The Crisis of the Welfare State and the Politics of the Past in Black Metal and Folk Metal Subcultures

Young ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-84
Author(s):  
Aila Mustamo
Keyword(s):  
Heavy Metal ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Black Metal ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Common Enemy ◽  
Critical Discourses ◽  
The Welfare State

Anti-modernism has always been a part of the ideology of black metal and folk metal subcultures. In addition to Christianity, a common enemy in the field of modernity is the ‘social democratic’ welfare state. Although at least black metal can be considered as a counterculture, both black metal and folk metal subgenres reflect widely shared ideas from the mainstream. Based on interview material, this article examines how members of black metal and folk metal subcultures participate in the discussion about the welfare state. It gives voice to individuals rarely heard in music media or in the gatherings of the black metal and folk metal scenes. This article brings forward critical discourses about the apolitical tradition of heavy metal subcultures. It discusses ideologies and representations, and reception of ideas shared in metal communities.

Denmark: The Rise of Fascism and the Decline of the Nordic Model

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasna Balorda
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
People's Party ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Agendas ◽  
The Welfare State

Contrary to its conventional image as a social-democratic paragon, the Danish welfare state has, in recent decades, been undergoing significant changes as a response to the intrusion into the social sphere by self-regulating markets and a final departure from Keynesian politics of universalism and solidarity. This article examines the evident decline of the Nordic model as a result of neoliberal globalisation and establishes an association between the erosion of the welfare state and the emergence of fascist political sentiment in Denmark. An analysis of the Danish People's party and its growing public support among the disenfranchised working class communities in Denmark demonstrates how those overlooked by the free market and unrepresented by the liberal left become increasingly more receptive to the proposed social agendas of the far right campaigns.

Public Nightmares and Communitarian Dreams: The Crisis of the Social in Social Welfare

1997 ◽  
Vol 44 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 66-91
Author(s):  
John Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Crisis Of Representation ◽  
Break Up ◽  
The Welfare State

This chapter examines the break-up of the welfare state as a process that involved a crisis of representation. In particular, social democratic images of the public and their embodiment in the organizational regimes of welfare bureau-professionalism were dislocated by the New Right's attack on the welfare state. The chapter argues that the attempt to reinvent the public's relationship to social welfare through the couplet of managerialism and consumerism created an impoverished conception of the public realm. Communitarianism has been presented as a response to this impoverishment. However, both lessons from history and the contemporary inflections of community suggest that communitarianism needs to be seen as an attempt to resolve the ‘crisis of the social’ in social welfare in regressive directions.

Comparative Social Policy and Political Conflict in Advanced Welfare States: Denmark and Sweden

1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gøsta Esping-Andersen
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Welfare State

There has developed an abundant literature on the social and political determinants of social policies, but few have addressed the question of how state policies, once implemented, affect the system of stratification in civil society. This article examines the political consequences of social policy in Denmark and Sweden, countries in which a social democratic labor movement has predominated for decades. Superficially, these two highly developed welfare states appear very similar. Yet, the political and social contexts in which their social policies have evolved differ substantially. I shall demonstrate the argument that the traditional welfare state approach may be conducive to a new and powerful political conflict, which directly questions the legitimacy of the welfare state itself, unless government is successful in subordinating private capitalist growth to effective public regulation. In Denmark, where social democratic governments have failed to match welfare state growth with more control of private capital, social policy has tended to undermine the political unity of the working class. Consequently, the Social Democratic Party has been weakened. Social welfare programs, in effect, have helped create new forms of stratification within the working class. In Sweden, social democratic governments have been quite successful in shifting a decisive degree of power over the private market to the state. This has helped avert a crisis of the welfare state, and has also been an important condition for continued social democratic hegemony and working-class unity. I conclude that social reform politics tend to be problematic from the point of view of the future power of social democratic movements.

scholarly journals Declaring, shepherding, managing: The welfare state ethos in Finnish government programmes, 1950-2015

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-22
Author(s):  
Matilda Hellman ◽  
Marjukka Monni ◽  
Anna Alanko
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Coalition Government ◽  
Absolute Minimum ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Perspective ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Welfare State

