As an introduction to the book, this chapter provides an overview of its argument, namely, how the modern state sustains, expands, and legitimates forms of unfree labour across sectors traditionally framed as non-market work. It challenges the linear narrative that positions the state as an emancipatory force and instead shows how state institutions actively construct labour unfreedom through exclusionary legal definitions, neoliberal policy design, and the privatization of public functions. Introducing the four case studies of prison labour, workfare, immigration (...) detention, and internships, the chapter situates these practices within a wider political economy structured by coercion, dependency, and stratified access to rights. It outlines the book’s conceptual framework, which places unfreedom on a spectrum shaped by macro-, meso- and micro-level constraints, and previews the analysis of how law, ideology, and state–corporate partnerships normalize exploitative labour relations that fall outside the scope of formal labour protections. (shrink)

This chapter examines how neoliberalism reshapes the role of the state in constructing and sustaining unfree labour. Rejecting narratives of state retreat, the chapter shows that neoliberal governance redeploys state power to restructure markets, reconfigure rights, and expand coercive labour practices. It analyses how contractualism operates at macro, meso, and micro levels: as an ideological framework that reframes social relations as reciprocal obligations; as an institutional logic driving privatization, outsourcing, and conditional welfare; and as a field-level mechanism that masks coercion (...) through the language of consent. Through examples from workfare, prison labour, immigration detention, and internships, the chapter demonstrates how law mediates and legitimizes these practices by transforming rights into conditional claims and narrowing judicial oversight. It concludes that neoliberalism not only tolerates unfree labour but also actively generates and normalizes it through legal, political, and economic structures. (shrink)

Chapter 2 introduces the state’s ‘hidden workforce’ through examination of the four key case studies in this book: prison labour, the labour of immigration detainees, workfare, and internships. It situates these forms of work within their broader historical contexts as well as exploring the working conditions, worker perspectives, and breadth and scale of these industries in England, Wales, and beyond. The involvement of private corporations in facilitating and benefiting from the labour remains a prominent theme throughout the chapter, revealing (...) that both the state and private companies gain from these forms of ‘hidden work’. The chapter concludes by drawing out the central themes and commonalities that transpire from analysing these case studies as a collective: primarily that the state is a coercive actor in organizing and governing the work, which includes the withdrawal and stratification of rights; the entanglement of private corporations within the work schemes who gain from workers’ exclusion from rights and protections; and the classed, gendered, and racialized profiles of the workers themselves, which are instrumentalized by the state to create particular vulnerabilities and legal exclusions. (shrink)

This chapter examines how ‘unfree labour’ should inform labour law’s development and how labour law principles enrich understandings of unfreedom. The chapter engages with competing paradigms—inequality of bargaining power, exploitation, and domination—arguing that these complement rather than contradict each other in explaining labour law’s purpose. It develops a doctrinal framework for identifying unfree labour through three dimensions: consent and coercion affecting entry and exit from employment; terms and conditions, including wages below the national minimum wage; and control and discipline extending (...) beyond the workplace. Drawing on historical institutionalism, the chapter demonstrates how practices at the margins—prison work, workfare, immigration detention labour, and internships—are gradually normalizing unfree labour through strategies of layering, drift, and conversion. The analysis concludes that beyond a certain threshold, unfree labour should be abolished, while less extreme manifestations require legal intervention to mitigate consequences and reduce unfreedom. The chapter positions unfree labour not as exceptional but as central to understanding contemporary labour relations and precarity. (shrink)

This chapter examines why participants in prison work, immigration detention labour, workfare, and internships are legally excluded from worker status despite satisfying common law employment tests. The chapter applies UK employment status tests (including personal service, control, and mutuality of obligation), demonstrating that participants meet the criteria for worker or employee status.It challenges two key justifications for exclusion: that work benefits participants rather than employers (the primary beneficiary test) and that welfare benefits differ from wages. Drawing on feminist theory (...) and post-colonial critique, the chapter adopts a historical materialist approach to trace how the market/non-market distinction has been weaponized to exclude marginalized groups, particularly women and colonized populations, from labour protections. The analysis reveals that employment status exclusions are rooted in social status—as prisoners, migrants, unemployed claimants, and interns—rather than the nature of work performed. The chapter concludes that law actively constructs hierarchies based on race, gender, and class, mystifying the economic value of excluded labour to facilitate exploitation and capital accumulation. (shrink)

