Critical reflections on the politics of need: implications for public health

This paper presents a case for an underlying language of need consistent with public healthʹs commitment to social justice. After examining the problem of human need as it has been conceptualised historically, this paper argues that the problems of needs – a central concern in the modern welfare state – are inherently political. Two ways of conceptualizing need which have dominated the recent discourse on need – namely a therapeutic language of need and rights talk – are examined and found to be unsatisfactory in capturing the sense in which needs and their definition and arbitration are central to the life of the community. What is required for public health is a language of need which speaks to the reciprocity and interdependence which characterise community; such a language is to be found in a “moral economy of interdependence”. The paper concludes by discussing what a moral economy of interdependence, as a language of need consistent with the aims of public health, might look like.