Participation, Responsibility and Choice

Participation, Responsibility and Choice

Summoning the Active Citizen in Western European Welfare States

  • Author: Newman, Janet; Tonkens, Evelien
  • Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
  • Serie: Care and Welfare Series
  • ISBN: 9789089642752
  • eISBN Pdf: 9789048513437
  • Place of publication:  Amsterdam , Netherlands
  • Year of digital publication: 2011
  • Month: April
  • Pages: 241
  • Language: English

Faced with budget problems and an aging population, European governments in recent years have begun reconsidering the structure and extent of the welfare state. Guarantees and directives have given way to responsibilities and choice. This volume analyzes the effect of this change on the citizens of Germany, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, France, Italy and the United Kingdom. It traces the emergence of new discourses around social movements for greater independence, power, and control, and the way these discourses serve to reframe the struggle at hand. Making use of ethnographic research and policy analysis, the authors analyze the cultural transition, tensions, and trajectory of this call toward active citizenship.

  • Participation, responsibility and choice : summoning the active citizen in Western European welfare states
  • Contents
  • Acknowledgements
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Citizenship and healthcare in Germany
  • 3. The embrace of responsibility
  • 4. From social citizenship to active citizenship?
  • 5. Active citizenship in Norwegian elderly care
  • 6. Mobilising the active citizen in the UK
  • 7. Dividing or combining citizens
  • 8. Just being an ‘active citizen’?
  • 9. Caring responsibilities
  • 10. Active citizenship
  • 11. Active citizens, activist professionals
  • 12. Towards a feminist politics of active citizenship
  • About the editors and contributors
  • Index

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