Social welfare has a three-thousand-year history in Western society. This book offers a sociological framework that provides conceptual order to the countless details of that history, while highlighting its essentials. Social welfare in all its forms is based on one central concept--help. But there are many versions of help and multiple debates about those versions. The outcomes of some debates have led to withholding help, and these outcomes are an inescapable part of this domain, in the past and in the present. The major versions, their development, and the debates are carefully examined in this volume. Social Welfare in Western Society argues that in history five basic concepts of help have emerged. These five, explored and developed are: charity, based on a relationship between private donors and recipients; public welfare, based on a relationship between the state and its recipients; social insurance, based on a relationship between the state and beneficiaries of its programs; social service, based on people skilled in interaction providing skill-based time to their clients; mutual aid groups (sometimes misleadingly called self-help groups), whose members are simultaneously helpers and those helped. There are multiple versions of each of these five concepts now usually referred to as social policy issues. There are fierce disagreements about what is helpful and which supposed forms of help are harmful to the wider society. The book concludes that major debates have centered and continue to center around these major issues: Should the poor be helped or punished? Who is to blame? Do the poor have the same rights as other people? Who should pay? Who should decide? What is the effect of receiving welfare on incentive to work? Who should be helped? This is a masterful text designed for professional and public reading. Gerald Handel is professor emeritus of sociology at The City College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is the author of Making a Life in Yorkville: Experience and Meaning in the Life Course Narrative of an Urban Working-Class Man, editor of Childhood Socialization, and co-editor of The Psychosocial Interior of the Family, all published by Transaction Publishers.

James Midgley provides a broad overview of social welfare, outlining key institutions, terminology, historical research, and approaches. He also details reasons for the existence of international social welfare and the challenges that arise from it. The author includes an important section on applied international social welfare that addresses the concerns of practitioners--concerns that have been neglected in much of the literature in the field. An entire section of the book is devoted to issues of social work practice, social developments, the activities of international agencies, and their collaborative efforts. While practical application is an important focus of the book, several chapters deal with key theoretical debates in the field. The author also includes descriptive chapters that provide comprehensive accounts of world social conditions and social welfare institutions.

This Very Short Introduction discusses the necessity of welfare states in modern capitalist societies. Situating social policy in an historical, sociological, and comparative perspective, David Garland brings a new understanding to familiar debates, policies, and institutions.

Social welfare has a three-thousand-year history in Western society. Th is book off ers a sociological framework that provides conceptual order to the countless details of that history, while highlighting its essentials. Social welfare in all its forms is based on one central concept-help. But there are many versions of help and multiple debates about those versions. Th e outcomes of some debates have led to withholding help, and these outcomes are an inescapable part of this domain, in the past and in the present. Th e major versions, their development, and the debates are carefully examined in this volume.

The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State is the authoritative and definitive guide to the contemporary welfare state. In a volume consisting of nearly fifty newly-written chapters, a broad range of the world's leading scholars offer a comprehensive account of everything one needs to know about the modern welfare state. The book is divided into eight sections. It opens with three chapters that evaluate the philosophical case for (and against) the welfare state. Surveys of the welfare state 's history and of the approaches taken to its study are followed by four extended sections, running to some thirty-five chapters in all, which offer a comprehensive and in-depth survey of our current state of knowledge across the whole range of issues that the welfare state embraces. The first of these sections looks at inputs and actors (including the roles of parties, unions, and employers), the impact of gender and religion, patterns of migration and a changing public opinion, the role of international organisations and the impact of globalisation. The next two sections cover policy inputs (in areas such as pensions, health care, disability, care of the elderly, unemployment, and labour market activation) and their outcomes (in terms of inequality and poverty, macroeconomic performance, and retrenchment). The seventh section consists of seven chapters which survey welfare state experience around the globe (and not just within the OECD). Two final chapters consider questions about the global future of the welfare state. The individual chapters of the Handbook are written in an informed but accessible way by leading researchers in their respective fields giving the reader an excellent and truly up-to-date knowledge of the area under discussion. Taken together, they constitute a comprehensive compendium of all that is best in contemporary welfare state research and a unique guide to what is happening now in this most crucial and contested area of social and political development.

The Oxford Handbook of the Social Science of Poverty builds a common scholarly ground in the study of poverty by bringing together an international, inter-disciplinary group of scholars to provide their perspectives on the issue. Contributors engage in discussions about the leading theories and conceptual debates regarding poverty, the most salient topics in poverty research, and the far-reaching consequences of poverty on the individual and societal level.

Offers peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies on social work as a discipline grounded in social theory and the improvement of peoples' lives. Bibliographies are browseable by subject area and keyword searchable. Contains a "My OBO" function that allows users to create personalized bibliographies of individual citations from different bibliographies.

The Handbook presents a most updated and comprehensive exploration of social movement research. It not only maps, but also expands the field of social movement studies, taking stock of recent developments in cognate areas of studies, within and beyond sociology and political science. While structured around traditional social movement concepts, each section combines the mapping of the state of the art with attempts to broaden our knowledge of social movements beyond classic theoretical agendas, and to identify the contribution that social movement studies can give to other fields of knowledge.

. . . the book focuses on a very interesting and important. . . dimension of welfare analysis. . . the book provides a very rich and interesting range of analyses of the complex links between culture and welfare state. It deserves to be read both by advanced undergraduates and academics working in this area, and perhaps should also be read by policy-makers and politicians as a useful corrective to an overly economistic approach to welfare in the straitened years ahead. Rob Sykes, Social Policy and Administration The essays in this collection advance cultural analysis of the welfare state by describing the experiences of a large array of developed nations. . . Highly recommended. D. Stoesz, Choice Culture and Welfare State provides comparative studies on the interplay between cultural factors and welfare policies. Starting with an analysis of the historical and cultural foundations of Western European welfare states, reflected in the competing ideologies of liberalism, conservatism and socialism, the book goes on to compare the Western European welfare model to those in North America, Asia and Central and Eastern Europe. Comprehensive and engaging, this volume examines not only the relationships between cultural change and welfare restructuring, taking empirical evidence from policy reforms in contemporary Europe, but also the popular legitimacy of welfare, focusing particularly on the underlying values, beliefs and attitudes of people in European countries. This book will be of great interest to sociologists and political scientists, as well as social policy experts interested in a cultural perspective on the welfare state.

This book explains why countries have adopted different policies for working parents through a comparative historical study of four nations: France, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States.