This book examines a growing yet overlooked sector of workers whose labour is characterized as ‘informal’ due to limited or lack of access to labour rights and protections despite being initiated, organized, and regulated by the state. Focusing on prison workers, workfare participants, immigration detainees, and interns, the book argues that these forms of labour constitute a system of state-organized ‘unfree’ labour that benefits both public authorities and private corporations. Rather than existing outside state oversight, these labour relations are (...) actively produced through intersecting regimes of welfare, immigration, criminal justice, and labour market policy. Using a socio-legal and jurisprudential approach, the book interrogates how and why these workers are formally denied recognition as ‘employees’ or ‘workers’. It explores the boundaries between free and unfree labour, analysing the structural conditions and coercive pressures that compel individuals to accept exploitative work. The book also addresses the broader political economy of privatized state functions and their reliance on cheap, unregulated labour. Finally, it advances legal, institutional, and collective strategies to reduce exploitation, including reconceptualizing work and worker status, expanding labour rights, and securing basic needs beyond the wage–work bargain. (shrink)

In response to recent policy trends towards linking social rights more tightly to work requirements, this article argues that those sharing Rawlsian commitments have good reasons to prefer a radical‐liberal policy agenda with a universal basic income at its core. Compared to its main rivals in present policy debates, the politics of basic income has greater potential to promote the economic life prospects of the least advantaged in a way that provides a robust protection for the bases of social recognition (...) and non‐subservience. The argument seeks to establish that these concerns should be ascribed priority in the most plausible balancing of Rawlsian objectives and that doing so generates a strong case for basic income. As recent arguments for basic income have suggested that Rawls’ theory is insufficient to make the case for such a reform, this analysis also demonstrates that a powerful argument for basic income can be built on Rawlsian foundations alone. (shrink)

This article critically evaluates and contests the flagship benefit delivery system Universal Credit for lone mothers by focusing on some of the ethical challenges it poses, as well as some key implications it holds for social work with lone mothers and their children. Universal Credit was first introduced in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2008, and echoes conditionality-based welfare policies adopted by neoliberal governments internationally on the assumption that paid employment offers a route out of poverty for citizens. However, research (...) evidence suggests that the risks of conditionality polices for lone parents can often include increased poverty, a deterioration in mental health or even destitution posed by paternalistic sanctions or precarious low-paid employment, which can undermine parenting capacities and children’s well-being. The article also critically appraises and questions challenges posed by an increased reliance upon contractual ethics by governments, alongside the wider behaviour-modifying policies of the workfare-orientated state. This includes that working-class lone mothers can erroneously be stigmatised as representing a morally challenged dependent burden through activation policies and risk-averse social work practices. (shrink)

As the first layer of the context analysis, this chapter investigates the nature and extent of basic dynamics in Italy’s post-war political economy in order to sketch out their far-reaching implications for the conflict over the 2012 labour market reform. The topic of continuity and change in Italy’s political economy is approached in terms of a progressive shift from the Keynesian welfare national state to the Schumpeterian workfare postnational regime. The analysis uncovers key long-term legacies for the observed conflict—first (...) of all the evidence of an incomplete and anomalous shift from the Keynesian to the Schumpeterian dimension of economic reproduction against the background of a basic inability of the main political forces to reconstruct a dominant social bloc since the end of the 1980s. (shrink)

The second layer of the context analysis in Chap. 10.1007/978-3-319-95615-2_5 focuses on the shift from welfare to workfare in the function of social reproduction and investigates its middle-ranging implications for the observed conflict. The argument concerning a workfare shift builds on the ideal-typical move from the Keynesian welfare national state to the Schumpeterian workfare postnational regime discussed in Chap. 10.1007/978-3-319-95615-2_5. Against this background, the chapter investigates these developments in Italy’s political economy with particular attention to changes in (...) its labour market policy. Main findings point at the evidence of an incomplete and anomalous shift from welfare to workfare, in which repeated interventions only at the margin of the Italian labour market and the absence of flanking measures have led to the spread of ‘flex-insecurity’. (shrink)

The collapse of Keynesian welfare states has determined a change in the relationship between individuals and social risks. The risk is no longer collectively addressed but its management is left to the prudence and the skills of subjects. Unemployment is no exception. The gradual spread of workfare policies aims to replace the subsidies, which are considered harmful to the work ethic and the health of the labor market. This transition produces an ambiguous space between protection and coercion, assistance and (...) punishment. A space that is the symptom of the neoliberal restructuring of relations and modes of production. (shrink)

