Class in Iceland

2021 ◽  
pp. 001139212110127
Author(s):  
Guðmundur Oddsson
Keyword(s):  
Welfare States ◽  
Significant Shift ◽  
Social Citizenship ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Neoliberal Globalization ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Late Modernity ◽  
Class Division ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
Structure Class

Individualization theorists claim that the socio-cultural changes of late modernity have dissolved class division and awareness. In contrast, this review of class research on Icelandic society since the dawn of modernization shows that class relations continue to structure inequality and that neoliberal globalization has increased class awareness. This is shown in relation to class structure, class politics, class inequality, class awareness and class culture. Moreover, it is argued that the strength and trajectory of class awareness in late modernity vary by welfare regime and that theorists overgeneralize declining class awareness based on highly differentiated, liberal welfare states. Heightened class awareness in Iceland is explained by the polarizing effects of neoliberal globalization, which represents a more significant shift for social democratic welfare states, where low inequality, comprehensive social citizenship and cultural homogeneity have long curbed perceptions of class division.

Classlessness as Doxa: Late Modernity and Changing Perceptions of Class Division in Iceland

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Gudmundur Aevar Oddsson
Keyword(s):  
Structural Changes ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Neoliberal Globalization ◽  
Late Modernity ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Class Division ◽  
Economic Collapse ◽  
Classless Society ◽  
The University

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This dissertation advances class analysis with a historical study of how the cultural and structural changes of late modernity impact class awareness. Using socialdemocratic Iceland as a case, I examine newspaper accounts, parliamentary records, and survey data to study (1) representations of classlessness from 1986 to 2007, (2) perceptions of class division from 1986 to 2012, and (1) class identity in the wake of Iceland's economic collapse in 2008. I draw primarily from Pierre Bourdieu's theoretical framework in my analysis. Contrary to prominent assertions that class awareness in Western societies has decreased across the board in late modernity, my analysis shows that perceptions of class division in Iceland increased over the study period. My results show how crises resulting from neoliberal globalization, the hallmark of late modernity, undermined the previously taken for granted assumption that Iceland is a relatively classless society, that is, "classlessness as doxa." These crises exposed classlessness as doxa to critical reflection, which, in turn, heightened perceptions of class division. My overall argument is that perceptions of class division increased because Icelandic society grew more culturally and economically differentiated as a result of neoliberal globalization, particularly at the "top" and "bottom" of the class structure.

scholarly journals Non-for-Profits and EU Citizens’ Cross-Border Social Rights in Different Welfare States

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 601-621
Author(s):  
CECILIA BRUZELIUS
Keyword(s):  
Welfare States ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Social Citizenship ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Welfare Mix ◽  
Provision Of Services

AbstractThis paper looks at rights in practice to understand how migrant EU citizens’ formal social rights translate into substantive ones. It highlights a factor thus far overlooked in the literature on welfare states and migrants’ social rights: namely, the actors involved in welfare delivery. The argument is based, first, on non-profit organisations’ (NPOs) function as ‘rights intermediaries’; and second, on the distinct make-up of the ‘welfare mix’ across countries, with which NPO’s role in the provision of services, and hence their capacities and autonomy, varies. Focusing on EU citizens’ cross-border social rights, and drawing on in-depth research in Germany and Sweden, the paper reveals how NPOs defend and facilitate access to rights in both countries. Yet NPOs’ extensive role in the German welfare sector generates greater capacities for NPOs to pursue inclusive objectives than what is available to their Swedish counterparts, which occupy a much more limited position as welfare providers. This, it is argued, can be important for understanding how boundaries of social citizenship are drawn in each country.

Cell phones, complicity, and class politics in the Philippine labor diaspora

Focaal ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 2008 (51) ◽  
pp. 28-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pauline Gardiner Barber
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Cell Phone ◽  
Cell Phones ◽  
Migrant Labor ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Filipino Migrants

This article addresses the politics of class, culture, and complicity associated with Philippine gendered-labor export. Several examples drawn from multisited ethnographic research explore two faces of class: migrant performances of subordination contrasted with militancy in the labor diaspora. With few exceptions, the literature on Philippine women in domestic service has emphasized disciplined subjectivities, the everyday dialectics of subordination. But class is also represented in these same relationships, understandings, and actions. Alternatively, the political expressions of Philippine overseas workers, and their supporters, is a feature of Philippine migration that is not often mentioned in writing concerned with migrant inequalities. This article proposes a reconciliation of these two faces of class expression by exploring how new media, primarily cell-phone technologies, enhance possibilities for organized and personal resistance by Filipino migrants, even as they facilitate migrant acquiescence, linked here to gendered subordination and class complicity, in the contentious reproduction of the migrant labor force.

