Poverty, Riches and Social Citizenship

226 Pages·1999·20.711 MB·English

by  Hartley Dean, Margaret Melrose (auth.)

POVERTY, RICHES AND SOCIAL CITIZENSHIP
Also by Hartley Dean
DEPENDENCY CULTURE: The Explosion of a Myth
(with P. Taylor-Gooby)
ETHICS AND SOCIAL POLICY RESEARCH (editor)
PARENTS' DUTIES, CHILDREN'S DEBTS: The Limits of Policy
Intervention (editor)
SOCIAL SECURITY AND SOCIAL CONTROLS
WELFARE, LAW AND CITIZENSHIP
Poverty, Riches and
Social Citizenship
Hartley Dean
Reader in Social Policy
Department of Social Studies
University of Luton
with
Margaret Melrose
Researcher
Department of Social Studies
University of Luton
Foreword by Ruth Lister
Consultant Editor: Jo Campling
palgrave
First published in Great Britain 1999 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG2J"6XS and London
Companies and representatives throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-333-76498-5 ISBN 978-0-230-37795-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230377950
ISBN 978-0-333-76498-5 paperback
First published in the United States of America 1999 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-21684-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dean, Hartley, 1949-
Poverty, riches and social citizenship / Hartley Dean with
Margaret Melrose.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-21684-9
1. Income distribution-Great Britain. 2. Welfare state.
3. Public welfare-Great Britain. 4. Citizenship--Great Britain.
5. Marginality, Social-Great Britain. 6. Social values-Great
Britain. I. Melrose, Margaret. II. Title.
HC260.l5D4 1998
339.2'0941-dc21 98-7075
CIP
© Hartley Dean and Margaret Melrose 1999
Foreword © Ruth Lister 1999
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made
without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with
written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by
the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WIP 9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to
criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and
sustained forest sources.
Transfcrrcd to digital printing 2001
Contents
List of Figures VB
List of Tables viii
Foreword by Professor Ruth Lister ix
Introduction Xl
1 Of poverty and riches 1
The gap between rich and poor 2
Deprivation and privilege 6
From class society to risk society 13
Negotiating inequality: the foundations of a new
taxonomy 17
Conclusion 22
2 The spectre of poverty 24
Poverty as a social construction 25
Social polarisation and exclusion 30
Social attitudes to poverty 34
An object of wholesome horror 37
Conclusion 47
3 The spectacle of riches 50
Defining riches 51
Consumption, lifestyle and identity 53
Waste, indulgence and fun 56
An object of prurient fascination 57
An asymmetrical relationship? 64
Conclusion 70
4 Of welfare and citizenship 72
Traditions of citizenship 73
Of gender and nation 79
Social citizenship and class 82
Social attitudes and welfare citizenship 95
Conclusion 99
5 Security versus freedom 101
Britain's Schumpeterian workfare state 102
v
vi Contents
The meaning of citizenship 105
Expectations of the state 114
Experiences of transition 120
Summary and conclusions 128
6 Citizenship and social difference 130
Welfare and sisterhood 131
Ethnicity and belonging 142
Conclusion 153
7 Popular paradigms and welfare values 155
Reprise: the argument so far 156
Class, citizenship and identity 160
Social citizenship as a strategic terrain 170
Appendix:: The Poverty, Wealth and Citizenship Study 173
References 193
Name Index 205
Subject Index 209
List of Figures
1.1 Changing income inequality in the UK 3
1.2 Changing income inequality in ten countries 5
1.3 Depths of poverty 8
1.4 Deprivation, privilege and citizenship 10
1.5 Relative deprivation and Runciman's taxonomy of
individual 'types' 13
1.6 A taxonomy of discourses surrounding the risk of
social inequality under conditions of 'late modernity' 20
2.1 Popular images/discourses of poverty 28
2.2 Fear of poverty 41
2.3 The incidence of explanatory discourses relating to
social inequality 46
3.1 Understandings of riches 59
3.2 Perceived causes of riches 65
3.3 The incidence of discourses of poverty and riches and
the boundaries of ordinary citizenship 69