When viewed as a question of distributive justice the evaluation of workfare typically reflects exclusively on the distribution of income: do the physically capable have a justified claim for state support, or is it fair to demand from those who do work to subsidise this support? Rarely is workfare appraised in terms of how it affects other parties such as employers or other workers, and on the structural effects the pattern of incentives it generates brings about, or as (...) an issue of distributive justice related to a more extensive range of objects of distribution such as access to pleasing jobs. We propose to evaluate workfare by looking at its effects more broadly: (1) we discuss and dismiss on empirical grounds the two most common arguments in favour of workfare, namely that workfare develops self-reliance among participants and it is more economical in the use of altruism among taxpayers. (2) We suggest that workfare focuses on work as a burden and as a means to income, ignoring other beneficial aspects that are conducive to the worker’s self expression. These other benefits are distributed unevenly between two main groups: the privileged well off and the disadvantaged. (3) we argue that workfare functions as a mechanism to preserve these privileges to one class of workers at the expense of another. Or, to put it the other way, the payment of unconditional welfare to the long term unemployed might be justified as one method of mitigating unjustified privileges. (shrink)

This paper offers an assessment of current welfare policy in the United States. I argue that there is a genuine set of reciprocal obligations owed between fellow citizens that both justify and constrain U.S. welfare policy. In particular, I argue that there is both a widespread duty for potential welfare recipients to seek employment and a similarly robust obligation for other members of society to provide publicly funded jobs of last resort for those unable to find traditional employment. This leads (...) me to endorse elements of current U.S. welfare policy but also recommend several substantial changes that would make the overall policy more just. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of libertarianism for welfare policy. There are two central arguments. First, the paper argues that if one adopts a libertarian framework, it makes most sense to be a Lockean right-libertarian. Second, the paper argues that this form of libertarianism leads to the endorsement of a fairly extensive set of redistributive welfare programs. Specifically, the paper argues that Lockean right-libertarians are committed to endorsing welfare programs under which the receipt of benefits is conditional on meeting a (...) work requirement, and also endorsing some form of publicly funded jobs of last resort for potential welfare recipients. (shrink)

Compulsory labor, justice and the foundations of social law The author argues that normative questions in social law are in need of a more philosophical approach. This is particularly true for the evaluation of Work-first arrangements. She proposes to evaluate workfare policies from the perspective of the reciprocity principle as it is deployed in the work of the liberal egalitarians John Rawls and Stuart White. While Rawls’ interpretation of the reciprocity principle seems to be at odds with Dutch jurisprudence (...) on workfare policies, which allows for Work-first arrangements within the boundaries that are set by article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights (a prohibition on compulsory labor), White’s approach rather encourages work obligations for welfare recipients, on the condition that citizens acquire individual drawing rights on collective participation funds. (shrink)

The chapter starts with a brief comparison between Means Testing Programs (MTPs) and Conditional Cash Transfer Programs (CCTs) to show that the former are incompatible with viewing their participants as full citizens. This is particularly relevant because of the dominant but incorrect view that MTPs are welfarist programs, although they clearly mark a shift from welfare to workfare policies that is the consequence of prevailing neoliberal views on society in general and on social policies in particular. The following sections (...) focus on CCTs and discuss possible justifications for them (economical, behavioral, moral, and political) to conclude that a republican justification is to be preferred because (1) it treats participants in CCTs as citizens; (2) it takes seriously the collective responsibility of the political community for the situation of poverty, in which participants in CCTs live; (3) it allows framing CCTs as a way of reaffirming the reciprocal duties of citizens and political institutions. (shrink)

Unemployed and informal workers seem an unlikely source of large-scale collective action in Latin America. Since 1997, however, Argentina has witnessed an upsurge of protest and the emergence of unusually influential federations of unemployed and informal workers. To explain this puzzle, this article offers a policy-centered argument. It suggests that a workfare program favored common interests and identities on the part of unemployed workers and grassroots associations, allowing them to overcome barriers to collective action. State responses to demands for (...) workfare benefits generated a pattern of protest and negotiation that strengthened those groups and dramatically expanded social policy. (shrink)

