Abstract
This chapter examines how in the last 40 years the concept of ‘dependency’ has been central to critiques the welfare state as an ideal model of social and political organisation. The chapter gives an overview of prominent critiques of ‘welfare dependency,’ particularly in the USA since the 1980s, and examines how feminist political theorists have responded to this rhetoric. The chapter argues that the concept of ‘interdependence,’ which is both implicit and explicit in much of this theory, does not suffice as a new basis for political debate and theory. The feminist lessons need to be reformulated with a focus on political choices between the forms of dependency inherent in different ways of structuring our basic economic institutions and relationships.
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Cockburn, P.J.L. (2018). Economic Dependence and the Welfare State. In: The Politics of Dependence. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78908-8_2
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