We all strive for personal happiness in one way or another, but what about public happiness? What does public happiness mean and what role can governments and public policies play? The current COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the inadequacies of old governance paradigms and even before this pandemic, increasing inequalities and frustration with the old GDP-centric growth paradigm have fueled dissatisfaction with and distrust of governments. This book suggests a new path towards public happiness as a potential solution. The book builds a theory of public happiness as a distinct concept from individual happiness, borrowing especially from Eastern philosophy. It provides an overview of the efforts so far to go "beyond GDP" - including measurement and exploration of the determinants of happiness - and how these efforts have fallen short of expectation. Lastly, the book sketches out what a public happiness policy might look like and identifies the factors of a successful happiness policy.

By means of a historical, legal and scientific approach, this book identifies the issues, progress and setbacks in the right for women to access abortion in various countries of the Global North. The book provides insights on the past, present and potential actions and struggles in the future about continuing to have the right to procure an abortion. Rites and rituals in order to better understand the practices of Asian countries, such as China, Japan and Taiwan, permeate discussions and debates. The volume presents the repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic on access to abortion healthcare services and abortion, and the innovative initiatives and schemes designed and implemented. The latter encourages health professionals and decision-makers to reflect on the 'good practices' and retain and develop over the long term. This edited collection is intended for academics and students across the social sciences and healthcare sector, members of the legal profession, healthcare professionals, activists, policy-makers, and any stakeholders working for and caring about women's reproductive rights and abortion rights.

This book investigates the history of women's reproductive health in Ghana, arguing that between the 1920s and 1980s, it was largely driven by discourses of development and population control rather than a concern for women's health or rights. Between the 1920s and 1980s, the choices that Ghanaian women made regarding their reproductive health were defined by development policy and practice. Spanning the colonial and immediate postcolonial periods, this book demonstrates that whilst the substance of development discourse shifted over time, principles of development continued to be used to impact and legitimise reproductive health policy and practices well after independence. The book explores Ghana's pluralist health system, the introduction of maternal and child welfare, the dominance of the Red Cross in Ghana's maternal and child health landscape, nationalist pronatalism and global population activism. In order to understand how global iterations of development and health policy impacted ordinary lives in Ghana, the author uses evidence from multiple 'levels,' including private papers, national archives and records of international and transnational organisations. Providing balanced archival perspectives, the book includes extensive oral history interviews carried out with both rural Ghanaian women and traditional birth attendants, as well as with midwives, doctors and family planning fieldworkers. This book will have an important impact on a number of historical fields including Ghanaian history, global health history, global histories of population and family planning and histories of development. It will be of interest to researchers and students in the history of public health, development, Africa, Ghana and gender.

A resource for progressing current research into disability sport. Brings together an eclectic mix of contributing authors. This includes disabled and able-bodied academics, and particularly for the sections in which we address intersectionality, authors who themselves have lived experiences of living with multiple identities. Bridge important gaps between disability studies and sport sociology through offering thorough interrogations between theory, method and empiricism progressing research in the field.

Since September 11th, the threat of a bioterrorist attack--massive, lethal, and unpreventable--has hung in the air over America. Bracing for Armageddon? offers a vividly written primer for the general reader, shedding light on the science behind potential bioterrorist attacks and revealing what could happen, what is likely to happen, and what almost certainly will not happen.
The story opens with a riveting account of a bioterrorism scenario commissioned by the U.S. government. Using this doomsday tableau as a springboard, Clark reviews a host of bioterrorist threats (from agroterrorism to a poisoning of the water supply) and examines not only the worst-case menace of genetically engineered pathogens, but also the lethal agents on the CDC's official bioterrorism list, including Smallpox, Anthrax, Plague, Botulism, and Ebola. His overview of attempted bioterrorist attacks to date--such as the failed Aum Shinrikyo attempts in 1995 in Japan and the Anthrax attack in the US following 9/11--bolstered by interviews with a range of experts--shows why virtually all of these attempts have failed. Indeed, he demonstrates that a successful bioterrorism attack is exceedingly unlikely, while a major flu epidemic (such as the deadly epidemic of 1918 that killed millions worldwide) is a virtual certainty. Given the long odds of a bioterrorist attack, Clark asks, has the more than $40 billion the United States has dedicated to the defense against bioterrorism really been well spent? Is it time to move on to other priorities?
In contrast to the alarmist fears stoked by the popular media, William Clark here provides a reassuring overview of what we really need to worry about--and what we don't.

