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Citizenship and Social Class

T. H. Marshall

Sociology of citizenship and welfare

It is the touchstone text for thinking about how welfare and citizenship rights coevolve.

Synopsis

A classic lecture tracing citizenship's expansion through civil, then political, then social rights, arguing social rights temper capitalism's inequalities.

Core passage idea

Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted work

Full citizenship grew in three stages, and its modern form adds social rights, a basic share in society's standards, that partly offsets market inequality.

It supplies the theoretical foundation for the welfare state as the completion of equal citizenship.

To avoid a bubble

Pair with Gøsta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism.

Reading note

Read it as a short, schematic lecture, holding its tidy three-stage sequence up against messier real histories.

Best paired with

Gøsta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism

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