Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figure
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Discipline, Community, and the Sixteenth-Century Origins of Modern Poor Relief
- 2 The Rise and Fall of the Workhouse: Poor Relief in the Age of Absolutism
- 3 Pauperism, Moral Reform, and Visions of Civil Society, 1800–1870
- 4 The State, the Market, and the Organization of Poor Relief, 1830–1870
- 5 The Assistantial Double Helix: Poor Relief, Social Insurance, and the Political Economy of Poor Law Reform
- 6 New Voices: Citizenship, Social Reform, and the Origins of Modern Social Work in Imperial Germany
- 7 The Social Perspective on Poverty and the Origins of Modern Social Welfare
- 8 From Fault to Risk: Changing Strategies of Assistance to the Jobless in Imperial Germany
- 9 Youth Welfare and the Political Alchemy of Juvenile Justice
- 10 The Social Evolution of Poor Relief, the Crisis of Voluntarism, and the Limits of Progressive Social Reform
- 11 Family, Welfare, and (Dis)order on the Home Front
- 12 Wartime Youth Welfare and the Progressive Refiguring of the Social Contract
- Conclusion: The End of Poor Relief and the Invention of Welfare
- Sources and Abbreviations
- Index
- References
12 - Wartime Youth Welfare and the Progressive Refiguring of the Social Contract
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figure
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Discipline, Community, and the Sixteenth-Century Origins of Modern Poor Relief
- 2 The Rise and Fall of the Workhouse: Poor Relief in the Age of Absolutism
- 3 Pauperism, Moral Reform, and Visions of Civil Society, 1800–1870
- 4 The State, the Market, and the Organization of Poor Relief, 1830–1870
- 5 The Assistantial Double Helix: Poor Relief, Social Insurance, and the Political Economy of Poor Law Reform
- 6 New Voices: Citizenship, Social Reform, and the Origins of Modern Social Work in Imperial Germany
- 7 The Social Perspective on Poverty and the Origins of Modern Social Welfare
- 8 From Fault to Risk: Changing Strategies of Assistance to the Jobless in Imperial Germany
- 9 Youth Welfare and the Political Alchemy of Juvenile Justice
- 10 The Social Evolution of Poor Relief, the Crisis of Voluntarism, and the Limits of Progressive Social Reform
- 11 Family, Welfare, and (Dis)order on the Home Front
- 12 Wartime Youth Welfare and the Progressive Refiguring of the Social Contract
- Conclusion: The End of Poor Relief and the Invention of Welfare
- Sources and Abbreviations
- Index
- References
Summary
From Prevention to Promotion: Rethinking the Political Rationality of Social Assistance
In his famous 1961 essay on “The Welfare State in Historical Perspective,” Asa Briggs drew a distinction between what he called the “social service state,” which guaranteed individuals and families a minimum income irrespective of their position in the labor market and provided a degree of security against such contingencies as sickness, old age, and unemployment, and the “welfare state,” which went beyond securing this minimum to ensure that all citizens enjoyed a fair share in the resources of the nation, a share that would permit them to realize their individual potential without being constrained by preventable illness, want, and ignorance. In this chapter I will argue that wartime youth welfare programs served as one of the mediums for the articulation of a new, distinctly Progressive approach to the problem of social inequality that provided the theoretical foundation for the twentieth-century German welfare state along the lines described by Briggs. Although the key ideas here had already been advanced in the debate over the social evolution of poor relief, the war transformed the political rationality of social assistance in a way that made the active promotion of the welfare of needy and endangered individuals appear more important than avoiding the moral hazards traditionally associated with any assistance that exceeded the deterrent existence minimum.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008