[Civsoc-mw] FW: [CODESRIA News] Call for abstracts and papers - 2017 Social Policy in Africa Conference: Social Policy in Africa's Development Context

[Diana Cammack]

From: Codesria-News [mailto:codesria-news-bounces at gn.apc.org] On Behalf Of
editor.news at codesria.org
Sent: 14 July 2017 20:24
To: codesria-news at gn.apc.org
Subject: [CODESRIA News] Call for abstracts and papers - 2017 Social Policy
in Africa Conference: Social Policy in Africa's Development Context

 

 

2017 Social Policy in Africa Conference

20-22 November 2017

University of South Africa, City of Tshwane, South Africa

 

Theme: Social Policy in Africa's Development Context

 

The 'counter-revolution' in Development Economics that emerged in the 1980s
brought in its wake a 'counter-revolution' in Social Policy. In its origin,
the 'counter-revolution' could be understood as a revolt against the
normative underpinnings of the 'welfare state'-something marked by Frederick
von Hayek's The road to serfdom (1944). By the 1980s in the North, this
involved efforts at retrenching the state and restructuring welfare
provision. In the South, and especially in the African context, this
involved a comprehensive reconstitution of the way the state 'thinks' and
acts in relation to the economy and its citizens. From the idea of a state
that 'thinks' in terms of a comprehensive obligation for securing long-term
national wellbeing and development, what emerged was a 'night-watchman'
state, more recently recast in the language of the 'capable state'-one more
focused on securing the space for private investors than the wellbeing of
its citizens. Economic policy was increasingly disconnected from social
policy, with a public policy orientation that is averse to socialised
provisioning, solidaristic risk pooling, (inter-class) redistribution, and
universalism. Social policy became largely residual.

 

Social policy has always been shaped by two broad contending forces. On the
one hand, we have those who see its objectives as mopping up the diswelfares
that emerge from market and institutional failure. On the other hand, are
those who see social policy as having an encompassing reach and coverage,
integrated with economic policy, and driven by norms of equality and
solidarity. The former takes a residual approach, with market as the first
port of call in social provisioning and public welfare as port of last
resort focused on the deserving poor who are not able to meet their own
social provisioning. The latter addresses diswelfares in both the ways we
pursue development and design production activities, and respond to needs at
various stages of the life-cycle. 

 

Over the last thirty years, in response to Africa's development challenges
and diswelfares that its citizens face, a more residual take on social
policy has become largely hegemonic, with powerful external and local actors
using the continent as site of a range of social experiments. Much of this
has been driven by an anti-development thinking that imagines the solution
to poverty as largely a matter of "just give money to the poor"-even as the
'poor' are defined in highly restrictive fashion to cover a smaller
proportion of the population experiencing severe entitlement failure-or a
direct distribution of earnings from mineral wealth to citizens (a question
of 'oil to cash'). Missing from such propositions is a structural approach
to understanding the bases of entitlement failure, poverty and inequality.
There is a general refusal to the engage with the maladjustment of Africa's
economies, deepening their structural weaknesses. The economies are no less
subject to vagaries of external forces in the second decade of the
twenty-first century than they were in the eighth decade of the twentieth.
The social dislocations and citizens' diswelfares, even in the context of
improved growth on the back of commodity super boom, have not shown
commensurate reduction. In most instances, the diswelfares have deepened.
Wealth-based measures of inequality have worsened in much of the continent,
and poverty rate (measured at $3.10 PPP/day) is above 70% of the population
in several countries.

 

It is a public policy regime sustained by an alliance of domestic and
external actors. If we understand the relations between state and citizens
as a web of rights and obligations, the retreat of the state from socialised
and universal social provisioning undermines the legitimacy of the state,
reinforces its more coercive face in its engagements with citizens, and
undermines social cohesion. Leaving citizens to fend for themselves in the
market place makes them subjects of the vagaries of the market. Neither is
there evidence that reducing social policy to social assistance, which is
narrowly focused on the deserving poor in increasingly dualistic social
policy regimes, eliminates poverty or ensures quality services for the poor.