This paper addresses how New York City's workfare program has structured opportunities for collective action by welfare recipients. As workfare blurs the distinction between wage workers and welfare recipients, it calls into question accepted understandings of the rights and obligations of welfare recipients and fosters new claims on the state. The concept of “cultural opportunity structures” can help to explain the political mobilization of workfare participants if it is linked to a Durkheimian tradition of cultural analysis attentive (...) to symbolic classification. The dramaturgic approach to culture exemplified in the work of Erving Goffman can usefully complement this structural approach if a narrow focus on frames and framing processes is broadened to include interaction rituals and ceremonial profanation. (shrink)

abstract Even if a state would have been perfectly within its rights not to provide for people's welfare at all, it might still be wrong for it to exercise that discretion conditional upon something that claimants do (like ‘look for work’). What might make some conditions morally permissible and others impermissible? One answer is in terms of the consonance of the condition with the purposes of the policy. If a policy is supposed to be for one purpose — or, morally, (...) if it can be justified only by reference to one purpose — then that policy must not impose conditions that are appropriate only to some other purpose. It is an improper exercise of power for public officials to tack wholly inappropriate conditions onto programmes justified on some other grounds altogether. Tacking labour‐market conditions onto policies that are ostensibly designed to promote people's welfare can be a case in point. (shrink)

The article explores Chinese rural migrants’ perspective on work and their relations with each other and with the Chinese state by drawing upon the ethnographical study of a group of rural home renovators in Beijing in the 1990s. The rural renovators were dubbed “guerrilla” workers because of their physical mobility, irregular employment, and unregistered status. After considering the novelty of guerrilla workfare in China, the article demonstrates the bifurcation of migrants’ social networks along the lines of work and everyday (...) association, locates the politics of worker-state interaction at the place of their everyday living, and explores their understanding of work that is remarkably devoid of nostalgia for state socialism. (shrink)

After the adoption of the workfare plan which followed the defeat of the unemployed movement in 1998, the jobless peoples’ struggle has found unexpected strength in the victory of those « recalculated » by the Unedic unemployment office. At the same time, a new movement of intermittents and precarious workers has built up a collective expertise to elaborate a « model of compensation for the unemployment of intermittent wage-earners. » The exchanges and ties gradually established between these struggling forces (...) sketch the outlines of a viable reform, whose pivotal elements will include a minimum daily compensation. (shrink)

There has been a major shift in welfare policies in the developed world towards activation, decentralization, and privatization. The 1996 US welfare reform welfare for single mother families was no longer an entitlement and there were stiff work requirements enforced by sanctions and time limits. In Western Europe, although there is variation, welfare has become conditional for social assistance recipients – the "socially excluded." Social assistance is administered at the municipal level, which contracts with private companies. Caseworkers are supposed to (...) make individualized contracts emphasizing work activities. This paper examines the field-level data in several US programs and finds that there is a symbiotic relationship between governments and contractors; caseworkers, whether public or private, focus on process rather than substantive plans; government does not question the data; contracts are imposed; the most employable are placed; and the most vulnerable are sanctioned or otherwise not allowed on welfare. Research in some European countries is showing similar results – activation programs are difficult to administer and increase the risks for the most vulnerable. Individualized contracts are a myth, given administrative constraints and client dependency. The paper argues that the difficulties of activation are an additional reason for a basic income guarantee. The socially excluded will have an exit option and well-being will be improved. (shrink)

Recent welfare reform has resulted in new work requirements for welfare recipients. These measures need to be justified, as they impair recipients’ freedom. This paper first repudiates economic justifications for these developments and argues that the dominant justification is perfectionist. But unlike workfare, perfectionism is not necessarily paternalistic. The second part of the paper outlines a liberal perfectionism which allows only for autonomy-enhancing politics. Though even such autonomy-enhancing politics cannot be made obligatory. The last section concludes that workfare’s (...) paternalism cannot be attributed to perfectionist justifications, but rather stems from the narrow philosophy of work that is applied. The idea that enforced wage labour is a reliable tool for inducing autonomy is refuted. In the end, workfare needs to be rejected, as it is based on assumptions that are mistaken both normatively and empirically. (shrink)

A prominent feature of the ongoing politics of welfare state restructuring is the development of workfare policies, defined as the attachment of a work condition to entitlement to basic income support. Workfare rejects unconditional rights of social citizenship, which formed the basis of social democratic political reforms and advocacy throughout the twentieth century. Nevertheless, workfare has received notable theoretical justification from egalitarian political theorists. This paper addresses four egalitarian arguments for workfare: the arguments from recipient self-respect, (...) rational paternalism, fair reciprocity, and equal opportunity for active citizenship. It attempts to demonstrate the tensions between each and egalitarian justification, and it is argued that none of the arguments successfully ground workfare policies in an egalitarian framework. (shrink)