This book explores two public sector scandals in the UK, drawing on Max Weber's thought on 'the iron cage' to understand how these cases of patient-neglect in NHS hospitals and failures by police and social workers to address the organised sexual exploitation of young girls occurred. Through examination of the management failures and institutional vulnerabilities, and with attention to the trends of bureaucratisation and rationalisation that characterised both scandals, it reveals the explanatory power of Weber's thought, developing a theoretical model that updates and extends Weber's work in light of the cases discussed. The final chapter examines the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and highlights how the focus on a rational techno-medical solution to the pandemic offered by the vaccines together with bureaucratic expansion has created an authoritarian and totalitarian society which represents the ultimate realisation of Weber's iron cage. Showing that ordinary people, including professionals, are still trapped in the 'iron cage', it will appeal to scholars of sociology and social theory, as well as those providing training and working within the caring and service professions of policing, social work and nursing.

Showcases an agile humanities response to one of the most pressing challenges of contemporary times. Demonstrates truly global understandings of the pandemic through linguistic, cultural and translational encounters beyond the Anglosphere. Covers over 100 countries, 20 languages and a rich diversity of source material (press conferences, political speeches, interviews, journalism, literature, graphic art, social media and data visualisations). Underpinned by an ethos of inclusion, collaboration and cross-disciplinarity; features work by leading scholars from across the world. Has implications for future pandemic responses, at cultural, societal, political and policy levels.

This book captures a unique moment in time, relatively early into the COVID-19 pandemic, when the implications and consequences of the pandemic remained unclear and largely unpredictable. The contributors to this volume contemplate the impact of the pandemic on our relationships with children and youth, child and youth serving systems, and broader issues in society that directly relate to childhood and youth. The essays collected in this volume cover a variety of perspectives that range from systemic racism in child-serving institutions to the politics of childhood during a pandemic, and the psychological and even neurological impacts of lockdowns, public restrictions and social isolation. Beyond capturing the moment in time, the contributors also focused on the long-term; they contemplated how the evolving situation might affect the way we think about child and youth services and our relationships to children, their families and their communities. From the very theoretical to the concrete and the practical, this volume provides current thinking and practice in relation to pandemic-impacted residential care settings, education and schools, hospital settings, communities, practitioners, and more. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Child & Youth Services.

--Vital reading for the public and students who wish to get at the core issues behind lagging US health care. --The Covid-19 basis of the book is timely for classroom discussion and points to new and continuing issues. --Details solutions for US society and health care policy.

Most European countries have experienced labour market reforms at varying times leading to extended working life and a postponement of retirement age. This book provides a gender perspective on the impact of extended working life on the different dimensions of well-being, the factors which can limit extended working life, and the working conditions of older workers. Over the course of 11 chapters the book explores factors that can limit access to paid work or affect working conditions for older workers, including care for dependent individuals, negative stereotypes surrounding aged workers and poor health. It also investigates differences in working conditions for older workers by gender compared to other groups of workers and across European countries including case-studies from Austria, France, Spain, Poland, Croatia, Albania and Turkey. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of social policy, sociology, gender studies and labour studies more broadly.

Austerity has reconfigured and scaled back the governance and delivery of public services and negatively affected society's most vulnerable groups. This book opens up the closed world of English prisons to examine its impact on prison health governance and healthcare delivery. It argues that austerity has been a decade-long, large-scale political experiment that has caused debt to balloon, eroded the prison health system and perpetuated a cycle of punishment resulting in sicker prisoners. In short, austerity has violated prisoners' human rights. Drawing on interviews and data from existing longitudinal and economic analyses, the book demonstrates how austerity has resulted in high rates of recidivism, diminished what remains of the welfare state, and increased inequality and punitiveness. Despite a decade of failure, there is a marked political reluctance to dispense with austerity, and the governmental juggernaut continues to produce the same result. As the spectre of recession increases, caused in part by Brexit and COVID-19, these failures are ever more perilous. This book blends the interdisciplinary perspectives of criminology, public health, sociology, law, social policy, politics, and economics to enable greater understanding of the impact of austerity on health governance, prison healthcare, the prison workforce, and prisoners' health and safety. It challenges current policy, practice and thinking, and is a must read for anyone who wants to reflect on how the political economic structure can affect the governance and delivery of healthcare services in marginalised settings, beyond prisons, and indeed beyond England.

