Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 October 2008
This paper examines how ‘welfare state’ and ‘welfare’ have been displaced by a ‘social development’ agenda within New Zealand. The discussion outlines a growing attention to language and the place of vocabulary and discourse as a valid research agenda. The paper then traces the end of welfare and the rise of ‘social development’, assessing the impact on citizenship debates. It suggests reasons why ‘social development’ must be handled carefully given its assumptions around temporality, its elevation of the market, the diminishing of the social, the stunted vision of development and its peculiar view of progress.