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The American philosopher Stanley Cavell (b. 1926) is a secular Jew who by his own admission is obsessed with Christ, yet his outlook on religion in general is ambiguous. Probing the secular and the sacred in Cavell's thought, Espen Dahl explains that Cavell, while often parting ways with Christianity, cannot dismiss it either. Focusing on Cavell's work as a whole, but especially on his recent engagement with Continental philosophy, Dahl brings out important themes in Cavell's philosophy and his conversation with theology

The aim in this article is to examine the recruitment process to workfare programmes in the Norwegian municipalities and determine whether these programmes actually enhance self‐sufficiency. The design of the study is quasi‐experimental. The programme group consists of 300 people and the comparison group of a 10% sample of 1,559 non‐participating social assistance recipients from 40 local social service administrations in 1995. In the Norwegian workfare schemes, recruitment according to 'need', i.e. labour market problems and lack of human resources, appears to be the dominating approach. The workfare schemes do not produce significant effects, either on employment or on earnings. These results are supported by analyses of a number of observed variables and of two models applied to deal with unobserved selection bias: the parametric Heckman model and the semi‐parametric maximum score model.

AbstractAs long as welfare arrangements have been in existence, there has been a strong belief that high‐benefit generosity leads to welfare reliance. In this study, we investigate whether an increase in welfare generosity in Norway resulted in higher social assistance (SA) uptake and decreased engagement in paid work. By utilizing high‐quality administrative data and employing a difference‐in‐difference design, we find no overall effects on SA or work activity. However, we do observe a significant reduction in work activity and an increase in SA for specific predefined high‐risk groups, which are believed to be particularly responsive to financial incentives. Thus, we discover evidence of unfavorable effects for child families, non‐Western immigrants, and the combined group of non‐Western immigrant child families. These latter findings are interpreted in light of the particular socioeconomic circumstances of these groups.

This article revisits earlier research on social assistance (SA) dynamics by applying a holistic life‐course approach, made possible by sequence analysis. We followed the life‐course over 20 years of young recipients of SA in Norway. The data material was derived from administrative data collected and linked by Statistics Norway. The study population was first‐time SA recipients aged 18–24 years in 1995. In addition to SA, spells of social security, schooling, work and earnings were examined. We found that SA plays a minor role over time, but that social security receipt constitutes an important trajectory for more than a quarter of the SA population. Education and work with medium earnings make up distinctly different and rather successful trajectories for about half of the SA population. Gender and early school‐leaving matter for trajectory affiliation. Women's trajectories are to a greater extent than men's characterised by unstable employment and low‐paid work.

Borgeraas E, Dahl E. Low income and 'poverty lines' in Norway: a comparison of three concepts
Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 73–83 © 2008 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare.In this article we address the question of how well three concepts of 'poverty' correspond with each other. We have compared three different measures of 'poverty' in Norway: income poverty and two measures of a minimum budget standard, one scientifically and one politically defined. The three measures rest on different underlying concepts, serve different purposes and yield significantly different poverty lines. If followed by the municipal social services, the governmental norms for social benefits will, paradoxically, leave the beneficiaries in income poverty as defined by that same government. The most generous poverty line of all three measures is provided by the minimum budget standard developed by the National Institute for Consumer Research in Norway, which rests on the assumption that a household's income has to give a sustainable financial situation in the longer run. Neither of the two other poverty measures have this property. All numbers pertain to the year 2005. Some political and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

This paper examines whether active labour market programmes (ALMPs) directed to the most disadvantaged in Norway are helpful in moving them from social assistance to self-sufficiency (i.e. work, earnings, and decent income) . The study focuses on programme packages that integrate several components and are especially targeted at the disadvantaged unemployed. Nine such programme packages are evaluated. Thus, nine comparison groups are formed, one for each intervention group. Both groups are derived from the pool of the entire population of social assistance recipients registered in 1995. The study adopts a quasi-experimental design. To handle selection bias, a matching procedure based on a propensity-score approach is applied. The results indicate that most of the programme packages yield a positive and, in most cases, significant effect on subsequent employment and earnings, both in the short and in the long run, that is, up to five years later.