David Craig’s three-part guest-post series looking at the prospects for the welfare state was one of the most-viewed and best-regarded pieces that we published this year. Now, as promised, it’s been collected (in slightly revised form) into a single online publication.
From my foreword:
New Zealand doesn’t generate at lot of profound theoretical analysis of the political economy of institutions like the welfare state. In particular, the New Zealand political blogosphere is the last place you’d expect to see someone grappling with the dilemmas of progressive labour market regulation in the context of Foucaultian ‘governing through freedom’.
Which is why I’m so pleased to have had the opportunity to publish work by David Craig.
In the case of this essay, which appeared in an earlier form as a series of blog posts in September 2010, I can even claim that it was something I wrote that prompted him to start composing it. (Even if he swiftly went well beyond anything I’d said in both scope and depth.)
I fully expect David Craig’s conception of the ‘wellbeing society’ to be developed into a recurring idea in the journals and textbooks of the future. When it does, I’ll be able to say, you heard about it here first!
You can download a copy here.
Tags: child development, decommodification, govermentalities, housing, income inequality, labour market, Michel Foucault, social wage, Third Way, Tony Blair, welfare state
