The thesis that a basic income would have a positive impact on people’s participatory opportunities has been repeatedly postulated politically and discussed scientifically for some years now. Christian Greis traces the scientific debate in his sociological monograph “Zur Zukunft eines bedingungslosen Grundeinkommens” (On the Future of an Unconditional Basic Income), published in 2021, back to Ralf Dahrendorf’s reflections on a “guaranteed minimum income” in 1986. In the field of politically engaged art (theory), the entanglement of basic income and direct democracy can be traced back to the 1970s. Compared to the consideration of the UBI from the perspective of the concept of participation, the conceptualisation and research of the UBI as an economic-political ‘narrative’ represents an even more recent phenomenon. This is to be seen in the broader context of a remarkable general boom of the concept of narrative in contemporary Western culture: In various cultural fields such as politics, economics and science, there has been increasing talk of ‘narratives’ since the turn of the millennium. This mostly refers to narratives of the future that are based on crisis scenarios from
which concrete instructions for action in the present can (or should) be derived. The constellation that exists between basic income, (political) participation and future ‘narratives’ will be thoroughly examined for the first time in the planned anthology from both a scientific and an activist perspective. But it will also look at the history and the connection of these concepts to other fields. The volume will be published within the series of the Freiburg Institute of Basic Income Studies (FRIBIS). Contributions on individual links or individual elements of this constellation are also welcome.
Extended Deadline for submission of abstracts (max. 300 words): May 31st, 2022 to leon.hartmann@philosophie.uni-freiburg.de
Weitere Info und Kontakt / Further info and contact:
Leon Hartmann, M.A. – leon.hartmann@philosophie.uni-freiburg.de
FRIBIS Team Participation & UBI