Poverty and the Third Way

by Colin C. Williams (Editor), Julius B. Rubinstein, Jan Windebank

What is poverty and how can it be tackled? The view of the Old Left adopts redistribution as the solution to poverty; the New Right identifies the poor as an underclass in need of integration into the mainstream, while New Labour's Third Way sees the root cause of poverty as joblessness and integration into the formal labour market as the route out of poverty. Taking the Third Way out of its narrow party political context, this book argues that it is necessary to harness work beyond employment in order to pave a Third Way beyond capitalism and socialism. The outcome is a thought-provoking new approach towards combating poverty. Poverty and the Third Way uncovers how New Labour's employment-focussed approach causes, rather than resolves, poverty. Searching for another approach, the authors find the seeds of an alternative Third Way in radical European social democratic and ecological thought which seeks to transcend capitalism and socialism by developing work beyond employment.

226 pages, Hardcover

First published November 21, 2002

About the author

Colin C. Williams is a Professor of Public Policy at the University of Sheffield, where he joined the Management School in 2006 after holding a professorship at the University of Leicester. His teaching is research led, drawing on case studies from consultancy projects and books on the future of work and regional economies. His research focuses on re-theorising economic development, informal economies, and public policy across local, national, and international contexts. He is editor of leading journals in sociology and social policy.