Almaz Zelleke  
Research and Writing
  
 
My research and writing over the last several years has focused on an examination of arguments for basic income, an unconditional guaranteed minimum income provided to all citizens on an individual basis without a means test or other condition of eligibility. I began this work as doctoral student in political science at Harvard University and have continued it through participation in several conferences on the topic in the United States and Europe. This site contains links to my papers on basic income and to my other writing; my CV; and links to other basic income sites.


Recent Papers

 
“A Feminist Critique of Reciprocity and Conditionality,” paper presented at the plenary panel on Women, Family, and the Basic Income Guarantee, at the Fourth Congress of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network, New York, March 4-6, 2005.

Abstract: I examine arguments for an unconditional basic income, a caregivers’ income, and a participation income from a feminist perspective on distributive justice that attempts to expand and refocus traditional theories of justice on issues of care, natural dependency, and the gendered distribution of labor.
 
“Distributive Justice and the Argument for an Unconditional Basic Income,” Journal of Socio-Economics, 34:1 (February 2005), 3-15.

 

 

 Abstract: Once private property is introduced, the principles of fairness and equality on which most theories of justice are based are necessarily compromised in subsequent generations. I argue that an unconditional basic income is superior to work-conditioned redistributive schemes in restoring a measure of the initial equality.
 
  “Basic Income in the United States: Redefining Citizenship in the Liberal State,” Review of Social Economy 63:4 (2005), 633-48; also in Karl Widerquist, Michael Anthony Lewis, and Steven Pressman, eds., The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee (Ashgate 2005), 109-21.
    Abstract: This paper examines citizenship-based arguments for work-conditioned welfare and basic income. I argue that the most common citizenship-based justifications for work requirements—the paternalistic and civic republican arguments—are flawed because of their selectivity, and that the only defensible citizenship-based justification for work requirements is the socialist model, which enforces work requirements universally on all. I offer as a liberal alternative a radically pluralist notion of citizenship, with a kind of universal economic suffrage at its core, to justify an unconditional basic income in the U.S.
 
Basic Income Links
 
 
 

 


 

 

 

Writing
Work Experience
Education
CV (pdf)
Contact: almaz@almazzelleke.com