 

Beyond this, of course, is the lack of appreciation that social policy (or
even social protection) is not simply about the relief of poverty.
Progressive social policy is fundamentally about ensuring human flourishing.
It does this by enhancing the productive capacity of citizens through public
investment in education, healthcare, housing, etc.; reconciling "the burden
of reproduction with that of other social tasks" (Mkandawire 2011); it is
about protecting people from the vagaries of life throughout the life-cycle;
it pays attention to the distributive outcome of economic performance; and
it should advance social cohesion (and achieving the nation-building
objectives so vital in the African context). It does all these more
efficiently through a 'prophylactic' approach of preventing vulnerability
rather than waiting to attend to it after people have fallen through the
cracks. 

 

Whether in the more progressive welfare regimes in the North or the
post-colonial experiences of the South (and Africa more so), successful
advancement in human wellbeing has always involved the integration of social
and economic policies and constructing social policy regimes focused on its
multiple tasks. Public provisioning of education, healthcare, housing, as
social investment, on the basis of solidarity and advancing equality
supports economic development. Economic development grounded in the same
norms of solidarity and advancing equality ensures the resources necessary
for the extension of social policy. The objectives of social policy measures
are not only prophylactic but aimed at being transformative of the economy,
social relations, social institutions, and deepening democracy.

 

The DST/NRF SARChI Chair in Social Policy and its partners invite abstracts
of papers to be presented at the 2017 Social Policy in Africa Conference.
The conference will take place from 20-22 November 2017 at the University of
South Africa (Pretoria, South Africa). We invite abstracts and papers that
offer critical reflections on (a) Africa's experience with social policy
since Africa's decade of independence in the 1960s, (b) contemporary
experiences of social policy, and (c) prospective inquiries into social
policy for addressing Africa's diverse challenges of developmental and human
wellbeing. As the heart of the conference is theorising Africa's social
policy experiences (formal and non-formal) in rethinking social policy.

 

The call for this conference is premised on the need to return to a wider
vision of social policy and a more holistic development project that
requires rethinking social policy and economic development in a manner that
reinforces the complementarity of economic and social policies. It is a
comprehensive approach that should take cognisance that a significant share
of Africa's population is still in the rural area. In this regard, it calls
for reflections on how the multiple tasks of social policy can be activated
to enhance the quality of lives for the rural population. How do we
understand land and agrarian reforms from a social policy perspective? 

 

In the same vein, we invite research-based papers that offer reflection on
diversity of traditional conceptions of mutual support and collective
efforts that simultaneously enhance production and protect against the
vagaries of life. 

 

We invite abstracts and papers in the following thematic areas:

 

1.         Social Policy in Africa's Development Context: redressing
poverty, reducing inequality, promoting development.

2.         Rethinking Social Policy: African insights in theorising social
policy.

3.         Social Policymaking in Africa: actors, agency, and policy space. 

4.         Poverty and Inequality in Africa.

5.         Redressing Health Inequalities: ensuring access to quality
healthcare.

6.         Pension Systems Reform and Income Security in Old Age.

7.         Critical Perspectives on Social Protection.

8.         Non-Formal Social Provisioning: the African Experiences.

9.         Land and Agrarian Reform: the social policy perspectives. 

 

Deadlines:

Deadline for Abstracts: Thursday, 01 September 2017. Authors of accepted
abstracts will be informed by Friday, 08 September 2017. 

 

Deadline for full papers of accepted abstracts: Friday, 20 October 2017 

 

Submission of Abstracts:

Click here
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScsvTYplGNXJ_x3icYmHAoY7df2DFwyTi7
6q1E39jqx9zIhUg/viewform?entry.1735054503&entry.178013929&entry.36935942&ent
ry.1556369182&entry.479301265&entry.2136281868&entry.29515617&entry.60432352
5>  to access the abstracts submission page.

 

Travel Support Grants:

A very limited number of travel support grants is available for accepted
paper presenters.

 

Please direct all enquiries to:

 

Ms Ipeleng Chauke

Administrator

2017 Social Policy in Africa Conference

E-mail: sarchisp at unisa.ac.za <mailto:sarchisp at unisa.ac.za> 

Tel: +27 12 337 6114.

 

Post-Conference Activities

 

We plan to publish a selected number of the papers presented at the
conference in a special edition of Africa Development. A larger number of
papers will be published as an edited volume of papers. We will be
approaching CODESRIA and UNISA Press for a joint publication arrangement for
the edited volume of papers. In the alternative, we will be proposing a
publication arrangement with CODESRIA under the imprint of Amalion
Publishing (Dakar, Senegal).

 

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