Kelly Mckowen
Biographic Data
| ID | 128948 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kelly Mckowen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kelly |
| FAMILY NAME | Mckowen |
| SIGNATURE | MCKOWEN K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Southern Methodist University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7800-1941 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 14 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 7 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Coming of Age in Utopia: Youth Unemployment, Social Democracy, and Reciprocal Becoming in Norway
In Norway, youth unemployment is not only a policy issue but a subject of popular concern. One sometimes hears that the country's young people, who have grown up in an exceedingly wealthy petro-state, lack the ethics, habits, and dispositions toward labor of their parents and grandparents. While these complaints hardly constitute an accurate representation of the youth, they do capture something important about the challenges of "coming of age" w…
Making up the market: Job-seeker courses and the ordinary ethics of social investment in Norway
The social investment paradigm enjoys broad, if tacit, support in contemporary Norway. At the same time, assessment of its effects remains superficial, focusing largely on the economic costs and consequences of particular policies. In keeping with the theme of this special issue, this article proposes a more expansive view of social investment as a normative order - an order animated by assumptions and claims about the relationship between human …
Economic Anthropology
Economic Anthropology is published by the Society for Economic Anthropology (SEA) to make available research that is innovative and interdisciplinary
The unemployment business: Profit, precarity, and the moral economy of social democracy in Norway
Norway's welfare system is widely admired for its success in mitigating the worst effects of post-industrial capitalism. In the past decade, however, that system has undergone remarkable - and controversial - change, as commercial firms have been permitted to play a growing role in administering services for the unemployed. This article, based on fieldwork in Oslo during the 2015-16 oil crisis, examines Norway's 'unemployment business' and the hi…
Digesting Difference: Migrant Incorporation and Mutual Belonging in Europe
Productive Values: Activating Labor and Finding Selves in Norwegian Job-Seeker Courses
In recent decades, activation has become the paradigm of European social policy. This is a move that many scholars have decried as part of the neoliberalization of the continent's once-robust welfare states. Much of the scholarship on activation, however, has focused on the formal and legal dimensions of policy change, obscuring how activation policies function at the level of everyday life and thus what they actually represent with respect to th…
Substantive commitments: Reconciling work ethics and the welfare state in Norway
Among some policymakers and elites, it is common sense that human behavior is rational and guided by material self-interest. In turn, this view underpins the idea that cash transfers and social services, if made too generous, risk distorting economic incentives, diminishing the "work ethic" and fostering a "culture of dependency." The Nordic countries, however, pose a significant empirical challenge to this common sense, as they feature both comp…
Precarious Japan by Anne Allison. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013
Substantive commitments: Reconciling work ethics and the welfare state in Norway
Among some policymakers and elites, it is common sense that human behavior is rational and guided by material self-interest. In turn, this view underpins the idea that cash transfers and social services, if made too generous, risk distorting economic incentives, diminishing the "work ethic" and fostering a "culture of dependency." The Nordic countries, however, pose a significant empirical challenge to this common sense, as they feature both comp…
Productive Values: Activating Labor and Finding Selves in Norwegian Job-Seeker Courses
In recent decades, activation has become the paradigm of European social policy. This is a move that many scholars have decried as part of the neoliberalization of the continent's once-robust welfare states. Much of the scholarship on activation, however, has focused on the formal and legal dimensions of policy change, obscuring how activation policies function at the level of everyday life and thus what they actually represent with respect to th…
Making up the market: Job-seeker courses and the ordinary ethics of social investment in Norway
The social investment paradigm enjoys broad, if tacit, support in contemporary Norway. At the same time, assessment of its effects remains superficial, focusing largely on the economic costs and consequences of particular policies. In keeping with the theme of this special issue, this article proposes a more expansive view of social investment as a normative order - an order animated by assumptions and claims about the relationship between human …
The unemployment business: Profit, precarity, and the moral economy of social democracy in Norway
Norway's welfare system is widely admired for its success in mitigating the worst effects of post-industrial capitalism. In the past decade, however, that system has undergone remarkable - and controversial - change, as commercial firms have been permitted to play a growing role in administering services for the unemployed. This article, based on fieldwork in Oslo during the 2015-16 oil crisis, examines Norway's 'unemployment business' and the hi…
Precarious Japan by Anne Allison. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013
Digesting Difference: Migrant Incorporation and Mutual Belonging in Europe
Productive Values: Activating Labor and Finding Selves in Norwegian Job-Seeker Courses
In recent decades, activation has become the paradigm of European social policy. This is a move that many scholars have decried as part of the neoliberalization of the continent's once-robust welfare states. Much of the scholarship on activation, however, has focused on the formal and legal dimensions of policy change, obscuring how activation policies function at the level of everyday life and thus what they actually represent with respect to th…
Substantive commitments: Reconciling work ethics and the welfare state in Norway
Among some policymakers and elites, it is common sense that human behavior is rational and guided by material self-interest. In turn, this view underpins the idea that cash transfers and social services, if made too generous, risk distorting economic incentives, diminishing the "work ethic" and fostering a "culture of dependency." The Nordic countries, however, pose a significant empirical challenge to this common sense, as they feature both comp…
The unemployment business: Profit, precarity, and the moral economy of social democracy in Norway
Norway's welfare system is widely admired for its success in mitigating the worst effects of post-industrial capitalism. In the past decade, however, that system has undergone remarkable - and controversial - change, as commercial firms have been permitted to play a growing role in administering services for the unemployed. This article, based on fieldwork in Oslo during the 2015-16 oil crisis, examines Norway's 'unemployment business' and the hi…
Economic Anthropology
Economic Anthropology is published by the Society for Economic Anthropology (SEA) to make available research that is innovative and interdisciplinary
Coming of Age in Utopia: Youth Unemployment, Social Democracy, and Reciprocal Becoming in Norway
In Norway, youth unemployment is not only a policy issue but a subject of popular concern. One sometimes hears that the country's young people, who have grown up in an exceedingly wealthy petro-state, lack the ethics, habits, and dispositions toward labor of their parents and grandparents. While these complaints hardly constitute an accurate representation of the youth, they do capture something important about the challenges of "coming of age" w…
Making up the market: Job-seeker courses and the ordinary ethics of social investment in Norway
The social investment paradigm enjoys broad, if tacit, support in contemporary Norway. At the same time, assessment of its effects remains superficial, focusing largely on the economic costs and consequences of particular policies. In keeping with the theme of this special issue, this article proposes a more expansive view of social investment as a normative order - an order animated by assumptions and claims about the relationship between human …
Sociology (7 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (5 works) · Economics (4 works) · Employment and Welfare Studies (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Politics (3 works) · Anthropology (2 works) · Citation (2 works) · Computer Science (2 works)