Survival or Sustainability

This article highlights in space, time and figures of thought the fate of the idea of human welfare and welfare States as well as the existence in human societies of social programs and provisions that in the social sciences have fallen under the umbrella of public social policy and welfare State studies. It takes a 150 year long perspective and discuss the different ways such projects have been questioned by secular worldly events – poverty, wars and ecological and environmental disasters – and ideological and political forces emanating in Europe and North America and ending up in the Global South.