Mounting scientific evidence generated over the past decade highlights the significant role of our cities' built environments in shaping our health and well-being. In this book, the authors conceptualize the 'urban health niche' as a novel approach to public health and healthy-city planning that integrates the diverse and multi-level health determinants present in a city system.The authors trace the origins of public health and city planning, drawing upon the shifting paradigms of epidemiology. Advanced network analysis techniques are employed to examine multi-scale associations between individual-level health outcomes and built environment features such as density, land-use mix and road network configuration. Healthy Cities will prove a fascinating read for an interdisciplinary body of scholars, practitioners and policy makers within the domains of public policy, regional and urban studies, urban planning, spatial epidemiology, health geography, sociology, public health and psychology.

First book to examine the ethics of pandemics from a philosophical standpoint Examines the key and controversial issues that arise out of pandemics, such as government response, test and trace, restrictions on human freedom and movement and vaccine passports Very useful reading for those in related fields such as medicine and health care as well as applied ethics within philosophy Case studies from UK, south east Asia, US and Europe

This book provides a theoretically and empirically grounded examination of the struggle for maternity care in contemporary Russia, framed by changes to the healthcare system and the roles of its participants after socialism. The chapters consider multiple perspectives and interactions between women and professionals and the structural and institutional pressures they face when striving for better conditions and treatment. Russian maternity care is characterized by the vivid mix of legacy of Soviet paternalism and medicalization, bureaucratic principles of state regulation (with high level of centralization and lack of professional autonomy) and global neoliberal tendencies. Maternity care professionals have to satisfy not only the growing needs and demands of women, but also deal with increasing state regulative control, market demands and new professional standards of care. Navigating these multiple and various challenges, maternity providers have to perform in multiple roles, bridge the organizational gaps and inconsistencies. Thus, the field of struggle for good care becomes not only professional, but political one. Highlighting the opportunities and barriers for good care in the context of post-socialist Russia, this book will be of particular interest to medical anthropologists and sociologists as well as midwives and other health professionals.

This book explores ways in which education supports or negates the wellbeing and rights of young people in or from the Americas. It shows how young people diagnose problems and propose important new directions for education. A collective chronicle from researchers working alongside young people in Chile, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and the Caribbean and Latin American diaspora in Canada, the authors embrace the work in terms of justice: intergenerational, racial, cultural and ecological with/by/for various groups of young people. This book delves into the wide gap between the expressed rights of young people in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the ways in which education operates. In so doing, it examines the entrenched colonial legacies which persist, including systemic racism, flabby curriculum, hyper-surveillance and broken promises for care and human relationships needed to support youth. The resourceful young people shown here - who identify as Latin American, Black, Indigenous and/or diasporic - are diagnosing and negotiating these injustices in revolutionary moves for education. Teachers, parents, communities and youth themselves could learn from these critical, transformative and anticolonial youthful pedagogies for being with education. This book will appeal to scholars, students, policymakers and practitioners in the areas of youth studies, education, social justice, sociology, human rights, wellbeing and social work.

Over the last two decades, fatness has become the focus of ubiquitous negative rhetoric, in the USA and beyond, presented under the cover of the medicalized ''war against the obesity epidemic''. In Fat on Film, Barbara Plotz provides a critical analysis of the cinematic representation of fatness during this timeframe, specifically in contemporary Hollywood cinema, with an emphasis on the intersection of gender, race and fatness. The analysis is based on around 50 films released since 2000 and includes examples such as Transformers (2007), Precious (2009), Kung Fu Panda (2008), Paul Blart (2009) and Pitch Perfect (2012).Plotz maps the common cinematic tropes of fatness and also shows how commonplace notions of fatness that are part of the current ''obesity epidemic'' discourse are reflected in these tropes. In this original study, Plotz brings critical attention to the politics of fat representation, a topic that has so far received little attention within film and cinema studies.

