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Social rights and social resistance: opportunism, anarchism and the welfare state
Author(s) -
Dean Hartley
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
international journal of social welfare
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.664
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1468-2397
pISSN - 1369-6866
DOI - 10.1111/1468-2397.00124
Subject(s) - oppression , sociology , resistance (ecology) , social rights , welfare state , welfare , poverty , law and economics , social welfare , opportunism , perspective (graphical) , state (computer science) , economics , human rights , political science , law , economic growth , ecology , algorithm , artificial intelligence , politics , computer science , biology
This conceptually oriented paper adopts a critical perspective on the question of social rights and asks whether, in contemporary circumstances, claims to social welfare based on rights can provide a meaningful basis for social resistance to poverty or oppression. Past approaches to the question of rights as a means of resistance are characterised as either opportunistic or anarchistic. Opportunistic approaches give rise to ameliorative compromise, anarchistic approaches to nihilistic or inherently hopeless struggle. Nonetheless, it is argued, it is possible to conceptualise rights to social welfare in ways that do not obscure the basis of social exploitation and that do project human need as the basis for social resistance.