In his book, Adam Gearey examines the British welfare state, drawing insight about the role of labor and the importance of egalitarian thinking in order to assess the importance of welfare state structures in the global market economy. An integration of political theory and public policy offers a potentially rich resource for envisioning a hopeful future in which humans acknowledge and act on mutual obligations locally and globally. That said, using disparate methodologies can be challenging and requires sustained engagement between the two. Justice as Welfare jumps between diagnoses of public-sector problems and more general observations about work, equality, and welfare, presented in what Gearey alternately calls a “bricolage” and “DIY” [do it yourself] of theoretical references or selective quotations; as he explains, he uses “the bits that seem to fit” (p. 8).

The first period of the British welfare state under consideration is the postwar period from 1945 to 1979, characterized by the increasing influence of liberal social democracy and public ownership for rebuilding after World War II. The second period, 1979–97, during which the Conservative governments held power, was marked by reform of welfare policy in favor of the market economy. The third, inaugurated by Tony Blair’s New Labour Party, shifted the focus to contemporary globalized market economy. Gearey maintains that welfare “is not just a question of helping the poor. It creates an inclusive ‘cosmopolitan’ national community in which both rich and poor feel they have a stake” (p. 45).

After briefly presenting the major trends in these three periods, Gearey moves toward a theoretical argument concerning how to think about welfare, asserting that social recognition is reliant on work. Meaningful work includes work that does not receive a wage; it is characterized as work that provides challenge and constitutes part of an individual’s identity. Meaningful work is required for well-being and is the site in which Gearey locates the concept of “productive agency” (p. 115), which contributes to “social and economic reproduction” (p. 114) and informs the notion of “citizenship” operative in his account.

Social freedom requires “social provision of resources that allow the achievement of autonomy and recognition as a member of a political community” (p. 83). Social freedom is the basis for “equality”; equality “indicates the nature of common institutions that are open to all citizens and which provide opportunities to all those in the political community” (p. 13). Equality plays a relatively minor role in the book, and “equity,” which is arguably what Gearey actually seeks in his discussion of public-sector reforms, hardly appears at all. Nevertheless, equality is a motivating element of the account of welfare that he proposes to accompany the market-based globalized economy: “Welfare can be seen as the provision of resources that enable individuals equal access to well-being. … Enabling people to achieve well-being and to become autonomous, self-directing individuals goes beyond narrow understandings of freedom from coercion. Whether capability is linked to the idea of freedom to choose or seen in a more radical sense as the constitution of the self, it can be understood as a concern with substantive agency and the social conditions in which agency is achieved” (p. 76).

Building on this proposal and drawing on the culture of work and the traditions of trade unions that structured self-help organizations and friendly societies, Gearey describes reciprocity and mutualism in order to recommend a rethinking of the welfare state. Self-help, understood not in the sense of self-esteem but rather in the sense of security during times of economic crises, provides the exemplar of reciprocity insofar as helping oneself entails helping neighbors. Friendly societies modeled self-help in their associational ties as they created funds to deploy when one of their members faced sickness or other emergency. The sense of “taking care of one of our own” evinced in these societies demonstrates the mutualism Gearey advocates for the welfare state. However, although friendly societies became more formalized toward the end of the nineteenth century and, according to the figures he cites, more than half of the workers in England were members of a friendly society by the turn of the century, they were not taken up as the model for welfare provision. Instead, state provision of welfare became the norm, replacing associational ties. Gearey submits that the recent surge of interest in coproduction, where service recipients partake in the production or distribution of service, as when students help to run a school, could be tapped to create an associationalist welfare system, with the mutualism and reciprocity of friendly societies serving as inspiration. Hence, trade unions played—and the implication is that they ought to continue to play—an irreplaceable role in ensuring social freedom and well-being.

Putting the pieces together, Gearey proposes an associationalist system of asset-based welfare that ensures opportunities for meaningful work. These pieces are the foundation for equal access to well-being and, thereby, the possibility for productive agency, or what he also calls autonomous or substantive agency. Agency of this sort is needed for social freedom and equality. In short, contrary to conservative arguments, welfare is necessary for contemporary market-based societies, but need not be solely the obligation of the state.

The penultimate chapter examines the prospects for global welfare and looks at the central role of solidarity in the Charter of the European Union. Throughout the book, Gearey continually appeals to R. H. Tawney’s work, concluding, in fact, that his project has been “concerned with the way in which [Tawney’s] vision can be updated” (p. 189). Although globalization poses some challenges, the European Union’s articulation of Solidarity Rights within a market framework serves as a model for the combination of welfare and capitalism, where common needs are met by social organization.

The book makes use of an impressive variety of resources, ranging from Bob Dylan and the Kinks to George Orwell and Rowan Williams, from Richard Titmuss, pioneer in the field of social administration, to John Rawls and Martin Heidegger, two quite disparate philosophers; there are also countless policy reports, practitioner observations, political theoretical tracts, and regional or international documents in between. I have focused on some of the more social and political elements of Justice as Welfare, but the author also explores a few of the metaphysical presumptions within his conception of humans and the human community. As is often the case, the book’s strength in its appeal to a variety of sources is also its weakness. With the possible exception of Tawney and Karl Polanyi, theoretical references are presented serially rather than integratively, often merely referenced rather than discussed. The history of the British welfare state that appeared as the raison d’être of the book is sketched in such hurried strokes that readers unfamiliar with the details of British politics over the last 70 years are left relying on suggestive hints rather than well-developed historical analysis.

All this leaves open the question of the audience for Justice as Welfare. Although it touches on political philosophy, public policy, social administration, economics, history, political organization, and law, it rarely delves far enough into any topic or subject to satisfy readers in any one of those scholarly areas. Readers seeking bricolage, however, might find the author’s tinkering not displeasing.