ABSTRACT
The “social question” – the question of social need – emerges during the Enlightenment and has remained central to thinking about the proper role of the state and practices of governance ever since. This chapter traces its impact on the formation of the social (or welfare) state and how social rights and social citizenship became insistent themes in responding to the social question. It then tracks how the welfare state's institutions of social solidarity came to be criticised and efforts to dismantle them operationalised in the name of market freedoms. The role of law, in particular private law, was central to these efforts and has resulted in an increasingly privatised, “debt state” replacing much of the welfare state. Such changes have been accompanied by rising levels of inequality in many leading economies. The chapter also engages with critiques of the dominant ways of addressing the social question from the often-neglected perspectives of gender discriminations and colonialism. It ends by considering how the growing prevalence of digital technology in organising and regulating contemporary society has the potential to alter radically the ways in which social relations are experienced, and the challenges to law and government that emerge in light of these
