From Imperial to Post-Imperial Welfare Policies: Continuities and Changes

Abstract

This panel targets the imperial sources of internationalised welfare. It aims to bring together scholars who investigate and critically reflect upon the ideas, policy measures and practices of empires in identifying, problematizing and dealing with poverty, social crises and contestations from excluded groups across global peripheries. What were the features of this imperial wave of global social policy? Under which conditions did imperial politicians, bureaucrats and academics engage with teaching, healing and nurturing subject populations in colonies and protectorates? In which ways were these policies and practices themselves transformed in the late imperial years after the Second World War? What were the overall consequences for social policy making after decolonisation had finally materialised? Organised around this set of questions, contributions ideally bridge the gap between themes of dependent development and the politics of empire, on the one hand, and of welfare statism and social policy, on the other hand. In particular, the goal is to theorise what the ‘imperial’ is in ‘imperial social policy and welfare’. Geographically, we invite papers that cover African, Middle Eastern and Asian contexts of imperial rule. With regard to policy fields, papers may cover anything from education, health, food, labour, pensions, housing and social assistance schemes. Contributions may render the multi-sited and multi-causal nature of imperial policy making visible, for example by investigating the various imperial justifications of policies and regulations, and the contestations they produced both within and beyond the respective imperial institutions.

Title	Details
Conceptualising the Imperial in Imperial Welfare	View Paper Details
Colonial Legacies of Social Policies: Concession Economies in the UN Middle Africa Subregion	View Paper Details
From Colonial Health to the WHO: The Limits of Internationalised Social Welfare in Postwar Africa	View Paper Details
Imperial Citizenship and the Origins of Malta’s Welfare State, 1942-1956	View Paper Details
A Post-War Vision of Social Welfare: The Global Dissemination and Local Reception of the Beveridge Report	View Paper Details