Pursuing equality is an important challenge for any modern democratic society but this challenge faces two sets of difficulties: the theoretical question of what sort of equality to pursue and for whom; and the practical question concerning which legal and political institutions are the most appropriate vehicles for implementing egalitarian social policy and thus realizing egalitarian justice. This book offers original and innovative contributions to the debate about equality of opportunity. The first part of the book sets out a theory (...) of equality of opportunity that presents equal opportunities as a normative device for the regulation of competition for scarce resources. The second part shifts the focus to the consideration of the practical application by courts or legislatures or public policy makers of policies for addressing racial, class or gender injustices. The author examines standardized tests, affirmative action, workfare, universal health-care, comparable worth, and the economic consequences of divorce. (shrink)

En el siguiente artículo se lleva a cabo un balance de las principales líneas de la crítica al neoliberalismo, concediendo especial importancia a las transformaciones del Estado, al workfare como nuevo modo de regulación y de prestación social, y a los discursos gerenciales, también conocidos como new management o nuevas teorías de gestión empresarial, que se han delineado en las últimas décadas como el discurso gerencial que apuntala los cambios en la organización del trabajo al servi­cio de la maximización (...) del beneficio. Como se expondrá, por el carácter híbrido y heterogéneo del neoliberalismo, se hace necesaria la conjunción de la crítica marxista que aborda este fenómeno como nuevo régimen de acumulación y las críticas de raigambre foucaultiana que lo afrontan como modo de subjetivación o forma de racionalidad. (shrink)

Work of elderly is a controversial problem. The introduction of protection of old age in form of pensions and retirement caused shaping in modern societies qualitatively new social category of persons in post-working age. Growth of human life-span with simultaneous lack of the principle changes of pensionable age inflicts grow in quantity of persons’ using welfare benefits. Growing costs of seniors livelihood lead to transformations in socio-economical structures as well as forcing them to engage in activities that will help increase (...) their social participation, including the lengthening of their professional activity. It seems that the nowadays processes of dematerialization of work combined with the shaping of knowledge-based economy and the movement of third-age universities largely enable the achievement of these objectives. Article aims to approximate the results of qualitative analysis of elderly economic activity in Bialystok conducted in the context of social capital research. Study describes main factors that restrict work opportunities for older people, as well as their hidden resources and potential workplaces. ** Wykonywanie pracy zarobkowej przez osoby starsze jest zagadnieniem kontrowersyjnym. Wprowadzenie zabezpieczenia starości w formie rent i emerytur sprawiło, że w społeczeństwach nowoczesnych ukształtowała siȩ jakościowo nowa kategoria społeczna składaj¸a}ca siȩ z osób w wieku poprodukcyjnym. Wzrost długości życia ludzkiego przy jednoczesnym braku zasadniczych zmian progów wieku emerytalnego sprawia, że ilość osób korzystaj¸a}cych ze świadczeń rośnie. Zwiȩkszaj¸a}ce siȩ koszty utrzymania seniorów prowadz¸a} do szeregu przemian w strukturach społeczno-ekonomicznych oraz wymuszaj¸a} podejmowanie działań, które pozwol¸a} na wzrost ich uczestnictwa społecznego, w tym na wydłużanie ich aktywności zawodowej. Wydaje siȩ, że zachodz¸a}ce współcześnie procesy dematerializacji pracy ł¸a}czone z kształtowaniem siȩ gospodarki opartej na wiedzy oraz ruch uniwersytetów trzeciego wieku w znacznej mierze umożliwiaj¸a realizacjȩ tych celów. Artykuł ma na celu przybliżenie wybranych wyników jakościowych analiz aktywności ekonomicznej ludzi starych w Białymstoku prowadzonych w kontekście badań nad kapitałem społecznym. Określone zostały podstawowe czynniki ograniczaj¸ace możliwości wykonywania pracy przez ludzi starych, jak również ich ukryte zasoby i potencjalne miejsca pracy. (shrink)

