The Redistributive Ethos in Crisis: Three Imaginaries Dismantling the Welfare State
Scholar in Residence Lecture 1 | Hanna Kuusela, University of Jyväskylä
The first lecture discusses the erosion of universalism as a guiding principle underlying the redistributive ethos. Drawing on interview studies with wealthy individuals in Finland, it explores the gradual and uneven erosion of the universalist ethos vis-à-vis different public services and policies.
Focusing on so-called welfare profit-makers – actors who have economically benefited from the marketization of the welfare state – the lecture examines how the wealthy engage in moral boundary work, distinguishing between deserving and undeserving groups and between legitimate and illegitimate forms of welfare provision. In doing so, it asks what becomes of the redistributive ethos when universalism – and the rationality of the risk-bearing system – is increasingly replaced by selective and conditional moral frameworks.
