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Social change and the unsettling of welfare
Welfare
systems in the industrialised West are in transition. The
social, economic, political and cultural conditions which
sustained a post-war welfare settlement have changed. Historically
welfare systems stand in a dynamic relationship to three interconnected
institutional spheres:
- ‘family’
- the organisation of social reproduction and intimacy
- ‘nation’
- nationhood and nation-state
- ‘work’
- production
What
marks the intensity of the current transition is that the
organisation, conditions and social relations within and across
these three spheres are being destabilised by different social
forces (Williams, 1989; 1992; 1995).
Changing
patterns of women’s and men’s paid employment, changing household
patterns, particularly in relation to parenting and partnering,
an ageing population, increased female poverty and the articulation
of women’s claims for autonomy challenge the normative structures
of family life upon which post-war social policies were built.
Similarly,
in relation to ‘work’, the globalisation of capital, the break-up
of Fordism and the search for new forms of capital accumulation
have created working lives and conditions (flexible working,
core and peripheral workforces, as well as underemployment
and unemployment) for which the old social insurance systems
are no longer adequate.
In
terms of ‘nation’, the development of supranational political
and economic institutions such as the EU, processes of devolution,
the change in the pace of migrations, the increased in permanent
settlement and ethnic and religious diversity all challenge
the political, cultural and territorial notions of nationhood
which served as the administrative and cultural frame of post-war
welfare citizenship.
Our
research will use ‘changing patterns of parenting and partnering’
as a lens to look at the interconnection in the changes between
these three spheres.
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2.
Moral re-ordering and the resettling of welfare
The
contours of a new welfare settlement are being shaped by new
political discourses and by competing interpretations of the
moral, social and economic risks we fare and of how we defend
ourselves against them (Williams, 1997; Smart & Neale,
1997). When Beveridge set out his five post-war giants of
squalor, disease, ignorance, idleness and want it reflected
the perceived needs of the politics of the time – the limited
redistribution of social opportunities and the management
of major social risks and inequalities. These risks also reflected
assumptions about what was relatively secure and fixed – gender
roles, marriage, steady jobs, firm moral and national boundaries.
The
dynamics of welfare resettlement have in the part involved
the state’s attempt to negotiate and consolidate disruptions
to the social, economic, political and moral order through
the twin processes of the management of risk and the management
of normality. The first entails identifying, defining and
managing the major social and economic risks facing the population.
The second involved the construction of a normative framework
of responsibilities and moral obligations underpinning the
management of risk.
It
is through this that the moral ordering (or re-ordering) of
family relations is, and has been, central to past and current
welfare settlements, and it is this process which frames our
empirical research and our analyses of policy discourses and
instruments. However, the terms on which settlements in other
welfare regimes are not necessarily the same and our cross-national
comparative research will both enable us to put Britain’s
historical and cultural specificities into perspective, whilst
also offering a window on ‘how things can be different’.
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3.
The emergence of the welfare subject as a creative moral agent
Different
forces over the past twenty years have reconstructed the representation
of the welfare subject from passive beneficiary into creative
human agent. Since the mid-1970s the post-war settlement has
been challenged by economic recession, by neo-conservative
critiques and welfare activists. What emerged in the 1980s
was a new managerialist regime, supported first by the Conservative
administrations and which continues to be supported in the
1990s by New Labour. In spite of the differences between these
political forces, what is common to all three is an emphasis
upon the welfare citizen/consumer/user as, first, agent of
her/his destiny (whether through the market, through exercising
social responsibilities, or through local, democratic reforms)
and second, as articulating her/his differential welfare needs.
Theoretically,
too, this emphasis can be seen in new approaches to social
policy which emphasise the capacity of people to be creative,
reflexive human agents of their lives, experiencing, acting
upon and reconstituting the outcomes of welfare policies in
variable ways (Dean, 1992; Baldock & Ungerson, 1994; Williams,
Popay & Oakley, 1999). However, this thinking is still
in its early days, and its implications for social policy
research, especially cross-national comparative research,
remain undeveloped as, by and large, ‘rational economic man’
still stalks the policy analysis field (Duncan & Edwards,
1997; Taylor-Gooby, 1998).