This study is concerned with the Finnish government’s political programmes (N=42) from the 1950s to the present. Its objective is to examine how conceptions of the welfare state have changed over the past 65 years. The analysis concentrates on the social and health care sectors as indicators of the content and nature of the ambitions set for the welfare system by the highest political leadership. The programmes were examined for their aims, character and concepts. The governments’ changing position towards its welfare political mandate emerges in three distinct periods: 1) 1950 through the 1970s, when the welfare state was being constructed; 2) the 1980s and 1990s, as the concept was further developed and internally synchronized; and 3) 2000 to 2015, a time of increasing estrangement from universal notions. The study shows that as late as 2014, the welfare state’s aims of inclusion and universalism were dramatically toned down to an absolute minimum in the government programmes. The article shows that in contemporary times, the coalition government system may have strengthened the welfare state ethos. This is a finding of great significance for a structural-political perspective on the support of welfare state ideas.

”Strängt taget fattas oss ingenting”: Folkhemmet i Stig Sjödins och Jenny Wrangborgs arbetarlyrik

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-199
Author(s):  
Magnus Nilsson
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractThe aim of this article is to analyze the attitudes of two prominent Swedish working-class poets – Stig Sjödin (1917–1993) and Jenny Wrangborg (born 1984) – toward the social-democratic welfare state. The premise of the analysis is that this welfare state is a historical and changing phenomenon that has attracted attention from working-class writers in different ways at different times. Sjödin wrote during the emergence and the heyday of the social-democratic welfare state, whereas Wrangborg is writing poetry at a time when the labour movement is ailing and the welfare state challenged. Thus, despite the two poets having closely aligned aesthetical and ideological ideals, their attitudes toward the welfare state are distinctly different.

scholarly journals European social model and opportunities for strengthening Welfare State in Latin America

2020 ◽  
pp. 184-194
Author(s):  
Eleonora Ermolieva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Medium Term ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Latin American Region ◽  
Working People ◽  
The Welfare State

The article contains a comparative analysis of European and Latin American models of the Welfare State. The author shows that the experience of formation the European social paradigm has been carefully studied in Latin American region in the past, and is taken into account nowadays, when all the countries over the planet are faced with the dramatic consequences of the Covid-19 corona virus pandemic. The labor market crisis, a sharp decline in living standards objectively forces the Social States on both sides of the Atlantic to search for medium term strategies for social protection of working people and the most vulnerable strata of society. The hypothesis is put forward that the European-Latin American сooperation in the social field of government policy will help to find the most optimal measures for overcoming the difficulties that have arisen.

scholarly journals Wither the social security and the welfare state in the 21st century - A relic or necessity?

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-170
Author(s):  
Zuzana Macková
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Security ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Social Standards ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Welfare State

Article provides for an overview of core terms, definitions and recent developments in the area of social rights and social security in context of Central and Eastern Europe, with focus on Slovakia. It advocates for protection of social standards through the universalist, social-democratic model of welfare state, in order to uphold and enhance democracy and human rights in the region, with a view of their genuine, daily realisation and enjoyment by everyone and all.

Managing Decentralization: The Strategy of Institutional Differentiation in German Industrial Relations

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 52-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Schroeder ◽  
Rainer Weinert
Keyword(s):  
Collective Bargaining ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Collective Bargaining Agreement ◽  
The Political ◽  
Process Of Change ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Institutional Differentiation ◽  
The Welfare State

The approach of the new millennium appears to signal the demiseof traditional models of social organization. The political core ofthis process of change—the restructuring of the welfare state—andthe related crisis of the industrywide collective bargaining agreementhave been subjects of much debate. For some years now inspecialist literature, this debate has been conducted between theproponents of a neo-liberal (minimally regulated) welfare state andthe supporters of a social democratic model (highly regulated). Thealternatives are variously expressed as “exit vs. voice,” “comparativeausterity vs. progressive competitiveness,” or “deregulation vs.cooperative re-regulation.”

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