The Politics of Social Welfare in America examines how politicians, theorists and citizens discuss need, welfare and disability with respect to theoretical and political projects. Glenn David Mackin argues that participants in these discussions often miss the way their perceptions of those in need shape their discourse. Professor Mackin also explores disability rights groups and welfare rights activism in the 1960s and 1970s to examine the ways that those designated as needy or incompetent often challenge these designations, thus making the issue of welfare an ongoing conflict over who counts as competent and generating new ways of understanding democracy and equality.
• Links the analysis of welfare in the United States to the concerns of democratic theory • Recrafts some of the key concepts in democratic theory, such as need, respect, autonomy, solidarity and rights, and explores how these relate to empirical practices • Modifies post-structuralist and agonistic approaches to democracy, challenging the tendency in this tradition to identify democratic action with rupture or the heroic transcendence of existing contours of justice
Contents
Introduction; 1. The aphoria of practical reason: from ethics to politics; 2. The aphoria of social rights; 3. The welfare system as a narrative of founding; 4. Otherwise than need; 5. Needing rights; Conclusion.
Printer friendly version