Care, Culture and Citizenship

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.

This book is a unique contribution to our knowledge of the working of the welfare state, for two reasons. First of all, the majority of the scholarly literature about the welfare state tended to neglect care and gender. This book moves beyond the formal institutions and policies, by analyzing public discourses on care in general. Secondly, the book has a truly intercultural perspective. It moves beyond the well-known insider-outsider dichotomy, where outsiders uncover or illuminate hidden assumptions of another culture often not perceived by the insiders. 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.

This 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 fi elds of political science, sociology, economics and anthropology. And those concerned with issues in the arenas of care, welfare, gender, family, friendship, parenting and ageing.

Carla Risseeuw is a professor in anthropology at the University of Leiden (the Netherlands). Rajni Palriwala is a professor in sociology at the University of Delhi (India). Kamala Ganesh is a professor in sociology at the University of Mumbai (Bombay) (India). Maithreyi Krishnaraj is an economist and Director of the Research Centre for Women's Studies in Bombay (India).