Architecture And The Welfare State

In the decades following World War Two, and in part in response to the Cold War, governments across Western Europe set out ambitious programmes for social welfare and the redistribution of wealth that aimed to improve the everyday lives of their citizens. Many of these welfare state programmes - housing, schools, new towns, cultural and leisure centres – involved not just construction but a new approach to architectural design, in which the welfare objectives of these state-funded programmes were delineated and debated. The impact on architects and architectural design was profound and far-reaching, with welfare state projects moving centre-stage in architectural discourse not just in Europe but worldwide. This is the first book to explore the architecture of the welfare state in Western Europe from an international perspective. With chapters covering Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden and the UK, the book explores the complex role played by architecture in the formation and development of the welfare state in both theory and practice. Themes include: the role of the built environment in the welfare state as a political project the colonial dimension of European welfare state architecture and its ‘export’ to Africa and Asia the role of welfare state projects in promoting consumer culture and economic growth the picture of the collective produced by welfare state architecture the role of architectural innovation in the welfare state the role of the architect, as opposed to construction companies and others, in determining what was built the relationship between architectural and social theory the role of internal institutional critique and the counterculture. Contributors include: Tom Avermaete, Eve Blau, Nicholas Bullock, Miles Glendinning, Janina Gosseye, Hilde Heynen, Caroline Maniaque-Benton, Helena Mattsson, Luca Molinari, Simon Pepper, Michelle Provoost, Lukasz Stanek, Mark Swenarton, Florian Urban and Dirk van den Heuvel.

This book addresses the need for a more democratic architecture for the European welfare state by promoting citizen participation, the third sector and co-production of welfare services.

Swedish Modernism provides an in-depth, multilayered account of the process of modernization; whilst also highlighting the difficulties found. The debate is enriched from a diverse range of contributors including architects, researchers and leading academics from across the globe. Following an introduction from Helena Mattsson and Sven-Olov Wallenstein, the book is divided thematically into three sections. The first section of the book explores the construction of the welfare state. The contributions in this section analyze the peculiar modalities of this development from the point of view of sociology and political science, providing a more nuanced view of 'modernization' that shows to what extent it must always be understood on the basis of local context. The second section delves into the importance of consumers and spectacles analyzed in relation to the wide range of 'state programmes' from housing to national marketing programmes. This section includes case studies highlighting the importance of consumption for the formation of subjectivity, both in the pre-and post-war period, and range from analyzes of exhibition architectures and debated on standardization to the Co-Op movement and the gendering of taste. One of the contributors looks, for example, at the exhibition Modern Leisure, 1936, and explores how exhibitions were highly instrumental in the formation of the Swedish welfare state. Another contributor looks at how strategies of consumption are formulated in the political and architectural debates of the 1930s. The third and final section of the book deals with the problem of historiography on a broad level. The section also includes contributions from Roger Jonsson and Sven-Olov Wallenstein, who draw on the work of Michel Foucault and delineate a genealogical model of analysis that focuses on how architecture can take part in the production of subjectivity. AUTHORS Reinhold Martin is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Columbia University, and Director of the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for Study of American Architecture, Columbia University. He is also partner in the firm Martin/Baxi Architects, New York. Penny Sparke is a Pro Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Design History at Kingston University, London. UK Joan Ockman is Director of the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. She lives in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. Helena Mattsson is an architect and researcher. She is teaching at the School of Architecture/Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. She is a member of the architectural collaboration Testbedstudio Stockholm, as well as of the editorial board of Site magazine. Sven-Olov Wallenstein teaches philosophy at the University College of Södertörn, and architectural theory at the Royal Institute of Technology, both in Stockholm, and is the editor-in-chief of Site. ILLUSTRATIONS 173 colour & b/w illustrations

This 'Very Short Introduction' discusses the necessity of welfare states in modern capitalist societies. Situating social policy in an historical, sociological, and comparative perspective, David Garland brings a new understanding to familiar debates, policies, and institutions.

