Abstract
While the rise of social protection in the global North has been widely researched, we know little about the history of social protection in the global South. This volume investigates the experiences of four middle-income countries - Brazil, India, China and South Africa - from 1920 to 2020, analysing if, when, and how these countries articulated a concern about social issues and social cohesion. As the first in-depth study of the ideational foundations of social protection policies and programmes in these four countries, the contributions demonstrate that the social question was articulated in an increasingly inclusive way. The contributions identify the ideas, beliefs, and visions that underpinned the movement towards inclusion and social peace as well as counteracting doctrines. Drawing on perspectives from the sociology of knowledge, grounded theory, historiography, discourse analysis, and process tracing, the volume will be of interest to scholars across political science, sociology, political economy, history, area studies, and global studies, as well as development experts and policymakers.
Highlights
Social Protection in the Global South: An Ideational and Historical ApproachTowards a New Approach to Analysing Social Policy in the Global South1The centres of gravity in the world are shifting
Western social ideas played an important role, this study argues that Republican China, especially the GMD state, emphasised collectivistic rather than individualist notions of social problems and social policy that fit the perceived special Chinese situation, which was viewed as a mixture of such factors as an agrarian society, backward production, an unorganised society that could not prevent foreign oppression, and a deep-rooted tradition of Confucianism as well as Western imperialism
The quantitative growth in social policies may point to the emergence of a Chinese welfare state, one must not overlook the background of an assertive Leviathan with an ever- expanding range of statecraft that encroaches on the core substance of the “social” ideas inherent in “social security”, namely the individualist understandings of social protections and rights, beginning when the term first appeared in official semantics
Summary
Citizens of Western and Northern Europe and some Commonwealth countries tend to take the idea of the welfare state for granted, as an essential part of a good society. 5) by Ravi Ahuja, who joined the group at a late stage and contributed a revised and shortened version of an earlier article In addition to this volume, the fellows of the social science subgroup of the Research Group have produced a number of articles, and the law group is editing their own volume. I thank the ZiF and its staff for enabling this Research Group and providing a tremendously supportive environment for the fellows. I thank Benjamin Davy, who has been an inspiration due to his creative, non-mainstream thinking He forged links with colleagues from land-use studies and provided insight into land as a crucial dimension of social welfare that no longer figures in the collective memory of European social policy but plays a major role in Southern countries. Open access of this publication was made possible through funding by the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1342 “Global Dynamics of Social Policy”, Specialised Information Service Political Science— POLLUX, and by Bielefeld University’s Open Access Publication Fund
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