4.1 Traditions of citizenship 77
4.2 T.H. Marshall's hyphenated society 83
4.3 Discourses of control and conceptions of citizenship 93
4.4 A taxonomy of moral repertoires 95
5.1 What being a citizen means 108
5.2 Profile of citizenship discourses 110
5.3 Qualities of a good citizen 112
5.4 Qualities of a bad citizen 113
5.5 Why the rich-poor gap is a problem 119
5.6 Awareness of and attitudes towards the rich-poor gap 121
5.7 Self-location on a notional 0-100/poor-rich scale 127
7.1 Framework for summary of arguments 157
7.2 A taxonomy of welfare regimes 166
A.1 Sample composition - location of respondents in
relation to taxonomy of discourses 178
A.2 Discourse analysis codings 179
Vll
List of Tables
2.1 Perceptions of the gap between high and low
incomes 34
2.2 Perceptions as to the existence of poverty 34
2.3 Perceptions of the causes of poverty 35
2.4 Popular definitions of poverty 36
4.1 Data from the British Social Attitudes survey 97
6.1 Poverty measures by ethnic group 146
Al Sample composition - gender and ethnicity by age 175
A2 Sample composition - occupational class and gross
income 175
A3 Sample composition - disposable income and
savmgs 176
A4a Summary of data on attitudes to poverty 180
A4b Summary of data on attitudes to riches 182
A4c Summary of data on attitudes to citizenship 184
A4d Summary of data from questions drawn from BSA
survey 186
A4e Summary of data from questions drawn from
Runciman's study 188
A5a Summary of data from newspaper monitoring
exercise (January to December 1996) - News items
relating to poverty 191
A5b Summary of data from newspaper monitoring
exercise (January to December 1996) - News items
relating to riches 192
A5c Summary of data from newspaper monitoring exercise
(January to December 1996) - News items relating to
citizenship 192
Vlll
Foreword
Citizenship has reemerged as a pivotal academic and political con
cept in recent years both in the UK and more widely. Politically,
in the UK, notions of citizenship underpin, either explicitly or im
plicitly, many of New Labour's pronouncements. The academic litera
ture on citizenship is burgeoning. Much of this literature has been
a mixture of the theoretical and the normative. It has rarely been
grounded in empirical work that investigates the range of popular
understandings of citizenship.
Herein lies the value of Hartley Dean and Margaret Melrose's
new work. It combines the theoretical and the empirical, thereby
helping to move on our thinking not only about citizenship but
also about how understandings of citizenship relate to the experi
ence and perception of poverty and wealth. The empirical work is
located in a wide-ranging theoretical discussion and, in turn, in
forms further theorising. As the authors acknowledge, much of this
theorising is inevitably tentative and speculative, given the 'explora
tory' nature of their study. Moreover, the findings are often com
plex, reflecting sometimes contradictory sets of responses. They thus
lend themselves to more than one interpretation.
The discussion of perceptions of poverty and riches takes us back
to Runciman's path-breaking study of relative deprivation and it
attempts to update his analysis in the context of the more acute
inequalities of the 1990s. It highlights how the fear of poverty seems
to outweigh the aspiration to wealth and how comfort, security and
possibly a bit of fun can be more important ambitions than riches
as such. The mixture of complacency and anxiety that the researchers
detected among the members of 'comfortable England' could be
seen as giving more support to Will Hutton's thesis of the 30:30:40
society, in which the middle group are marked by insecurity, than
to 1.K. Galbraith's notion of the 'contented majority'.
The findings on citizenship are salutary to those of us who in
cessantly debate its meaning and significance: for most of the study's
respondents the word itself meant nothing and had little or no sig
nificance! Nevertheless, when questioned about the substance of
citizenship and their perceptions of the 'good' and 'bad' citizen,
some interesting insights emerged. Among these were the importance
attached to social citizenship. Most of the respondents disagreed
IX