Our
research seeks to develop these ideas in four main ways:
- First,
in Strand 1&2 it will explore methodologies and concepts
(‘moral obligations’, ‘gendered moral rationalities’, ‘moral
intersubjectivities’) which sustain the idea of the welfare
subject as a creative moral agent whose actions are influenced
by complex cultural processes rather than simply being the
consequence of policies. This will then be applied in Strand
3, 4 & 5.
- Second,
it will recognise the variability of sub-national localities
in influencing people’s behaviour. For example, in the choice
of four different localities for the samples in Strand 3
and 5 we recognise the significance of local labour markets
and neighbourhoods in generating differential material resources
and beliefs about the nature of obligations (Duncan, 1989).
- Third,
it will extend the inquiry into moral obligations to minority
ethnic groups and to non-traditional household forms. Some
of these issues of variability of ethnicity and socio-cultural
context will also be pursued in the cross-national research
in Strand 4.
- Fourth,
in using predominantly qualitative methods, we want to assert
our claim about the usefulness of qualitative work to policy-making,
with its capacity to develop more nuanced and complex findings
and to offer the ability to understand the reasons for changing
family practices. The core element of such work has recently
been an emphasis in the concept of ‘obligations’, particularly
in relation to the provision of care – and the extent to
which these are not fixed by duty, law or status, nor coterminous
with the co-resident nuclear family (Finch & Mason,
1993; Maclean & Ekelaar, 1997; Smart & Neale, 1998;
Weeks et al, 1998; Mason, 1996; Sevenhuijsen, 1998). We
also see qualitative work as a crucial source to inform
a reflection upon the normative basis of social policy.
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4.
Welfare activism and the articulation of rights to recognition
and respect
Recent
social theory has identified de-traditionalisation and the
enhancement of reflexivity as key processes of social change
within late modernity (Giddens, 1991, 1992; Beck, 1992, 1997;
Lash & Urry, 1994). The breakdown of traditional forms
of social stratification, rationalist bureaucracies and the
political alignments and social identities which were constituted
by them gives rise to new possibilities for social and political
action (Offe, 1987; Habermas, 1981, 1987; Beck, 1992). This,
it is argued, the social reflexivity of late modernity produced
"an energetic society" (Giddens, 1994: 86) characterised
by a proliferation of social movements, pressure groups, campaigning
organisations and self-help groups. These movements and groups
are engaged in the construction of new ways of thinking and
new forms of social relations, and give expression to new
collective identities (Eyeman & Jamieson, 1991; Roseneil,
1995).
Grass-roots;
organisations have mobilised new identities around issues
of welfare, and formulated new demands of welfare provision
based on these identities (Williams, 1989, 1997, 1998; Beresford
& Turner, 1996; Leonard, 1997). In particular, certain
groups have begun to resist their portrayal as inadequate
families, competent parents or invalid partners (e.g. disabled
people, ‘lone’ mothers, lesbians and gay men, ‘absent’ fathers,
minority ethnic families) and to assert the right to respect
and recognition. Our research in Strand 5 will explore how
far, and in what ways, these collectivities are seeking to
shape the moral ordering of family life, focusing on claims
upon the local, national and supranational arenas.
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5.
Balancing universal values with diversely-constituted needs,
beliefs and practices
We
take the view that the question of how to reconcile the relationship
between universalism and diversity is one of the most important
in the social inquiry today. The limitations of a universalism
which simply reflects the interest of those with most direct
access to political negotiation are now acknowledged. Yet
the goal of reaching a common vocabulary of values and normative
standards has not been rejected either (Eztioni, 1997; Squires,
1993). We will be looking, in Strand 6, for a common vocabulary
in the normative guidelines used in negotiating car and intimacy
and related issues of trust, commitment, autonomy and interdependence.
At the same time, we acknowledge that the aim of respect for
diversity and difference is not without problems: how do we
reconcile competing claims? How far does recognition of ‘difference’
mean the continuation of privileges or inequalities? The two
key questions for policy development are: how can governments
at local, national and supranational levels facilitate the
universal articulation of and provision for diverse welfare
needs? And what sort of welfare provision can be universal
in that it reflects all people’s welfare needs, but also diverse,
reflecting people’s own changing definitions of their diversity
and not simply the diversity created through inequalities
in the society at large? We will use these questions to develop
a set of normative principles for welfare in Strand 6.
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