Citizens or Consumers?

Social Policy in a Market Society

Edited by Wayne Antony, Dave Broad

Social policy is about citizens choosing the kind of society they want to live in. The mid-20th Century Keynesian welfare state can be seen as a citizenship package which included acceptance of intervention by the state to maintain economic growth and social stability, that meant the inclusion of many previously excluded groups in the social policy process and the institutionalization of a collective responsibility for individual welfare. But, with the ascendancy of neo-liberalism, the politics of citizenship is being replaced by a notion of citizens as consumers, whose medium of social interaction and source of economic and social security is the capitalist market.

This book is concerned with social welfare problems and the need for citizen participation in addressing those problems. While all of the authors are critical of the current neo-liberal orthodoxy, none advocates a return to the status quo ante of the post-World War II welfare state. The essays are grouped into three parts: conceptual critiques of neo-liberal social policy; specific empirical analyses of the neo-liberal counter-revolution; and conceptual and practical responses for moving beyond neo-liberalism.

Contents

• Introduction
• Citizenship and Social Policy: Neo-liberalism and Beyond (David Broad and Wayne Antony) 
• Conceptions of Citizenship and Social Welfare Citizenship Today: Is There a Crisis? (Edward Broadbent)
• The Politics of Social Policy in the Twenty-first Century (Janine Brodie)
• The Media, Business and Social Policy (David Olive)
• Neo-liberalism and the Rise of the Citizen as Consumer (Melanie White)
• New Governing Arrangements, Women and Social Policy (Lucie LaMarche)
• Unions and Social Policy: Confronting a Challenging Future (Basil (Buzz) Hargrove)
• Social Welfare and the Neo-liberal Counter-reformation Neo-liberalism and Retrenchment: Employment, Universality, Safety-net Provisions and the Collapsing Canadian Welfare State (Jane Pulkingham and Gordon Ternowetsky)
• Economic Recovery or Scorched Earth? The State of Newfoundland in the Late 1990s (James Overton)
• Neo-liberalism and the Project of Self-government (Gabrielle Ann Slowey)
• Quasi-marketing Education: The Entrepreneurial State and Charter Schooling in Alberta (Jerrold L. Kachur)
• Women, Human Rights and the Development of the Neo-liberal State in Alberta (Lois Harder)
• Making the Links: Neo-liberalism, Medicare and Local Control in an Age of Globalization (Joel Davison Harden)
• Workfare Temporaries: Workfare and the Rise of the Temporary Employment Relationship in Ontario (Leah Vosko) 
• Re-conceiving Social Welfare Post-Social Democracy, or the Dialectic of the Social Economy (Paul Leduc Browne)
• The Voluntary Sector, the State and Citizenship in the U.K. (Pete Hudson)
• The Children’s Services Initiative in Alberta: Citizens Making Social Policy (Tom Fetter)
• Defending the Past or Constructing the Future? The Role of Labour in Redefining Social Welfare in Canada (James Mulvale)
• Still struggling for Better Child Care: Women, the Labour Movement and Child Care in Canada (Laurel Rothman and Jamie Kass)
• A Modern Socialist Approach: R and R for Social Policy (Chris Axworthy)
• Can We Still Resist? Globalization, Citizenship Rights and Class Formation (Colin Mooers)
• Public Moral Values, The Fabrication of Communities and Disempowerment (Robert Ware)
• Afterword: The Welfare State as Political Community (Phillip Hansen)
• References

About the Authors

Wayne Antony is a publisher at Fernwood Publishing. He is also a founding member of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives–Manitoba (CCPA-MB) and has been on the board of directors since its inception. Prior to becoming involved with the CCPA-MB, he worked with the Winnipeg political activist organizations, Socialist Education Centre and Thin Ice. Wayne also taught sociology at the University of Winnipeg for eighteen years. He is co-author of three reports on the state of public services in Manitoba (for CCAP-MB) and is co-editor (with Les Samuelson) of Power and Resistance: Critical Thinking about Canadian Social Issues  and Citizens or Consumers? Social Policy in a Market Society and Capitalism Rebooted? Work and Welfare in the New Economy (both with Dave Broad). He is also co-editor (with Julie Guard) of the up-coming book, Bankruptcies and Bailouts.

Dave Broad is a Professor of Social Policy in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan. His publications include (with Ron Bourgeault) 1492-1992: Five Centuries of Imperialism and Resistance; (with Wayne Antony) Citizens Or Consumers? Social Policy in a Market Society; and Hollow Work, Hollow Society? Globalization and the Casual Labour Problem.