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This classic volume was originally designed as an introduction to social science perspectives on a broad range of social issues in American society, specifically the complex social problems of the 1960s. Because the volume is structured as a survey, it is neither exhaustive or defi nitive. It does provide a wide range of information about these problems, as well as the many diff erent policy initiatives that were developed to cope with them. Readers can learn a great deal about the common themes, predilections and quandaries that characterized United States responses to the complex problems of the 1960s and the patterns of inequality and injustice prevalent at that time.The essays were selec...
Part I of this book is devoted to the development of Scandanavian societies from agrarian societies to modern industrial economies and welfare states. Three of the chapters in Part II analyse particular welfare problems, those of inequality, poverty, and redistribution; the final essay deals with women's position in the welfare state. The papers included in Part III present theory and methods of welfare research.
This title was first published 1983. A common method, concern, and argument underlie all of these essays. The method is 'value critical'. The concern is with a more institutionally grounded understanding of why governments do what they do. The argument is substantive, dealing with concrete issues such as the claim for economic resources, social protection and the organization of social services....The canonical (that is, the conventional and normative) view is thrown into question, on the implicit assumption that things do not work as expected, that there is inherently a difference between the text and the message.
There are few areas of society today that remain outside the ambit of policy processes, and likewise policy making has progressively reached into the structure and fabric of everyday life. An instrument of modern government, policy and its processes provide an analytical window into systems of governance themselves, opening up ways to study power and the construction of regimes of truth. This volume argues that policies are not simply coercive, constraining or confined to static texts; rather, they are productive, continually contested and able to create new social and semantic spaces and new sets of relations. Anthropologists do not stand outside or above systems of governance but are themselves subject to the rhetoric and rationalities of policy. The analyses of policy worlds presented by the contributors to this volume open up new possibilities for understanding systems of knowledge and power and the positioning of academics within them.
Children and parents have become a focus of debates on ‘new social risks’ in European welfare states. Policymaking elites have converged in defining such risks, and they have outlined new forms of parenting support to better safeguard children and activate their potential. Increasingly, parents are suspected of falling short of public expectations. Contributors to this special issue scrutinize this shift towards parenting as performance and analyse recent forms of parenting support.
How do two-career couples manage in a one-career world?It's about Time examines this mismatch between outdated scripts and the experiences of dual-earner couples. It broadens our understanding of occupational and family career strategies couples use in light of the widening gap between their real lives and the outdated work-hour and career-path roles, rules, and regulations they confront. It's about Time draws on the data from the Cornell Couples and Careers Study to demonstrate that:*Regardless of income, time is a scarce commodity in dual-earner households. With two jobs, two commutes, often long work hours, high job demands, business travel, several cars, children, ailing relatives, and/o...
The New Deal placed security at the center of American political and economic life by establishing an explicit partnership between the state, economy, and citizens. In America, unlike anywhere else in the world, most people depend overwhelmingly on private health insurance and employee benefits. The astounding rise of this phenomenon from before World War II, however, has been largely overlooked. In this powerful history of the American reliance on employment-based benefits, Jennifer Klein examines the interwoven politics of social provision and labor relations from the 1910s to the 1960s. Through a narrative that connects the commercial life insurance industry, the politics of Social Securi...
Drawing on data covering the past 50 years and more than 400 interviews with top decision-makers, Wilensky provides a richly detailed account of the common problems modern governments confront and their contrasting styles of conflict resolution.