Call for Papers: AAG Conference, Chicago, Il. April 2015
Non-profits, Governance, and the Welfare State in the Post-Economic Crisis Period
The welfare state in the United States has been marked by a set of transitions in the last 30 years. This includes, most notably: the decline in cash assistance to the poor; the rescaling of the governance of the welfare state down to state and local levels; and the contracting out of basic public sector goods and services to private (for-profit and not-for-profit) corporations. These processes are both well-established in practice, and well understood in geography and the social sciences more generally. And there is some convergence towards the American framework of welfare state governance in other parts of the north Atlantic (most notably Canada and the United Kingdom).
Importantly, it was this welfare state that had to confront the economic crisis of 2007-2009 and that crisis’s very long shadow. And it is this welfare state that we have for the foreseeable future. As we continue to make sense of the crisis, and what it has wrought, it is important that we understand the ways in which the welfare state is able, or not able, to withstand such crises and how we should interpret the character of the welfare state moving forward. In this session we will be addressing the governance and performance of the welfare state in the economic crisis and in the period since the worst of the crisis ended.
Papers in this session can address any number of issues related to this theme (and can be about the US or any other country) including:
- The role of non-profits in the post-crisis welfare state
- The fiscal crisis of states and municipalities and its aftermath
- The capacity of non-profits to withstand the crisis
- The continued privatization of the welfare state
- The changing character of American federalism in the contemporary political economy
- The implications of the current character of the welfare state for our understandings of state theory
- The spatial variability in the character and capacity of the welfare state
- The Big Society and the evolving inter-relationships between the state and non-profits in the UK
This session is being organized by James DeFilippis, Rutgers University (jdefilip@rci.rutgers.edu); Phil Ashton, University of Illinois-Chicago (pashton@uic.edu); and Emily Rosenman, University of British Columbia (emily.rosenman@geog.ubc.ca). If you are interested in participating in the session, or if you have any questions, please email James by October 30.