Od tuláků k nezaměstnaným: sociální politika z pohledu dějin pojmů

• Authors: Jakub Rákosník

Title variants

EN

From the shiftless to the unemployed: social policy from the perspective of the history of ideas

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

This article focuses on the genesis ofthe concept of“unemployment”. The concept as we understand it today took root at the close ofthe 19*^ century, at a time when the first - very tentative - forms of unemployment insurance began to appear. Here, I am trying to capture the language used in the past to describe people who did not work, which of course was to influence the way society was to deal with such non-working people. Liberalism in the 19^ century and the ideas on the nature and tasks of man in the world that were associated with it created an anthropological description in which the importance of material assistance was supplanted by the disciplining and moral edification of fallen individuals which may be found in pre-liberal practice in the age ofEuropean mercantilism. Classical political economics also had difficulties explaining unemployment scientifically. Under its influence, particularly in the first half of the 19*^ century, attention was shifted to an individualising explanation of the origins of unemployment, situating it to a large extent within the sphere of individual responsibility. I stress here the discursive “invention” of unemployment as opposed to what is perhaps a more ingrained idea today: that unemployment simply derives from the objective economic conditions that hold under capitalism.

Keywords

CS

politika; nezaměstnanost

EN

politics; unemployment

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Masaryk's Institute and Archives, ASCR
• Journal: Dějiny - Teorie - Kritika (History - Theory - Criticism)
• Year: 2005
• Volume: 2
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 179-194
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Jakub Rákosník

• Dějiny – Teorie – Kritika, redakce, Masarykův ústav a Archiv AV ČR, v.v.i., Gabčíkova 2362/10, 180 00 Praha 8, Czech Republic