Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to explore the welfare state as a key site of state-citizen relations. Welfare programs provide access to larger socio-political constellations, and the moral economies and forms of social contract these spell out.

Paper long abstract:

This paper seeks to explore the welfare state as a key site of state-citizen relations, which provides access to specific, historically and spatially situated socio-political worlds. Rather than examining the disciplinary effects of particular forms of governance and service provision, as many anthropological explorations of the welfare state do, I suggest we step back to examine the larger socio-political constellations of which these welfare programs are part, and the moral economies and forms of social contract these spell out. I propose we understand welfare state programs as modelling particular relationalities, between states that embody a public will, public good or public actor and agency, citizens, individuals positioned in particular reciprocal relations with that state, and other entities, like the public, society or community that represent forms of congregation among citizens. Taking inspiration from approaches developed out of science and technology studies, we can ask how such entities, and the relations between them, are enacted in and through welfare programs. I will illustrate the value of this approach by drawing on examples from fieldwork in Amsterdam over the last ten years.