The Culture of Welfare Markets: The International Recasting of Pension and Care Systems

by Bode; Ingo

• ISBN13: 9780415958011
• ISBN10: 0415958016
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-10-24
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book examines the rise of welfare markets in Western societies and explores their functioning, regulation and embeddedness by addressing the particular field of old age provision, including both retirement provision and elderly care. It goes beyond a mere social policy analysis by investigating major cultural underpinnings of the new (quasi-)markets, with these underpinnings embracing collective normative representations of how societies (should) institutionally handle old age. The book looks at whether pension and care systems are converging under the influence of globalization ? with marketization being a key phenomenon ? and to what extent this is creating a transnational culture of welfare markets. This book, the first book to systematically describe and analyse the phenomenon of welfare markets, elucidates the complex cultural underpinnings of care and pensions systems in an era of marketization, arguing that we are facing a cultural struggle over the way late modern societiesconceptualize institutional old-age provision.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Welfare Markets: Institutional Forms and Organizational Landscapes	p. 11
Welfare Markets in Old-Age Provision: The State of Things	p. 23
Where the Market Comes in: Current Institutional Designs
How Welfare Markets Develop: The Dynamics of Change
The Role of (Welfare) Culture: The State of the Art and an Analytical Grid	p. 83
The Culture of Welfare, the Culture of the Market
The Case of Old Age Provision
Key Moral Issues in Pension and Care Systems
Sense-making of Welfare Markets for Old-Age	p. 124
The Study: The General Approach, Research Design, and Methodological Questions
Sense-making in Public Debate and the Media
Making Sense of Sense-making: Hybrid Settlements Compared
Conclusion: A New Moral Economy of Old-Age Provision	p. 188
Notes	p. 199
References	p. 229
Index	p. 245
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