Notions of Unemployment and Welfare: A Conversation with Dr. Kelly McKowen

In this conversation, Nikita Taniparti interviews Dr. Kelly McKowen, who explains Norway’s system of social democracy and the privatization of welfare services for the unemployed. We talk about “business of unemployment” and how it is part of Norway’s unique form of welfare capitalism. People in Norway feel a moral social obligation to get a job, which in turn speaks to the relationship between society and the state. Dr. McKowen also turns to highlight his upcoming research on the emergence of convenience as a value that might be upending certain service sectors. Today’s guest is Dr. Kelly McKowen. He is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University and is also, more familiar to our listeners, the Book Review Editor for Economic Anthropology. His research and teaching interests include capitalism, the state, cash transfers, work value, morality, and more. His first book project is Down and Out in Utopia, based on his extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Norway. The book examines the everyday lives of the unemployed in Norway in order to rethink the Nordic welfare model as a system of sociocultural and moral incorporation. His recent research includes writing about the “business of unemployment,” which we’ll talk a lot more about in a moment, about unemployment and migration, migration and identity, work ethics and welfare regimes, and job-seeker training and neoliberalism. He teaches courses on the anthropology of business, economy and morality, and society and culture in contemporary Europe. Links: https://kellymckowen.com/ https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9655.13820 https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-9655.13820