Person-centred health care is increasingly endorsed as a key element of high-quality care, yet, in practice, it often means patient-centred health care. This book scrutinizes the principle of primacy of patient welfare, which, although deeply embedded in health professionalism, is long overdue for critical analysis and debate. It appears incontestable because patients have greater immediate health needs than clinicians and the patient-clinician encounter is often recognized as a moral enterprise as well as a service contract. However, Buetow argues that the implication that clinician welfare is secondary can harm clinicians, patients and health system performance. Revaluing participants in health care as moral equals, this book advocates an ethic of virtue to respect the clinician as a whole person whose self-care and care from patients can benefit both parties, because their moral interests intertwine and warrant equal consideration. It then considers how to move from values including moral equality in health care to practice for people in their particular situations. Developing a genuinely inclusive concept of person-centred care - accepting clinicians as moral equals - it also facilitates the coalescence of patient-centred care and evidence-based health care. This reflective and provocative work develops a constructive alternative to the taken-for-granted principle of primacy of patient welfare. It is of interest to students and academics in the health and caring sciences, philosophy, ethics, medical humanities and health management.

The historical context of colonisation situates the analysis in Children, Care and Crime of the involvement of children with care experience in the criminal justice system in an Australian jurisdiction (New South Wales), focusing on residential care, policing, the provision of legal services and interactions in the Children's Court. While the majority of children in care do not have contact with the criminal justice system, this book explores why those with care experience, and Indigenous children, are over-represented in this system. Drawing on findings from an innovative, mixed-method study - court observations, file reviews and qualitative interviews - the book investigates historical and contemporary processes of colonisation and criminalisation. The book outlines the impact of trauma and responses to trauma, including inter-generational trauma caused by policies of colonisation and criminalisation. It then follows a child's journey through the continuum of care to the criminal justice system, examining data at each stage including the residential care environment, interactions with police, the provision of legal services and experiences at the Children's Court. Drawing together an analysis of the gendered and racialised treatment of women and girls with care experience in the criminal justice system, the book particularly focuses on legacies of forced removal and apprenticeship which targeted Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and girls. Through analysing what practices from England and Wales might offer the NSW context, our findings are enriched by further reflection on how decriminalisation pathways might be imagined. While there have been many policy initiatives developed to address criminalisation, in all parts of the study little evidence was found of implementation and impact. To conclude, the book examines the way that 'hope tropes' are regularly deployed in child protection and criminal justice to dangle the prospect of reform, and even to produce pockets of success, only to be whittled away by well-worn pathways to routine criminalisation. The conclusion also considers what a transformative agenda would look like and how monitoring and accountability mechanisms are key to new ways of operating. Finally, the book explores strengths-based approaches and how they might take shape in the child protection and criminal justice systems. Children, Care and Crime is aimed at researchers, lawyers and criminal justice practitioners, police, Judges and Magistrates, policy-makers and those working in child protection, the criminal justice system or delivering services to children or adults with care experience. The research is multidisciplinary and therefore will be of broad appeal to the criminology, law, psychology, sociology and social work disciplines. The book is most suitable for undergraduate courses focusing on youth justice and policing, and postgraduates researching in this field.

This book is dedicated to improving the practice of the policing of domestic abuse. Its objective is to help inform those working in policing about the dynamics of how domestic abuse occurs, how best to respond to and investigate it, and in the longer term how to prevent it. Divided into thematic areas, the book uses recent research findings to update some of the theoretical analysis and to highlight areas of good practice: 'what works and why'. An effective investigation and the prosecution of offenders are considered, as well as an evaluation of the success of current treatment options. Policing domestic abuse can only be dealt with through an effective partnership response. The responsibilities of each agency and the statutory processes in place when policy is not adhered to are outlined. Core content includes: A critique of definitions and theoretical approaches to domestic abuse, including coverage of the myths surrounding domestic abuse and their impact on policing. An exploration on the challenges of collecting data on domestic abuse, looking at police data and the role of health and victim support services. A critical review of different forms of abuse, different perpetrators and victims, and risk assessment tools used by the police. A critical examination of the law relating to domestic abuse; how police resources are deployed to respond to and manage it; and best practice in investigation, gathering evidence, and prosecution Key perspectives on preventing domestic abuse, protecting victims, and reducing harm. Written with the student and budding practitioner in mind, this book is filled with case studies, current research, reports, and media examples, as well as a variety of reflective questions and a glossary of key terms, to help shed light on the challenges of policing domestic violence and the links between academic research and best practice.

