Giving everyone a fish: COVID-19 and the new politics of distribution

Christopher Webb

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: In response to widescale job losses produced by the COVID.19 pandemic, states have drastically expanded social protections, primarily through cash transfer programs. Drawing from James Ferguson's notion of distributional politics, this reflection analyzes the meaning of this rapid global expansion of the welfare state and the political opportunities it provides. Based on two seemingly disparate cases, South Africa and Canada, I suggest that these expansions provide valuable opportunities for rethinking existing approaches to livelihoods, labour and social protection. These interventions also provide political possibilities through which a more radically redistributive politics can be articulated. In both contexts, state responses have provoked new challenges, dialogues, and experiments in distribution at multiple scales, from the neighbourhood to the nation state. This reflection calls for deeper inquiry into the multiple meanings of cash transfers and the political openings they provide. Finally, it provides guiding questions for future anthropological inquiry into livelihoods and social protection.

Keywords: Canada; cash transfers; Covid-19; distribution; labour; livelihoods; politics; social protection; South Africa; coronavirus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2021-05-13
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Anthropologica, 13, May, 2021, 63(1), pp. 1 - 16. ISSN: 0003-5459

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/110525/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:110525

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().