Peter Dwyer, Understanding Social Citizenship, 2nd edn, Policy Press, 2010, xix + 260 pp, hbk 1 847 42329 0, £65, pbk 1 847 42328 3, £19.99
The number of degree course modules on ‘citizenship’ is increasing, and this book is designed as a core text; but it will be useful not just to teachers and students, but also to social policy practitioners and politicians because the contested and complex concept of citizenship now informs debate on all manner of social policy issues, as this book amply shows.
There is material here on republicanism and liberalism, the development of social citizenship in Britain, political ideologies since the 1950s, class, poverty, gender, disability, race, ethnicity, social Europe, and global citizenship (with a question mark).
Those interested in the tax and benefits system will find relevant material in most chapters – not surprisingly, given the importance of the term ‘citizen’ to much social policy debate and the connections between the tax and benefits system and so many social policy fields.
Of particular interest will be the material on the relationship between class, poverty, citizenship and welfare to be found in chapter 5. Increasing conditionality in relation to benefits policy was a feature of the last government, and we are waiting to see whether the same will be true of the new one. The chapter contains an informative table of new conditionalities in a variety of social policy fields.
Citizenship suggests universalism, but it also has to cope with difference ( – a theme running through the book), and the final chapter outlines three approaches to the relationship between universalism and difference: a Citizen’s Income, group rights, and differentiated universalism.
The erroneous argument that a Citizen’s Income would be ‘too expensive’ is, as usual, offered without evidence. Similarly, the idea that ‘for some a [Citizen’s Income] is a step too far as everybody, freeloaders included, would be able to claim their citizen’s income’ (p.208) receives a response in terms of a participation income rather than the challenge which it deserves. He does concede that ‘freeloaders already receive means-tested benefits and these benefits actively discourage them from seeking employment: a Citizen’s Income wouldn’t do that’, but it’s encouraging to see a Citizen’s Income taken seriously as the feasible corollary to social citizenship.
Given the importance of a Citizen’s Income and citizenship to each other, a future edition of this excellent book would benefit from an extended and better informed treatment of both Child Benefit and Citizen’s Income, which should be treated together rather than separately as they are in this volume.
On the 25th of October 2008 the Instituto pela Revitalização da Cidadania, in the small community of Quatinga Velho at the municipality of Mogi das Cruzes, ReCivitas began an independent a pilot project in the Basic Income of Citizenship (BIC) in line with the principles of universality and unconditionality. The organizers hope that the experience of this project will help educate the public about BIC, paid monthly, in cash, to all local residents, at any time they wish to participate in the project, without any discrimination or requirement to reciprocate. The project is financed by a consortium of Natural Persons formed exclusively for this purpose The project which was originally expected to last for one year and pay a monthly amount of R$30,00 to 27 members of this community. In November of 2009, at the meeting to present the results of first year of experience, the consortium decided to continue the project for another year. After 15 months, the project pays unconditional income to 67 residents of Quatinga Velho. For more information, or instructions on how to donate, contact: recivitas@recivitas.org.br.
The growing movement for universal basic income (UBI) has been gaining attention from politics and the media with the audacious idea of a regular, unconditional cash grant for everyone as a right of citizenship. This volume in the Essential Knowledge series from MIT Press presents the first short, solid UBI introduction that is neither academic nor polemic. It takes a position in favor of UBI, but its primary goal remains the provision of essential knowledge by answering the fundamental questions about it: What is UBI? How does it work? What are the arguments for and against it? What is the evidence?
To read more about the book and or purchase it, click here.
Readers and BIEN members might be interested in a new book, IN THE BALANCE: The Case for a Universal Basic Income in South Africa and Beyond, which has just been published and is drawing good reviews.
It’s available from online retailers, New York University Press (for North America and Europe) and Witwatersrand University Press (for Africa). An open access PDF version can also be downloaded for free.
Here are a few excerpts from reviews:
“Hein Marais delivers a theoretically powerful, impressively documented, timely and urgent case for radical wealth redistribution …. Crucially, the book supports a basic income not as a policy fix, but as a far-reaching political and imaginative response to the steady collapse of a wage-centered social order. This is a book destined to have lasting influence.” —Franco Barchiesi, Ohio State University; author of Precarious Liberation: Workers, the State, and Contested Social Citizenship in Post-apartheid South Africa
“If you have been searching for a way to clearly understand the concept of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), then this is the book that you have been waiting for.” — Awande Buthelezi, coordinator for the #UBIGNOW Campaign and activist with the Climate Justice Charter Movement
“This book is a major contribution to our understanding of the possibility for policies to achieve more equitable levels of well-being in the contemporary political economy of South Africa and the world.” – Peter B. Evans, Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
And here is a short description:
“As jobs disappear, wages flat line and inequality grows, this timeous book presents a compelling analysis of the need, conditions and possibilities for a universal basic income (UBI) in South Africa and globally.
Paid work is an increasingly fragile and unattainable basis for dignified life. This predicament, deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic, is sparking urgent debates about alternatives such as a universal basic income (UBI). Highly topical and distinctive in its approach, In the Balance: The Case for a Universal Basic Income in South Africa and Beyond is the most rounded and up-to-date examination yet of the need and prospects for a UBI in a global South setting such as South Africa.
Hein Marais casts the debate about a UBI in the wider context of the dispossessing pressures of capitalism and the onrushing turmoil of global warming, pandemics and social upheaval. Marais surveys the meaning, history and appeal of a UBI before even handedly weighing the case for and against such an intervention.
The book explores the vexing questions a UBI raises about the relationship of paid work to social rights, about prevailing notions of entitlement and dependency, and the role of the state in contemporary capitalism. Along with cost estimates for different versions of a basic income in South Africa, it discusses financing options and lays out the social, economic and political implications. This incisive new book advances both our theoretical and practical understanding of the prospects for a UBI.”
On 23 April 2021, Diana Popescu, Otto Lehto, and Emil Panzaru from Department of Political Economy, King’s College London – organized a full-day online academic workshop called “The Ethics of UBI in a Changing Economy” that tackles the normative justifications and practical feasibility of UBI.
The program and rough times: 00:00:00 Otto Lehto Opening words 00:08:45 Guy Standing (SOAS) Battling Eight Giants 00:56:10 Christian Schemmel (University of Manchester) Just Workplaces: Asset equality vs workplace democracy? 01:32:46 – Martin Sticker (Bristol) Is a merely national “Universal” Basic Income just? 02:05:34 – Otto Lehto (King’s College London) UBI as a Discovery Procedure 02:41:23 – Deryn Thomas (St Andrew’s) Basic Income and the Collective Good of Work 03:18:47 – Nika Soon-Shiong (Oxford) Cash, Citizenship, and the Contemporary Politics of Belonging in India 03:44:48 – Jim Pugh (Universal Income Project) and Jamie Morgan (Brandeis) Accelerating Equity and Justice: Cash transfers and generational wealth 04:17:30 – Diana Popescu (KCL) How much Dignity is enough: Appearing in public without shame and UBI 05:07:30 – Bernhard Neumärker (Freiburg) UBI in Times of Crisis (Note: Due to technical difficulties, Prof. Neumärker’s presentation is missing the first few minutes. The presentation finishes in Part 2.)
