Suchergebnisse

This article presents a discussion of the current landscape of political economy. It teases out the contested understandings of political economy, explores the contributions from different political and economic traditions focusing in particular on the contribution of feminist economics. In its recount of conversations with Nancy Folbre, the preeminent feminist economist in the area of care, it examines how gender interacts with concepts of reciprocity, implicit contracts of care, and how the social norms are constructed in ways that reinforce women's responsibility for care. The gradual surfacing of a feminist political economy perspective on care is identified and the complex way in which institutions, power relations, and exploitation are embedded in care relations is explored.

Why some politicians are more dangerous than others, by James Gilligan, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2011, 180 pp., €20.40 (hardback), ISBN 9780745649818

While the economic fragility exposed by Covid-19 has renewed the attention paid to social protection systems and in particular to basic income, the Scottish government had already funded four local authorities – North Ayrshire, City of Edinburgh, Fife and Glasgow – to undertake a feasibility study on the introduction of a Universal Basic Income pilot in Scotland. This article explores the specific Scottish context and rationale for this study, including the factors that led the Scottish government and the local authorities to pursue this approach, as well as the impact of the study on the wider social security debate and policy context in Scotland. Specifically, it takes a critical look at the Steering Committee's feasibility study, and its two commissioned research components, and explores the financial costings and institutional obstacles identified in taking forward a pilot Universal Basic Income in Scotland. These significant challenges are considered in light of both the limits of devolution and the ongoing debate on independence, as well as the wider implications for progress in social protection in Scotland.

The Scotland Act 2016 devolved powers over eleven social security benefits (including Carer's Allowance) providing Scotland with some, albeit limited, opportunity to differentiate itself in terms of welfare policy progressivity. The Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 set out the strategy for supporting those who limit their employment or educational enrolment due to the responsibility of caring for an adult or child with a health condition. Using a microsimulation of Scottish data from the Family Resource Survey, this article explores the potential impact, on income and poverty rates of carer households, of raising the level of CA by various amounts and by changing the eligibility criteria. It concludes that, while the Scottish Government's ambitions are too modest to fully support their progressive rhetoric, or to change the overall income inequality landscape, the reforms in targeted policy do make a substantial difference to the lived experience to carers in poverty and, by extension, to the receipt of that care.

The Scotland Act 2016 devolved powers over eleven social security benefits (including Carer's Allowance) providing Scotland with some, albeit limited, opportunity to differentiate itself in terms of welfare policy progressivity. The Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 set out the strategy for supporting those who limit their employment or educational enrolment due to the responsibility of caring for an adult or child with a health condition. Using a microsimulation of Scottish data from the Family Resource Survey, this article explores the potential impact, on income and poverty rates of carer households, of raising the level of CA by various amounts and by changing the eligibility criteria. It concludes that, while the Scottish Government's ambitions are too modest to fully support their progressive rhetoric, or to change the overall income inequality landscape, the reforms in targeted policy do make a substantial difference to the lived experience to carers in poverty and, by extension, to the receipt of that care.

The nurturing that produces love, care, and solidarity constitutes a discrete social system of affective relations. Affective relations are not social derivatives, subordinate to economic, political, or cultural relations in matters of social justice. Rather, they are productive, materialist human relations that constitute people mentally, emotionally, physically, and socially. As love laboring is highly gendered, and is a form of work that is both inalienable and noncommodifiable, affective relations are therefore sites of political import for social justice. We argue that it is impossible to have gender justice without relational justice in loving and caring. Moreover, if love is to thrive as a valued social practice, public policies need to be directed by norms of love, care, and solidarity rather than norms of capital accumulation. To promote equality in the affective domains of loving and caring, we argue for a four-dimensional rather than a three-dimensional model of social justice as proposed by Nancy Fraser (2008). Such a model would align relational justice, especially in love laboring, with the equalization of resources, respect, and representation.

The nurturing that produces love, care, and solidarity constitutes a discrete social system of affective relations. Affective relations are not social derivatives, subordinate to economic, political, or cultural relations in matters of social justice. Rather, they are productive, materialist human relations that constitute people mentally, emotionally, physically, and socially. As love laboring is highly gendered, and is a form of work that is both inalienable and noncommodifiable, affective relations are therefore sites of political import for social justice. We argue that it is impossible to have gender justice without relational justice in loving and caring. Moreover, if love is to thrive as a valued social practice, public policies need to be directed by norms of love, care, and solidarity rather than norms of capital accumulation. To promote equality in the affective domains of loving and caring, we argue for a four‐dimensional rather than a three‐dimensional model of social justice as proposed by Nancy Fraser (2008). Such a model would align relational justice, especially in love laboring, with the equalization of resources, respect, and representation.

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