Vol 14 (9) ◽  
pp. 594-594
Author(s):  
James C. Crumbaugh
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
The Welfare State
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