The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State is the authoritative and definitive guide to the contemporary welfare state. In a volume consisting of nearly fifty newly-written chapters, a broad range of the world's leading scholars offer a comprehensive account of everything one needs to know about the modern welfare state. The book is divided into eight sections. It opens with three chapters that evaluate the philosophical case for (and against) the welfare state. Surveys of the welfare state 's history and of the approaches taken to its study are followed by four extended sections, running to some thirty-five chapters in all, which offer a comprehensive and in-depth survey of our current state of knowledge across the whole range of issues that the welfare state embraces. The first of these sections looks at inputs and actors (including the roles of parties, unions, and employers), the impact of gender and religion, patterns of migration and a changing public opinion, the role of international organisations and the impact of globalisation. The next two sections cover policy inputs (in areas such as pensions, health care, disability, care of the elderly, unemployment, and labour market activation) and their outcomes (in terms of inequality and poverty, macroeconomic performance, and retrenchment). The seventh section consists of seven chapters which survey welfare state experience around the globe (and not just within the OECD). Two final chapters consider questions about the global future of the welfare state. The individual chapters of the Handbook are written in an informed but accessible way by leading researchers in their respective fields giving the reader an excellent and truly up-to-date knowledge of the area under discussion. Taken together, they constitute a comprehensive compendium of all that is best in contemporary welfare state research and a unique guide to what is happening now in this most crucial and contested area of social and political development.

Danish Architecture and Society offers a fascinating architectural history of the institutions and public buildings that have helped shape the everyday lives of Danes since the eighteenth century. The book charts the emergence and development as well as the grandeur and ultimate demise of these institutions, tracing the underlying--and changing--architectural and societal ideals that have been influential in terms of design, organization, and furnishing. The individual contributions detail the often dramatic historical developments of buildings from industrialism's heyday, such as train stations, post offices and customs houses. Although some of these still exist, a great many have today either been adapted to other functions or demolished. The contributing authors examine the significance of the buildings at the time they were constructed and attending understandings of sustainable building, contrasting these with present-day notions of architecture and construction as a more makeshift phenomenon. Through more than two hundred illustrations--drawings, sketches, plans and photos, much of it never before published--the authors provide a vivid and compelling account of Danish architectural history and its influence in framing the Danish welfare state as we know it today.

The welfare state faces various challenges in Scandinavia and many European countries today, including a poor work environment in the public sector, a growing democracy deficit, and demographic obstacles. In this new book, Victor A. Pestoff argues that the state cannot resolve these challenges alone or together with the market, rather it requires the active participation of citizens and the third sector in order to overcome them and become more sustainable and flexible in the future. This book addresses the need for a more democratic architecture for the European welfare state, opening new perspectives for developing alternative channels for direct citizen participation at the sub-municipal level of governance. Pestoff finds that neither democratic theory nor welfare state theory devotes adequate attention to the contemporary role of the third sector as a service provider or to greater direct citizen participation in the provision of welfare services. He shifts the focus of analysis from the input to the output side of the political system and explores new ways to promote a greater role for the third sector and more citizen participation in the provision of universal, tax financed welfare services. Part 1 discusses social economy actors in Sweden and Scandinavia, both from a historical and future perspective. Part 2 explores major issues for the third sector and welfare state, including the allocation of an organization’s surplus or profit, work environment and service quality in public services and the third sector, consumer perspectives on the social economy, democratizing medical and health care in Japan, and co-production of childcare services in eight European countries. Part 3 revisits the third sector and state in democratic theory and welfare theory, as well as recognizing major hurdles to the third sector and democratization of the welfare state. Part 4 concludes by summarizing the politics of participation in the welfare state.

Despite costing hundreds of billions of dollars and subsidizing everything from homeownership and child care to health insurance, tax expenditures (commonly known as tax loopholes) have received little attention from those who study American government. This oversight has contributed to an incomplete and misleading portrait of U.S. social policy. Here Christopher Howard analyzes the "hidden" welfare state created by such programs as tax deductions for home mortgage interest and employer-provided retirement pensions, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Targeted Jobs Tax Credit. Basing his work on the histories of these four tax expenditures, Howard highlights the distinctive characteristics of all such policies. Tax expenditures are created more routinely and quietly than traditional social programs, for instance, and over time generate unusual coalitions of support. They expand and contract without deliberate changes to individual programs. Howard helps the reader to appreciate the historic links between the hidden welfare state and U.S. tax policy, which accentuate the importance of Congress and political parties. He also focuses on the reasons why individuals, businesses, and public officials support tax expenditures. The Hidden Welfare State will appeal to anyone interested in the origins, development, and structure of the American welfare state. Students of public finance will gain new insights into the politics of taxation. And as policymakers increasingly promote tax expenditures to address social problems, the book offers some sobering lessons about how such programs work.