What Model of Society and What Social Policies? Results and prospects in the context of the Great Recession

Abstract

At a time when the financial crisis has turned into a crisis affecting the social model, the question we should be asking is, where are we going? The reality of recent decades has shown not only that growth by itself does not generate distribution but also places poverty in an irrelevant position. To address the crisis, then, we need to question the very structure of welfare and see poverty and exclusion as problems of our society. This gives rise to a fundamental challenge, in that if all crises redefine social relations, the current crisis is doing this now, and to a very notable extent, and by way of the change in social relations is engendering a change that affects social structures. We are face with inescapable task is of creating con ditions in society that ensure that the excluded, the impoverished, are not expelled but accepted and treated with compassionate solidarity.