What We Talk about When We Talk about Poverty: Culture and Welfare State Development in Britain, Denmark and France

Martin, Cathie Jo; Chevalier, Tom

doi:10.1017/s0007123421000016

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…Conversely, support for the view that knowledge is a goal in itself is particularly strong in Germany, a country often considered to hold a long tradition of research‐oriented academic education (Ash, 2006). Remarkably, the view that education is primarily a tool for promoting inter‐generational mobility receives the greatest support in liberal welfare states (Ireland and the United Kingdom)—countries in which the notion of upward social mobility through education may be particularly embedded in the creed of the national welfare state (Goldthorpe, 2013; Martin & Chevalier, 2022) and the dominant meritocratic ideology (Mijs, 2021). This view is also strongly supported in Southern European countries, consistent with the actual role of education in upward mobility in Spain (Gil‐Hernandez et al, 2017).…”

Section: Empirical Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Knowledge, skills or social mobility? Citizens' perceptions of the purpose of education

Busemeyer

Guillaud

2023

Soc Policy Adm

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This article explores individual views of the purpose of education. Most existing research focuses on attitudes and policy preferences; while these types of perceptions have so far been largely overlooked due to a lack of data. Our analysis of original survey data in eight Western European countries shows that personal socioeconomic factors and ideological predispositions shape these individual opinions. Individuals with higher levels of education and income are more likely to view education as aimed at expanding knowledge as goal by itself, and less likely to view it as a tool to promote intergenerational social mobility. Left‐leaning individuals are also more likely to regard education as a goal by itself, and less likely to view it as conferring useful labour market skills for the younger generation. Finally, we investigate the relationship between these different views and individual preferences for social policies. Our results show that the perception of education as promoting intergenerational mobility is strongly associated with support for passive transfers, while the perception of education as conferring marketable skills increases support for workfare policies. Social investment policies, because they are widely supported in the population, are not linked to specific views on education.

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Section: Empirical Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Knowledge, skills or social mobility? Citizens' perceptions of the purpose of education

Busemeyer

Guillaud

2023

Soc Policy Adm

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“…I elsewhere develop case histories of how authors participated in specific struggles over education policy, focusing on their influential works in advance of reform episodes, the roles that they played within educational movements, the credit given to authors for their influence by their contemporaries, and their private musings about educational politics in their biographical accounts (based on letters, memoirs, etc.) (Martin, 2018; Martin & Chevalier, 2022; Martin [forthcoming]).…”

Section: Cultural Views and Education Regimesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, cultural tropes found in literature confirm that distinctive cultural views on education predated the evolution of the modern institutions—parties, unions, employers' associations and expanded suffrage—that influence twentieth and twenty‐first century choices. Finally, different cultural assumptions about aspects of social investment may be found across policy areas (Martin & Chevalier, 2022).…”

Section: Cultural Views and Education Regimesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The culture of education regimes: Efficiency, equality and governance in education and social policy

2023

Self Cite

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Education has become a key tool for reducing inequality in the postindustrial economy; however, educational reformers must address tensions in goals of efficiency and equality. Cross‐national differences in cultural assumptions about education provide context for countries’ choices in resolving tensions between efficiency (developing skills) and equality (ensuring educational access for marginal workers). Cultural frames encourage actors to consider the role of education in solving social problems in strikingly different ways across countries. Britain and Denmark exemplify cross‐national variation in coping with efficiency and equality. I first demonstrate how cultural frames regarding education differ historically in Britain and Denmark in large corpora of literature from 1700 to 1920 (Martin, 2018). I show that British and Danish authors (as producers of culture) differ significantly in their depictions of education with respect to efficiency (skills), equality (perceptions of class and society) and governance (role of the state, assessment and coordination). I then report findings from an online internet survey of 2100 British and Danish young people that demonstrate the continuing divergence in cultural constructions of education in Britain and Denmark today. The survey reveals that the same cross‐national cultural distinctions apparent in the nineteenth‐century continue to resonate in contemporary views of education reform. The paper contributes by adding a cultural perspective to the factors driving diverse country choices about efficiency and equality in education policy, and it reinforces the importance of public opinion in policy choices. Moreover, the paper expands upon our understanding of Nordic social democracy from a historical perspective.

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Cultural Images of Labor Conflict and Coordination: Literature and the Evolution of Industrial Relations Systems

Martin¹,

Nijhuis²,

Olsson³

2021

Arch. eur. sociol.

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Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands have different historical patterns of industrialization, but developed similar patterns of industrial coordination and cooperation. Theories accounting for industrial relations systems (economic structure, power resources, and party/electoral systems) have difficulty accounting for the similarities among these cases. Therefore, we explore the historical depictions of labor appearing in literature to evaluate whether cross-national distinctions in cultural conceptions of labor have some correspondence to distinctions between coordinated and liberal industrial relations systems. We hypothesize that historical literary depictions of labor are associated with the evolution of industrial systems, and apply computational text analyses to large corpora of literary texts. We find that countries (Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands) with coordinated, corporatist industrial relations in the 20th century share similar cultural constructions about labor relations dating back to at least 1770. Literary depictions found in modern coordinated/corporatist countries are significantly different from those found in Britain, a country with liberal/pluralist industrial relations systems. The research has significance for our understanding of the role of culture in the evolution of modern political economies.

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What We Talk about When We Talk about Poverty: Culture and Welfare State Development in Britain, Denmark and France

Cited by 6 publications

References 69 publications

Knowledge, skills or social mobility? Citizens' perceptions of the purpose of education

Knowledge, skills or social mobility? Citizens' perceptions of the purpose of education

The culture of education regimes: Efficiency, equality and governance in education and social policy

Cultural Images of Labor Conflict and Coordination: Literature and the Evolution of Industrial Relations Systems

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