Seminar outline.

Seminar 2: A ‘perpetually moving frontier’? Voluntary action and the welfare state

Key questions for discussion in the seminar:

• What do the terms the ‘moving frontier’ and ‘mixed economy of welfare’ mean?

• How far did voluntary organisations want to work with local and central government, and how did this change over time?

• What did the British public think of the role of voluntary organisations in welfare provision?

This session will introduce students to key concepts of voluntary action history such as the ‘moving frontier’ and the ‘mixed economy of welfare’, before asking how far the public’s views on the role of voluntary action in welfare provision changed in the early to mid-twentieth part of the century. The seminar will explore the 'unique partnership' between state and voluntary action which developed in the first part of the twentieth century, and was described as the 'new philanthropy' by the 1930s.

The session will also examine data collected by the social research organisation Mass Observation in the 1940s as part of a wider inquiry into voluntary action by William Beveridge.