Bill Jordan - Freedom and the Welfare State

Freedom and the Welfare State — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Freedom and the Welfare State" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...68

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: WELFARE AND THE STATE

Volume 10

FREEDOM AND THE WELFARE STATE

FREEDOM AND THE WELFARE STATE

BILL JORDAN

First published in 1976 by Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd.

This edition first published in 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1976 Bill Jordan

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-138-61373-7 (Set)
ISBN: 978-0-429-45813-2 (Set) (ebk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-60369-1 (Volume 10) (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-46890-2 (Volume 10) (ebk)

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

Preface to the reissue

In the final paragraph of this book, I warned that coercive measures against claimants (such as benefits sanctions) could ultimately lead to a prolonged crisis in welfare institutions, a new and invigorated debate about these, and increasingly violent social conflict. This was before the days of workfare, welfare-to-work or activation, which have added a dimension to the coercive powers of the benefits authorities.

The book aimed to review the concepts of freedom currently being canvassed by philosophers and political theorists, and to relate them to real-life issues in welfare states. In the final section, I advocated the introduction of universal, unconditional Basic Incomes for all citizens, as the most promising way to resolve these dilemmas.

In the following decade, a whole collection of scholars, both in the UK (such as Hermione Parker), and in Europe (such as Philippe Van Parijs) came together to form what eventually became the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), a worldwide alliance of academics and activists, meeting biennially to promote the idea.

I did not foresee that it would not be in the more developed, industrialised economies that Basic Income schemes would eventually become established, but in Alaska, where windfall oil revenues supplied the funding; or that later unexpected mineral wealth would in turn lead to pilot projects in Namibia, Mongolia and India, inspired and reported by Guy Standing in his book Basic Income: And How we Can Make it Happen (Pelican, 2017).

These pilot studies demonstrated the liberating and life-enhancing effects for women and children of Basic Incomes, making exactly the connections I attempted to outline in this book. The alternative, of growing authoritarianism and social conflict, is an all-too-evident threat in the developed world.

Freedom and the Welfare State

Bill Jordan

Department of Sociology
University of Exeter

Routledge & Kegan Paul

London, Henley and Boston

First published in 1976
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
39 Store Street,
London WC1E 7DD,
Broadway House,
Newtown Road,
Henley-on-Thames,
Oxon RG9 1EN and
9 Park Street,
Boston, Mass. 02108, USA
Bill Jordan 1976
No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission from the
publisher, except for the quotation of brief
passages in criticism

ISBN 0 7100 8425 0

Contents

I am very grateful to a number of colleagues, friends and relatives for helpful discussions of various parts of this book during its writing. They include Professor Duncan Mitchell, Professor Robert Leaper, Bob Witkin, Dermont Walsh, Sarah Pelissier, Paul and Lesley Wolfarth. Many of my students and ex-students will also recognise bits of themselves in parts of it, but those from whose dissertations I most directly borrowed were Peter Jeffries, Diane Hart and Julian Kohn. My thanks are also due to Mrs Jill Soughton for her patient and prompt typing of the manuscript, and to Mrs Colleen Hutchings, Mrs Sue Ridler and Mrs Margaret Jerry for additional assistance. But I am most particularly grateful to Jean Packman for encouragement, interest and sharing in the whole of this book at every stage, from preliminary plans to final amendments.

Three Traditions

To what extent is freedom compatible with attempts by the state to promote the welfare of its citizens? Does liberty reside in independence from state interference? Are welfare institutions necessarily agencies of social control which impose constraints on individual autonomy? Do some people require the states protection, and if so, should they enjoy the same rights and liberties as independent citizens? These questions are the starting point of this book.

But it is not meant to be an abstract and philosophical discussion of these issues. My interests are in social policy and social worknot in building theoretical models of society, but in the ways people actually think and feel and live together. As a framework for the development of an analysis of these questions, I have identified three elements which seem to me to be likely to influence the future relationship between freedom and welfare in our own society. These elements are really no more than constellations of attitudes; but they have come to form separate and recognisable traditions which have run through society like underground streams, coming to the surface in politics, in literature, in philosophy or in everyday life. Each of these traditions has a history of its own, sometimes expressed in an extreme crystallisation of values at a certain point in time, sometimes in more subtle, long-term and subterranean influences upon people and events. There are other such traditions; I have selected the three most relevant to welfare issues and institutions.

Next page

1234567...68

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Freedom and the Welfare State»

Look at similar books to Freedom and the Welfare State. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Philip Mendes

Empowerment and Control in the Australian Welfare State: A Critical Analysis of Australian Social Policy Since 1972

Charlie Cooper

Modernising Social Policy: Unravelling New Labours Welfare Reforms

Noel W. Timms

Talking About Welfare: Readings in Philosophy

J.F. Sleeman

The Welfare State: Its Aims, Benefits and Costs

William Alexander Robson

Welfare State and Welfare Society: Illusion and Reality

Jie Lei

Chinas Social Welfare Revolution

Paul Spicker

Arguments for Welfare: The Welfare State and Social Policy

Gamble

Can the Welfare State Survive?

David Kelley

A Life of Ones Own: Individual Rights and the Welfare State

George R. Boyer

The Winding Road to the Welfare State: Economic Insecurity and Social Welfare Policy in Britain

James Bartholomew

The Welfare State We’re In

Bent Greve

Historical Dictionary of the Welfare State

Discussion, reviews of the book Freedom and the Welfare State and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.