The Dignity of Interdependence: The Fragile Hope of the Enabling World to Come
摘要
This final chapter turns towards the future, arguing that the dignity of interdependence offers a fragile but vital hope for imagining an enabling society beyond the productivist values of both solid and liquid modernity. Building on Bauman’s humanist insistence that caring and being cared-for are the foundations of social life, the chapter considers how contemporary transformations—automation, AI, digital bureaucracy, and shifting labour markets—pose both risks and opportunities for disabled people. It explores how emergent systems of automation could either entrench existing exclusions through new forms of algorithmic indifference or release society from the moral obligation to prove worth through work. The chapter examines Universal Basic Income+ (UBI+) as one such post-productivist policy that could decouple value from labour, enabling disabled people to live without the constant suspicion and conditionality that characterise welfare regimes. Throughout, it argues that interdependence must be reclaimed as a political and ethical foundation for organising life in an age of uncertainty.