This paper examines how the discourse of workfare, which has swept a number of Western countries over the past two decades, perpetuates social divisions and facilitates the intensification of Western capitalism. The social politics of workfare in Western countries is underpinned by dubious notions about the flawed behaviour and morality of welfare recipients on the one hand and the virtue of paid work on the other, often expressed as a ‘work-first’ approach. This policy narrative is guided by the (...) belief that the sources of economic disadvantage are largely attributable to the behavioural problems and moral shortcomings of an established ‘underclass’, rather than the result of structural inequalities in the national and global economy. While some critical attention has been paid to the words of welfare, far less attention has been paid to the effects of discourse, particularly in terms of analysing how ‘target’ populations respond to the policy frames that are used to legitimate welfare state restructuring. This paper draws on a 3 year semi-longitudinal study with long-term unemployed in Australia to examine how low-income people respond to problematised constructions of citizenship, such as ‘welfare-dependent’ and ‘work shy’. Through this form of ‘reader research’ I aim to show that ‘welfare reform’ is much more than a set of policies aimed at managing the poor and the long-term unemployed in advanced capitalist economies; it also reinforces a system of values and beliefs about how all citizens should behave. (shrink)

Les politiques sociales en direction des ménages monoparentaux sont loin d’être homogènes en Europe. Cet article compare les différentes réformes adoptées par plusieurs pays européens ces dernières décennies, et montre la manière dont se dessine aujourd’hui une politique européenne de retour à l’emploi des mères qui élèvent seules leurs enfants – ce que les Anglo-Saxons qualifient de Workfare ou de Welfare to work.

In this paper on the integrative function of work the author challenges the popular claim that jobs are the main source of social integration. Rather it is argued that the claim that work entitles to recognition, participation, income and opens the way towards a meaningfullife should be treated as an ideal, established in the period of Enlightenment. >Social integration< is then defined as a normative concept concerning the capability to participate in the social systems and communities. In that view, social (...) integration implies more than the workplace has to offer. While gainful employment based on high standards of social security may further the cause of social integration, precarious jobs combined with harsh workfare regimes do endanger it. Concluding, a policy adhering to the capability approach towards social integration is proposed, measures intended to take pressure offthe welfare system include changes in the system of public education and the establishment of a basic income scheme. (shrink)

This article opens with a brief analysis of key features of the Mexican semi-authoritarian regime. It then moves to a discussion of the critical realist positions and features that inform the strategic-relational approach. Attention is paid to social interactions and causal relations that enable the SRA to trace patterns of punctuated evolution and to highlight the processes of transformation. Since ideal types serve to highlight key characteristics in specifc phenomena, processes and actors, some features of ideal types of the state (...) and of the transition from one type to another are also discussed. In particular, attention is paid to the Keynesian welfare national state and to the Schumpeterian workfare post-national regime ideal types elaborated by Jessop. For it is contended that the specific features of these ideal types could be of great help in broadening the debate on economic restructuring and political reforms in countries such as Mexico. Moreover, the SRA approach provides an insight into the endogenous features of social change and stresses the importance of networking for a strategic agenda as well. For the never-static dynamics of the processes of change the role of situated agents in context is fundamental, as it injects intentionality and acknowledges the contingency of the conditions that surround them. (shrink)

While many people outside India find the images, sounds, and practices of Indian performing arts compelling and endeavor to incorporate them into the "global" repertoire, few are aware of the central role of religious belief and practice in Indian aesthetics. Completing the trilogy that includes Darsan: Seeing the Divine and Mantra: Hearing the Divine in India and America, this volume focuses on how rasa has been applied in a range of Indian performance traditions. "Rasa" is taste, essence, flavor. How is (...) it possible that a word used to describe a delicious masala can also be used to critique a Bharata Natyam performance? Rasa expresses the primary goals of performing arts in India in all the major literary, philosophical, and aesthetic texts, and it provides the cornerstone of the oral traditions of transmission. It is also essential to the study and production of sculpture, architecture, and painting. Yet its primary referent is cuisine. This book articulates the religious sensibility underlying the traditional performing arts as well as other applications of rasa and examines the relationships between the arts and religion in India today. (shrink)

The reciprocity objection is one of the most widespread criticisms against Basic Income (BI). In this article I challenge the consistency between the reciprocity principle and the preferred policy options of left reciprocity theorists. I argue that any consistent policy design for a reciprocity theory should satisfy two conditions: 1. Everyone who benefits from social resources contributes relevantly (reciprocally) to society’s efforts; and 2. Everyone who contributes relevantly to society benefits from social resources. BI is accused by reciprocity theorists of (...) failing to satisfy Condition 1. But, surprisingly, their preferred policy pack also fails to satisfy Condition 1, and seems badly prepared to satisfy Condition 2. Significantly, left reciprocity theorists reject those options that would satisfy both conditions. I suggest that other normative values and intuitions may explain that inconsistency and indicate that the reciprocity objection to BI is wrong for principled reasons. (shrink)

