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Substantive commitments: Reconciling work ethics and the welfare state in Norway
Economic Anthropology ( IF 1.236 ) Pub Date : 2019-12-13 , DOI: 10.1002/sea2.12169
Kelly McKowen 1
Affiliation  

Among some policymakers and elites, it is common sense that human behavior is rational and guided by material self‐interest. In turn, this view underpins the idea that cash transfers and social services, if made too generous, risk distorting economic incentives, diminishing the “work ethic” and fostering a “culture of dependency.” The Nordic countries, however, pose a significant empirical challenge to this common sense, as they feature both comprehensive welfare systems and high rates of employment, labor force participation, and surveyed “employment commitment.” What remains unclear is the nature of this commitment, how it is cultivated at the level of everyday life, and what its broader scholarly and policy implications might be. This article, based on sixteen months of fieldwork among the unemployed in Oslo, Norway, argues that the country's distinctive “social democratic” welfare regime endows formal wage labor—as opposed to the labor process itself—with meanings and values that make having a job central to shared ideas of social personhood and moral life. This “employment ethic” is affirmed, my unemployed interlocutors show, by experiences of worklessness. The article concludes by suggesting that a focus on the moral dimensions of contemporary welfare regimes points the way toward a generative, “neosubstantivist” economic anthropology.

中文翻译:

实质性承诺:调和挪威的职业道德与福利国家

在某些决策者和精英阶层中,人们的行为是理性的,并受到物质自身利益的引导是常识。反过来,这种观点也支撑着这样的观点,即现金转移支付和社会服务如果过于慷慨,则有可能扭曲经济激励措施,削弱“工作道德”并养成“依赖文化”。但是,北欧国家对这一常识提出了重大的经验挑战,因为它们既具有全面的福利体系,又具有较高的就业率,劳动力参与率以及接受调查的“就业承诺”。尚不清楚这项承诺的性质,如何在日常生活中培养这种承诺以及其更广泛的学术和政策影响。本文基于挪威奥斯陆失业者的16个月实地考察,认为该国 独特的“社会民主”福利制度赋予正式的有偿劳动(与劳动过程本身相对),其含义和价值使工作对于社会人格和道德生活的共同观念至关重要。我的失业者表示,这种“职业道德”是通过失业的经验得到肯定的。本文的结论是,建议着眼于当代福利制度的道德层面,为通向生成性的“新实体主义”经济人类学指明道路。
更新日期:2019-12-13
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