Relational Nordic Welfare State

Edited by Sakari Hänninen, Emeritus Professor, University of Jyväskylä and Emeritus Research Professor, Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), Finland, Kirsi-Marja Lehtelä and Paula Saikkonen, National Institute for Health and Welfare, Finland

‘The volume is a timely contribution, and through concrete examples also very helpful to understand how forty years of reform have fared in this corner of the world. Through their choice of perspectives, the authors demonstrate that there is still a particularly Nordic outlook whose arrangements are the result of concrete, interest-based struggles and thus not as continuous or robust as some might like to believe – along with the dawning realisation that not only our states, but also the ecological systems are not necessarily sustainable.’

• Contents:PrefaceIntroduction: the Nordic welfare state as a state of civilisation 1Sakari Hänninen, Kirsi-Marja Lehtelä and Paula SaikkonenPART I AUTONOMY1 Neoliberal relations of poverty and the welfare state 15Sanford F. Schram2 The Nordic welfare state and the challenge of difference 29Sakari Hänninen3 The profits and pitfalls of prosociality: cultural-evolutionaryperspectives on Scandinavia 50Nina WitoszekPART II PARTICIPATION4 The Nordic model in ordo-liberal Europe: from welfare parityto social hierarchy? 74Paolo Borioni5 The rise and fall of the Nordic utopia of an egalitarian wagework society 95Pauli KettunenPART III INCLUSION6 Nordic welfare states, trust and the rights discourse:the history of the children’s day care system in Finland 120Toomas Kotkas7 A social constitution of Europe? 138Kaarlo TuoriPART IV SUSTAINABILITY8 The eco-social Nordic welfare state – a distant dream or apossible future? 162Monika Berg and Paula Saikkonen9 Social sustainability and the organization of social work fromthe perspective of Finnish adult social work practitioners 184Minna Kivipelto, Merita Jokela, Sanna Blomgren and MarekPerlinski10 Civilizing business enterprises: the search for a new Nordicgrowth and development model 202Peer Hull Kristensen, Eli Moen and Kari LiljaEpilogue: the Nordic welfare state beyond ideology and utopia 224Sakari Hänninen, Kirsi-Marja Lehtelä and Paula SaikkonenIndex 251