Gøsta Esping-Andersen

Dzieła

• 1990The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Trzy światy kapitalizmu opiekuńczego)

  Porównuje osiemnaście bogatych demokracji pod kątem tego, w jakim stopniu prawa socjalne uwalniają ludzi od rynku i jak polityka społeczna kształtuje stratyfikację, i grupuje je w reżimy liberalny, konserwatywny i socjaldemokratyczny, ukształtowane przez różne historyczne koalicje klasowe.

• 2009The Incomplete Revolution: Adapting to Women’s New Roles (Niedokończona rewolucja: dostosowanie się do nowych ról kobiet)

  Rosnące wykształcenie i zatrudnienie kobiet przekształciły rodziny, ale rewolucja jest niedokończona: tam, gdzie polityka i mężczyźni pozostają w tyle, spada dzietność i rosną nierówności między rodzinami; Esping-Andersen opowiada się za polityką opiekuńczą wspierającą równość płci i wczesne dzieciństwo.

Stanowisko

Esping-Andersen is on the map as a bridge figure from comparative welfare-state research. “The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism” (1990) argued that welfare states differ in kind, not only in how much they spend. Esping-Andersen, inspired by Karl Polanyi and recalling Marx’s analysis of labour power as a commodity, measured how far social rights allow people to maintain a livelihood independently of the market (“de-commodification”), and how far social policy reproduces or reduces social stratification. On this basis the book distinguished three regimes: a liberal one with modest, means-tested benefits (United States, Canada, Australia), a conservative one tied to occupational status and the traditional family (Germany, Austria, Italy) and a social-democratic one with universal benefits (Scandinavia), each shaped by historical coalitions of social classes. The typology became a standard framework of the field. Feminist scholars such as Jane Lewis and Ann Orloff objected that it neglected unpaid care work and women’s dependence on the family; Nancy Fraser cited the book in her model of gender equity after the family wage. Esping-Andersen took up these objections with the concept of “de-familialisation” (“Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies”, 1999), and “The Incomplete Revolution” (2009) examines how women’s rising education and employment change families, fertility and inequality.

Życie i kontekst

Gøsta Esping-Andersen was born in Næstved, Denmark, in 1947. Esping-Andersen studied at the University of Copenhagen and at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, which awarded a doctorate in sociology in 1978 for a dissertation on social class, social democracy and state policy. Teaching posts followed at Harvard University, at the European University Institute in Florence and at the University of Trento, and later at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, where Esping-Andersen is now professor emeritus. The first book-length studies dealt with the social democratic parties of Scandinavia (“Politics Against Markets”, 1985). Esping-Andersen was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008 and became a corresponding fellow of the British Academy in 2010; the University of Copenhagen awarded an honorary doctorate in 2012.

Dalsze główne dzieła

• Politics Against Markets: The Social Democratic Road to Power (1985)
• Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies (1999)
• Why We Need a New Welfare State (2002, with D. Gallie, A. Hemerijck and J. Myles)