Drawing on the results of a recently completed ESRC research project, this article advances three principal arguments. First, unprecedented social polarization in Britain and other liberal democracies in the last quarter of the 20th century now constitute poverty and wealth as socially constructed forms of exclusion from the realm of 'ordinary' citizenship. Second, that as the welfare state gives way to what has been characterized as the 'risk society', poverty and wealth as symbolic spectres now bear upon the quotidian anxieties and desires of virtually all citizens— whether they be poor, rich or 'comfortable'. Third, that discourses of cit izenship and popular values tend to draw on conflicting sets of traditions and moral repertoires; an insight which helps explain the ambiguity of political debate and social attitudes concerning the welfare state.
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