scholarly journals GEOPOLÍTICA E CONSTITUIÇÃO À LUZ DO ESTADO DEMOCRÁTICO DE DIREITO

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (18) ◽  
Author(s):  
Guilherme Sandoval Góes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global South ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
Neoliberal Globalization ◽  
Late Modernity ◽  
World Power ◽  
The University ◽  
Ordinary Citizens

This article is the result of research carried out in the postdoctoral stage of the Postgraduate Program in Aeronautical Sciences at the University of Aeronautics (PPGCA), whose theme was “Geopolitics, Culture and Law: Epistemological dialogues needed in times of postmodernity” Thus, it collimates to examine the scientific connections that unite geopolitics and law, disciplines that overlap in such a way that they end up guaranteeing fundamental rights for ordinary citizens, aiming to analyze the geopolitical control of law from the influence of neoliberal geopolitics on constitutionalism. of the countries of late modernity, as is the case of Brazil, thus it was possible to demonstrate the influence of real factors of world power in the legislative process of the countries of the Global South of neoliberal globalization, whose leadership is being disputed by the United States and China.

Class, Politics, and the Decline of Deference in England, 1968-2000

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite
Keyword(s):  
Political Ideology ◽  
New Labour ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Political Narrative ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
People’S Attitudes ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This book examines class identities and politics in late twentieth-century England. Class remained important to ‘ordinary’ people’s identities and their narratives about social change in this period, but in changing ways. Using self-narratives drawn from a wide range of sources, the book shows that many people felt that once-clear class boundaries had blurred since 1945. By the end of the period, ‘working-class’ was often seen as a historical identity, related to background and heritage. The middle classes became more heterogeneous, and class snobberies ‘went underground’, as people from all backgrounds began to assert the importance of authenticity, individuality, and ordinariness. The book argues that it is more useful to understand the cultural changes of these years through the lens of the decline of deference, which transformed people’s attitudes towards class, and towards politics. The final two chapters examine the claim that Thatcher and New Labour wrote class out of politics. This simple—and highly political—narrative misses important points of distinction. Thatcher was driven by political ideology and necessity to dismiss the importance of class, while the New Labour project was good at listening to voters—particularly swing voters in marginal seats—and echoing back what they were increasingly saying about the blurring of class lines and the importance of ordinariness. But this did not add up to an abandonment of a majoritarian project, as New Labour reoriented socialism to emphasize using collective action to empower the individual.

Fiscal welfare in Europe: Why should we care and what do we know so far?

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 549-560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathalie Morel ◽  
Chloé Touzet ◽  
Michaël Zemmour
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Public Expenditures ◽  
Social Citizenship ◽  
Tax Expenditures ◽  
Strong Control

This article offers a reflection on how integrating fiscal welfare into welfare state research can shed light on some subtle, yet important, transformations of welfare states and social citizenship in Europe. We begin by clarifying the concepts of fiscal welfare and social tax expenditures (STEs), by reviewing and critically assessing the various related concepts found in the literature. We also map out the empirical knowledge currently available, highlighting the limitations in the available data. Then, drawing on both existing knowledge (developed especially in the context of the US welfare state) and the emerging literature on fiscal welfare in Europe, we identify a number of trends and set out some hypotheses as to why tax expenditures have become a privileged instrument in the field of social policy: not only do STEs appear as a useful instrument to build consensus across party lines in a context of budgetary austerity and strong control of public expenditures, they also enable the discreet privatization of social insurance schemes. Fiscal welfare also allows for a new mode of governing social policy through incentives, which entails a different mode of redistribution than traditional social policy instruments. Finally, we identify the remaining empirical and theoretical gaps to guide future research on the subject.

Earning Social Citizenship in the European Union: Free Movement and Access to Social Assistance Benefits Reconstructed

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 270-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dion KRAMER
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Social Assistance ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Social Citizenship ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Cultural Conditions

AbstractWhile ideas on ‘earned citizenship’ have been around in discussions on the coexistence of freedom of movement and nationally-bounded welfare states in the European Union, both the concept and the process it entails have hardly been explored in connection to EU (case) law. This contribution identifies earned citizenship as a technique of government in the broader political strategy of neoliberal communitarianism, requiring Union citizens to ‘earn’ access to the welfare system through an emphasis on their individual responsibility to fulfil the economic, social and cultural conditions of membership. Analysing economically inactive Union citizens’ access to social assistance benefits, it argues that earned citizenship has been visible since the Court’s early citizenship jurisprudence, but has been reconstructed with the recentDano-line of case law.

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