Anthropology day 2024: Welfare States in Crisis

After decades of neoliberal erosion across Europe, once solid welfare states are coming apart at the seams. It has now become increasingly clear that we are living and working in a grim moment in which welfare actors are unable to live up to promises of care and welfare in the face of deep social inequalities, precarity and distrust. These failing welfare states raise existential questions for many people, and have recently led to the political success of right wing populism, and the global circulation of conspiracy theories.

New anthropological research explores the limits of the welfare state, asking how welfare actors within and beyond the state prototype welfare arrangements of the future. What happens when welfare state promises come up against their limits, both in terms of the basic necessities it can no longer provide (housing, income, food) and in terms of the multiple exclusions it enacts among those in need, including sans papiers? How are old social contracts reimagined in this context?

This year’s anthropology day is organized in collaboration with Crafting Resilience. Anouk de Koning, Principal Investigator for the project, will join the opening panel on "Reimagining Welfare Futures As Things Fall Apart". Crafting Resilience postdoc Wiebe Ruijtenberg will contribute to a panel about the “outcast” professional who seeks to change the system. The day closes with a roundtable about making new welfare states around the world. 

For more information and how to register, click here.