The lottery question asks whether you would stop working, continue working in the same job or continue working in a different job if you won a sum of money large enough to allow you to live on it comfortably for the rest of your life without working. This literature review reports the results of 22 surveys carried out between 1955 and 2005 where this issue was raised in connection with basic income, and devotes specific attention to how the results have (...) hitherto been analyzed. Used as a measure of employability, other dimensions of the lottery question, such as occupational discontent and satisfaction beyond economic necessity, have been largely overshadowed despite their prominence in the statistical material. The prevalence of non-financial employment commitment (NEC) has also been overestimated because of an analytical dichotomy between those who would continue working and those who would stop working completely if finances permitted. Suggestions for further studies include a clear distinction between non-financial commitment to current employment and to employment as such. (shrink)

In this paper we ask whether liberal egalitarians can endorse workfare policies that require that welfare recipients should work in return for their welfare benefits. In particular, we focus on the fairness-based case for workfare, which holds that people should be responsible for their own welfare since they would otherwise impose unfair costs on others. Two versions of the fairness-based case are considered: The first defends workfare on the grounds that it would form part of an unemployment (...) insurance scheme that individuals would endorse under certain hypothetical conditions that are salient for the purposes of determining just public policy. The second appeals to the notion of reciprocity in order to justify the requirement that people work for their benefits. We cast doubt on both of these arguments for workfare. Neither argument shows that the unconditional provision of welfare benefits is unjust; hence, the fairness case for workfare is inconclusive. (shrink)

The welfare state has come under severe pressure internationally, partly for the well-known reasons of slowing economic growth and declining confidence in the public sector. According to the influential social theorist Pierre Rosanvallon, however, there is also a deeper and less familiar reason for the crisis of the welfare state. He shows here that a fundamental practical and philosophical justification for traditional welfare policies--that all citizens share equal risks--has been undermined by social and intellectual change. If we wish to achieve (...) the goals of social solidarity and civic equality for which the welfare state was founded, Rosanvallon argues, we must radically rethink social programs. Rosanvallon begins by tracing the history of the welfare state and its founding premise that risks, especially the risks of illness and unemployment, are equally distributed and unpredictable. He shows that this idea has become untenable because of economic diversification and advances in statistical and risk analysis. It is truer than ever before--and far more susceptible to analysis--that some individuals will face much greater risks than others because of their jobs and lifestyle choices. Rosanvallon argues that social policies must be more narrowly targeted. And he draws on evidence from around the world, in particular France and the United States, to show that such programs as unemployment insurance and workfare could better reflect individual needs by, for example, making more explicit use of contracts between the providers and receivers of benefits. His arguments have broad implications for welfare programs everywhere and for our understanding of citizenship in modern democracies and economies. "For more than two decades Pierre Rosanvallon has been analyzing the development and the crisis of the 'welfare state,' combining precise, specific knowledge with philosophical and historical depth in a way that is rare among social policy analysts.... [A] subtle and informed book."--From the foreword by Nathan Glazer. (shrink)

Mandatory workfare has been the centerpiece of welfare reform in this decade. In 1992-94, there was a pitched legislative battle over mandatory workfare in Vermont. Feminist organizations mobilized to oppose the mandatory work requirement, producing data to substantiate the claims that women's jobs did not pay enough to purchase basic needs for their families, that unemployment remained a serious problem for single mothers, and that in states where workfare had already been adopted, it did not raise families (...) out of poverty. Vermont's original bill was made less punitive for welfare recipients in some significant respects as a result of the debate. (shrink)

