In this monumental book sociologist Robert Castel reconstructs the
history of what he calls "the social question, " or the ways in
which both labor and social welfare have been organized from the
Middle Ages onward to contemporary industrial society. Throughout,
the author identifies two constants bearing directly on the
question of who is entitled to relief and who can be excluded: the
degree of embeddedness in any given community and the ability to
work. Along this dual axis the author locates virtually the entire
history of social welfare in early-modern and contemporary Europe.
This work is a systematic defense of the meaningfulness of the
category of "the social, " written in the tradition of Foucault,
Durkheim, and Marx. Castel imaginatively builds on Durkheim's
insight into the essentially social basis of work and welfare.
Castel populates his sociological framework with vivid
characterizations of the transient lives of the "disaffiliated":
those colorful itinerants whose very existence proved such a threat
to the social fabric of early-modern Europe. Not surprisingly, he
discovers that the cruel and punitive measures often directed
against these marginal figures are deeply implicated in the
techniques and institutions of power and social control.
The author also treats the flip-side side of the problem of
social assistance: namely, matters of work and wage-labor. Castel
brilliantly reveals how the seemingly objective line of demarcation
between able-bodied beggars -- those who are capable of work but
who chose not to do so -- and those who are truly disabled becomes
stretched in modernity to make room for the category of the
"working poor." It is the novel crisis posed bythose masses of
population who are unable to maintain themselves by their labor
alone that most deeply challenges modern societies and forges
recognizably modern policies of social assistance.
The author's gloss on the social question also offers us
valuable perspectives on contemporary debates over who should
receive social assistance and whether this entitlement should be
linked to the obligation to work. Castel's rich insights and
brilliant generalizations are invaluable for anyone concerned with
what he describes as the "new social question" of work and social
welfare in contemporary society.
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