A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at
www.luminosoa.org.
Want, disease, ignorance, squalor, and idleness: first recognized
together in mid-nineteenth-century Europe, these are the focus of the
Social Question. In 1942 William Beveridge called them the "giant evils"
while diagnosing the crises produced by the emergence of industrial
society. More recently, during the final quarter of the twentieth
century, the global spread of neoliberal policies enlarged these crises
so much that the Social Question has made a comeback.
The Social Question in the Twenty-First Century maps out the linked
crises across regions and countries and identifies the renewed and
intensified Social Question as a labor issue above all. The volume
includes discussions from every corner of the globe, focusing on
American exceptionalism, Chinese repression, Indian exclusion, South
African colonialism, democratic transitions in Eastern Europe, and other
phenomena. The effects of capitalism dominating the world, the impact of
the scarcity of waged work, and the degree to which the dispossessed
poor bear the brunt of the crisis are all evaluated in this carefully
curated volume. Both thorough and thoughtful, the book serves as
collective effort to revive and reposition the Social Question,
reconstructing its meaning and its politics in the world today.