The world of work is undergoing major surgery. Future economic historians may yet describe the cumulative impact of globalisation, technological change and new work patterns that are currently shaking the OECD countries as an economic revolution similar in magnitude and significance to the industrial revolution of the 19th century. There is certainly plenty of pain around, but scattered in so many countries and cultures that this late 20th century revolution will probably prove to have been beyond the capacity of any (...) Charles Dickens, or of a Marx and Engels, to chronicle.From the perspective of the European Union, the pain is clearly visible in two areas: a growing insecurity and stress attending many who are at work in the Union, particularly in occupations and employments where earnings have risen a lot; and the level and persistence of long-term unemployment together with the growing number of discouraged workers, primarily men, who are opting out of the labour force altogether. Not visible within the EU, but no less real of course, is the impact on workers in other countries when the Union adopts protectionist or aggressive trading policies.[...]CONCLUSION :The dislocation that is evident throughout the world of work today, and the insecurity and pain it is causing, is influencing political life in the European Union. What Americans would call the ‘feel bad’ factor tempts some to support protectionist measures, abrupt limits to immigration, cuts in taxation and social services, workfare or — if they are outsiders — abuse of the social welfare system and black market activity. It is important to appreciate that very few people are escaping; the upheavals in the world of work are affecting insiders and outsiders. Making common cause requires forging a fresh consensus on fundamental values of which two key ones are the nature of a business enterprise and the place of a job in a person’s life. These are the key areas where social innovation must match the apparently ceasless innovations on the part of technology. They may, hopefully, prove capable of redirecting the process of technological change itself. (shrink)

Workfare reforms under conditions of fiscal and democratic constraints are the starting point for a reflection on the relationship between social justice and democracy. The focus is on a dilemma of regress or circularity, defined as a situation in which these principles mutually presuppose each other. The main section picks up on the theoretical challenge to escape this dilemma. By examining the critical theory of Nancy Fraser, Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth, it argues that the concepts of Fraser and (...) Honneth seem particularly promising because they integrate discourse ethics with a more systematic reflection about social justice and recognition. Yet they tend to suffer from the tendency to replicate the dilemma of regress on a higher level of reflection by treating social justice and democracy in a sequential manner as primary or secondary issues. In search for a solution the concluding section suggests a balanced intervention into the problem of regressive presupposition. (shrink)

To many in the Netherlands it seems that basic income’s time has come, following the wide appeal of several municipal experiments. These random-control trial designs study the effects on employment, social participation, health and well-being of exempting social assistance claimants from the duties of seeking work and participating in training activities under the workfare-oriented Participation Act. In some treatment groups, claimants also retain a larger percentage of earnings, thereby reducing the poverty trap. These two design features resemble an unconditional (...) basic income. I situate the experiments in the wider context of basic income and discuss their theoretical background and policy orientation. Under existing legal strictures, the experimental designs are too limited to judge the effects of replacing the conditional scheme of social assistance by an unconditional one. Yet these experiments point the way for future trials which can compare the effectiveness of basic income-oriented versus workfare-oriented treatments. (shrink)

Reading the Communist Manifesto against the contemporary background of massive unemployment, the author argues that Marx's theory of work is no longer adequate to tackle the problem of `workers without work' and suggests that it has to be reformulated in such a way that its normative intuitions and its critical impulses can be maintained. In the first part, he presents a philosophical critique of Marxism that is inspired by Jürgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt. In the second part, he presents a (...) sociological critique of Marxism and argues that the theory of the alienation of work implies a justification of work and the work society. Finally, in the last part, the author presents an ideological critique of Marxism that is inspired by Marcel Mauss' sociology of the gift. Criticising the contractualist assumptions of workfare solutions, he proposes a package solution for a radical decommodification of the labour market by means of a disjunction of income and work. (shrink)

Resumen La formidable expansión e intensificación de las actividades de la policía norteamericana, las cortes criminales y las prisiones durante los últimos treinta años ha sido finamente dirigida, en primer lugar a la clase, en segundo a la raza, y en tercero al territorio, conduciendo no a un encarcelamiento masivo sino a un hiper-encarcelamiento del (sub)proletariado conformado por hombres negros que provienen del ghetto implosionado. Esta triple selectividad revela que el edificio del pantagruélico estado punitivo que ha hecho de los (...) Estados Unidos el campeón mundial del encarcelamiento resulta una reacción tardía al movimiento de los Derechos Civiles y a los disturbios de los ghettos de mediado de los años sesenta, y un instrumento desplegado para fomentar la revolución neoliberal ayudando a imponer la inseguridad laboral como el horizonte normal de trabajo para las fracciones no cualificadas de la clase trabajadora postindustrial. El doble acople de la prisión con el hiperghetto dilapidado, por un lado, y el workfare 2 por el otro, no es un dilema moral sino un problema político que requiere un análisis expandido del nexo del estigma étnico, la desigualdad de clase y el castigo en la era postfordista. (shrink)