Ethnographies of Deservingness : Unpacking Ideologies of Distribution and Inequality

Claims around 'who deserves what and why' moralise inequality in the current global context of unprecedented wealth and its ever more selective distribution. __Ethnographies of Deservingness__ explores this seeming paradox and the role of moralized assessments of distribution by reconnecting disparate discussions in the anthropology of migration, economic anthropology and political anthropology. This edited collection provides a novel and systematic conceptualization of Deservingness and shows how it can serve as a prime and integrative conceptual prism to ethnographically explore transforming welfare states, regimes of migration, as well as capitalist social reproduction and relations at large. Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Deservingness Reassessing the Moral Dimensions of Inequality Part I Deservingness: Genealogies, Struggles and Ideologies 1 Caring for the Old and Letting Them Die A Political Economy of Human Worth 2 Must the Tired and Poor ‘Stand on Their Own Two Feet’? Tools for Analysing How Migrants’ Deservingness Is Reckoned 3 ‘Deserving Classes without Class’ Explaining the Neonationalist Ascendancy 4 Comparing Deservingness A Reflexive Approach to Solidarity and Cruelty Part II Categories, Policies and Negotiations of Deservingness 5 Hartz IV Affective and Sensual Registers of Moral Inferiority 6 Unemployment, Deservingness and Ideological Apparatuses A Case Study from Turin, Italy 7 The Politics of Austerity Welfare Charity, Discourses of Deservingness and Human Needs in a Portuguese Church Parish 8 ‘Here, Morality Is a Sense of Entitlement’ Citizenship, Deservingness and Inequality in Suburban Atlanta Part III The (Un)Deserving Migrant/Refugee 9 Ambivalences of (Un)Deservingness Tracing Vulnerability in the EU Border Regime 10 The Politics of Deservingness among Resettled Bhutanese Refugees 11 Suffering and Vulnerability Reconfi gured Refugee Images of Hungarian Migrants Working in German Refugee Accommodation Institutions Part IV Debt Relations: The State, Market Actors and Debtors 12 Do Mortgagors in Hardship Deserve Debt Relief? Legitimizing and Challenging Inequality during the Spanish Home Repossession Crisis 13 Households on Trial Over-indebtedness, the State and Moral Struggles in Greece 14 Victims, Patriots and the Middle Class The (Un)Deservingness of Debtors in Post-Credit Boom Croatia Afterword Differentiating Deservingness Index "Claims around 'who deserves what and why' moralise inequality in the current global context of unprecedented wealth and its ever more selective distribution. Ethnographies of Deservingness explores this seeming paradox and the role of moralized assessments of distribution by reconnecting disparate discussions in the anthropology of migration, economic anthropology and political anthropology. This edited collection provides a novel and systematic conceptualization of Deservingness and shows how it can serve as a prime and integrative conceptual prism to ethnographically explore transforming welfare states, regimes of migration, as well as capitalist social reproduction and relations at large"-- Provided by publisher

Claims around 'who deserves what and why' moralise inequality in the current global context of unprecedented wealth and its ever more selective distribution. Ethnographies of Deservingness explores this seeming paradox and the role of moralized assessments of distribution by reconnecting disparate discussions in the anthropology of migration, economic anthropology and political anthropology. This edited collection provides a novel and systematic conceptualization of Deservingness and shows how it can serve as a prime and integrative conceptual prism to ethnographically explore transforming welfare states, regimes of migration, as well as capitalist social reproduction and relations at large.