Abstract
The attempt to introduce the principle of withholding housing benefit from people deemed to be antisocial, together with recent antisocial behaviour legislation, marks a subtle change in the role of the welfare state. The argument favouring a welfare contract in which benefits are conditional on citizens behaving in a socially acceptable way is critically appraised as is the view that incivility is the product of a deficit in appropriate value orientations. The paper concludes by offering a broader perspective on incivility incorporating an understanding of culture as a set of ‘tool kits’ rather than value orientations and, on the basis of a distinction between human capital and cultural capital, argues for social policies that build social solidarity as being equally important as those aimed at improving the educability and civility of the individual.
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