Care, Culture and Citizenship: Revisiting the Politics of the Dutch Welfare State

Carla Risseeuw, Rajni Palriwala, and Kamala Ganesh with a special contribution by Maithreyi Krishnaraj, have brought together their expertise to explore a European welfare state, the Netherlands. They deal with the public and private domains, the public arrangements of the welfare state and the private social arrangements of family, friendship, and care relations. They focus on two categories of people for whom care arrangements and policy are crucial to their everyday lives: the elderly and the single parents. The book analyzes public discourses on care in general. For those working in the area of the state and the provision of care in a comparative perspective this book is innovative and inspiring. Its methodological approach and emphasis on the importance of the cultural context and the way citizens "live" relationships of care, deserve widespread attention and following. The book appeals to a wide range of readers: scholars on the welfare state, policy makers and other professionals working in the care sector, feminists and researchers, teachers and students from various fields of political science, sociology, economics, and anthropology. And those concerned with issues in the arenas of care, welfare, gender, family, friendship, parenting, and ageing.