Providing a critical humanities approach to ageing, this book addresses new directions in age studies: the meaning and workings of "ageism" in the twenty-first century, the vexed relationship between age and disability studies, the meanings and experiences of "queer" aging; the fascinating, yet often elided work of age activists; and, finally, the challenges posed by AI and, more generally, transhumanism in the context of caring for an ageing population. Divided into four parts: Part I: What Does It Mean to Grow Old? Part II: Aging: Old Age and Disability Part III: Aging, Old Age, and Activism Part IV: Old Age and Humanistic Approaches to Care the volume provides an innovative, two-part structure that facilitates rather than merely encourages interdisciplinary collaboration across the humanities and social sciences. Each essay is thus followed by two short critical responses from disciplinary viewpoints that diverge from that of the essay's author. Drawing on work from across the humanities - philosophy, fine arts, religion, and literature, this book will be a useful supplemental text for courses on age studies, sociology and gerontology at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

Outlines how in modern societies hearing, health and sound technologies are entangled in multi-faceted ways. The book brings together, for the first time, historians, scholars from media studies, social sciences, cultural studies, acoustics and neuroscientists to show and discuss how modern technologies play a decisive role in the ways 'normal', enhanced or 'smart' hearing as well as hearing impairment have been configured and experienced. Addresses current hearing practices that become increasingly mediated by personalized hearing technologies and aids that engage with continuously changing sonic situations along advanced algorithms and intuitive apps.

Based on the study of a police organization in England, this book explores the role of social relations in the ways that people construct, mobilize, consume, and reconstruct meaning about wellbeing. Wellbeing is a powerful, institutionalized concept in police organizations across England and Wales. With the emergence of numerous policies, strategies, and practices that both explicitly and implicitly address wellbeing in the workplace, the concept has come to feature prominently. Wellbeing is addressed as an issue that needs to be understood intersubjectively by attending to the underlying social issues that shape how it is promoted or denied. After a theoretical exploration of police culture and wellbeing, the book traverses ethnographic data and captures insights from individuals across the organization's hierarchy. It explores what individuals perceive wellbeing to mean and how they make sense of the concept. The book reveals discernible ideological-laden tensions across the hierarchy in terms of wellbeing constructions. By exploring these tensions, there is a potential to understand the constructions of wellbeing and the resultant implications for practice. This book will be of interest to academics, researchers, and students in policing, criminology, criminal justice, leadership/management, organizational behaviour, and wellbeing. Given its empirical focus and applicability to practitioners, it will also be of interest to a range of non-academics, including police officers and leaders, public servants, private organizations, policymakers, and human resources professionals.

This book examines the phenomenon of 'digital guru media' (DGM), the self-styled online influencers, life coaches, experts and entrepreneurs who post on the themes of wellness, health and fitness. It opens up new perspectives on digital leisure and internet celebrity culture, and asks important questions about the social, cultural and psychological implications of our contemporary relationship with digital media. Drawing on cutting-edge social theory, the book explores a wide range of contexts in which DGM intersects with digital leisure, from the health-related learning of young people to the 'clean eating' movement, to the online lives of fitness professionals. It asks if digital and social media are problematic per se and explores the problems a turn to the Internet could be revealing about the lack of real-world or analogue support, as well as potential solutions, for our wellness, health and fitness needs and wants. Bringing together innovative, multi-disciplinary perspectives, this book is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in leisure studies, media studies, cultural studies, sociology, or health and society.

Argues for a return to a positive view of the other via a personalist philosophy of being offered by Mounier, Marcel, and Wojtyla, and deepened by participation, belonging, and possibility of contributing to the good of all. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, philosophy and anthropology. Disability studies are often regarded as practical studies as opposed to the apparently inevitable theorizing of philosophy or theology. However, this book's methodology of explicitly linking disability studies with philosophy and theology demonstrates their complementarity.