scholarly journals The Politics of Social Discourses about Youth in New Zealand 1950-1965 and 1990-2005

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jean-Christopher Somers
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Young People ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Home School ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Social Discourses ◽  
Public Concerns ◽  
The Welfare State

<p>This thesis explores the politics of changing discourses around the youth question in New Zealand’s postwar (1950-1965) and near-contemporary history (1990-2005). Building on a modified Foucaultian framework, it examines for both periods anxieties over young people’s relationships with home, school and the wider society. It also contrasts the two periods to illustrate the ideological shift from the welfare state to neoliberalism, as it was played out through youth-related discourses. This thesis goes beyond the moral panic approach, especially regarding the postwar period. It will demonstrate that rethinking what is conventionally condensed and marginalised as ‘context’ is key to understanding the politics of youth discourses. Postwar debates about young people, because youth were conceived as being in social crisis, served to expose ideological differences that the welfare state had ostensibly overcome. That in turn destabilized the apparent moral consensus and opened up opportunities for resistance and subversion. By contrast, the liberal and emancipatory discourse of society in the 1990s and early 2000s served to insulate neoliberal politics from volatile public concerns. This in turn paradoxically provides a stronger and more efficient foundation for social control over youth.</p>

scholarly journals The Politics of Social Discourses about Youth in New Zealand 1950-1965 and 1990-2005

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jean-Christopher Somers
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Young People ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Home School ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Social Discourses ◽  
Public Concerns ◽  
The Welfare State

<p>This thesis explores the politics of changing discourses around the youth question in New Zealand’s postwar (1950-1965) and near-contemporary history (1990-2005). Building on a modified Foucaultian framework, it examines for both periods anxieties over young people’s relationships with home, school and the wider society. It also contrasts the two periods to illustrate the ideological shift from the welfare state to neoliberalism, as it was played out through youth-related discourses. This thesis goes beyond the moral panic approach, especially regarding the postwar period. It will demonstrate that rethinking what is conventionally condensed and marginalised as ‘context’ is key to understanding the politics of youth discourses. Postwar debates about young people, because youth were conceived as being in social crisis, served to expose ideological differences that the welfare state had ostensibly overcome. That in turn destabilized the apparent moral consensus and opened up opportunities for resistance and subversion. By contrast, the liberal and emancipatory discourse of society in the 1990s and early 2000s served to insulate neoliberal politics from volatile public concerns. This in turn paradoxically provides a stronger and more efficient foundation for social control over youth.</p>

The Second Marriage of Justice and Efficiency

1990 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe van Parijs
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Ex Ante ◽  
Major Reform ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
The Welfare State

ABSTRACTNo major reform of the welfare state has a chance of going through unless one can make a plausible case as to both its ‘ethical value’ and its ‘economic.value’, that is, that it would have a positive effect in terms of both justice and efficiency. In this essay, this rough conjecture is first presented, and its plausibility probed, on the background of some stylised facts about the rise of modern welfare states in the postwar period. Next, the focus is shifted to the current debate on the introduction of a basic income, a completely unconditional grant paid ex ante to all citizens. It is argued that if basic income is to have a chance of meeting the strong twofold condition stipulated in the conjecture, some major changes are required in the way one usually thinks about justice and efficiency in connection with social policy. But once these changes are made, as they arguably must be, the chance that basic income may be able to meet the challenge is greatly enhanced.

Systems, Fiddling and Strangers: Young People on the ‘Welfare State’

2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian McIntosh
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Young People ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social World ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Qualitative Approaches ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
The Welfare State

This paper is concerned with young people's understanding of the welfare state; who and what is it for, and what is their relation to it? It is argued that such qualitative research into these questions is not common. Exploring these issues increases our knowledge of the presence that ideas and discourses about welfare states have in young people's understanding of the social world. Qualitative approaches such as the one adopted in this paper can tap into meanings and perceptions that young people have in relation to the welfare state that can be glossed over with more quantitative concerns with ‘attitudes’.

Welfare, Church and the Pursuit of Justice in the Land of the Long White Cloud

2009 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-107
Author(s):  
Anthony Dancer
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Promised Land ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Mother Country ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractThe relationship between Christianity and social development in New Zealand has been an historically complex one. Many of the early settlers to these islands came to escape a life of poverty in their mother country. Yet wherever there is wealth, there is poverty social problems, and they cast a long shadow over the promised land for the early colonizers and the indigenous Maori. The emergence of the welfare state in the 1930s paved the way for significant social transformation. It was understood by some to express 'applied Christianity'. With the comparatively recent demise of the Welfare State in New Zealand at the hands of neo-liberalism it is reasonable to consider whether this can equally be understood to indicate the demise of the Christianity's social import. Yet an appreciation of the church's predominantly informal social involvement throughout the history of these islands provides both a helpful interpretative key to the past and the future. Aotearoa New Zealand history may be one signifier that the priority for the pursuit of justice is to be found primarily at the margins amidst the informality of the ordinary, and far less at the centre of formality, systems and political institutions, and that the role of intentional Christian community in this might be as significant to the identity of the church as it is to the state.

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