300666 Welfare Transformations in Post-socialist Asia (MA: Soziologie der globalen Welt) (S) (WiSe 2024/2025)

As China and Vietnam have moved from planned to socialist market economies after decades of reform, their welfare systems are also undergoing significant changes. New policies such as universal health insurance or basic pensions have emerged, and welfare coverage for different social groups has become highly diversified. This course explores welfare transformations in post-socialist countries such as China and Vietnam, and regards welfare as a site of struggles that involves different moral and political ideologies and actions that form ‘the politics of care’. It will not only introduce the policy changes per se, but will also shed light on how normal people including factory workers, struggle to care for themselves and their families. Relying on the case of post-socialist Asia, it will provide students with knowledge about important debates in welfare studies, including but not limited to welfare regimes, the double movement, and the politics of needs.