In this monumental book sociologist Robert Castel reconstructs the history of what he calls "the social question, " or the ways in which both labor and social welfare have been organized from the Middle Ages onward to contemporary industrial society. Throughout, the author identifies two constants bearing directly on the question of who is entitled to relief and who can be excluded: the degree of embeddedness in any given community and the ability to work. Along this dual axis the author locates virtually the entire history of social welfare in early-modern and contemporary Europe.

This work is a systematic defense of the meaningfulness of the category of "the social, " written in the tradition of Foucault, Durkheim, and Marx. Castel imaginatively builds on Durkheim's insight into the essentially social basis of work and welfare. Castel populates his sociological framework with vivid characterizations of the transient lives of the "disaffiliated": those colorful itinerants whose very existence proved such a threat to the social fabric of early-modern Europe. Not surprisingly, he discovers that the cruel and punitive measures often directed against these marginal figures are deeply implicated in the techniques and institutions of power and social control.

The author also treats the flip-side side of the problem of social assistance: namely, matters of work and wage-labor. Castel brilliantly reveals how the seemingly objective line of demarcation between able-bodied beggars -- those who are capable of work but who chose not to do so -- and those who are truly disabled becomes stretched in modernity to make room for the category of the "working poor." It is the novel crisis posed bythose masses of population who are unable to maintain themselves by their labor alone that most deeply challenges modern societies and forges recognizably modern policies of social assistance.

The author's gloss on the social question also offers us valuable perspectives on contemporary debates over who should receive social assistance and whether this entitlement should be linked to the obligation to work. Castel's rich insights and brilliant generalizations are invaluable for anyone concerned with what he describes as the "new social question" of work and social welfare in contemporary society.

First published in 1998, this study offers a survey of the conceptual background, the political dimension, and the macroeconomic context and constraints of the social security system in Israel, which in four decades (since the mid-1950s) grew virtually from scratch into a comprehensive system, similar in scope to that of Western and Northern Europe, North America, the European outposts in the antipodes and, of course, Japan.

First published in 1999, this book attempts to understand housing co-operatives in terms of their development over time and their relationships to other types of housing tenure. The book considers them within the framework of the broader co-operative movement and its role in society's overall system of production and exchange. There is an examination of the role of a form of ownership which is neither "private", nor "state" in six countries, and in some cases the fortunes of housing co-operatives seem closely to correlate with periods of political liberalization and crises, heralding a shift in ideological orientation.

Radical changes in the design of housing in post-war Japan had numerous effects on the Japanese people. Public policy toward housing provision and the effects of escalating land prices in Tokyo and a few other very large cities in the country from the mid- to late 1970s onward are examined, but it is dwellings themselves and the slow but steady shift from a floor-sitting to a chair-sitting housing culture in urban and suburban parts of the country that figure most prominently in the discussion.
Central to the book is the author's translation of an account written by Kyoko Sasaki, an observant wife and mother, about the housing she and her growing family experienced during the 1960s, and subsequent chapters explore some of the issues that flow from her account. Chief among these are the small size and generally poor quality of the private-sector housing that Japanese of fairly ordinary means could afford to occupy in the early postwar years, the new design initiatives undertaken at about that time by public-sector housing providers and the diffusion of at least some of their initiatives to the housing sector as a whole, and the adjustments that the occupants of housing had to, or chose to, make as the dwellings available to them as renters or as owners changed in character. Attention is also paid to the structural requirements of dwellings and attitudes toward dwellings of diverse types in a country prone to earthquakes.

The problem of how, where, and on what terms to house the urban masses in an industrial society remains unresolved to this day. In nineteenth-century Victorian England, overcrowding was the most obvious characteristic of urban housing and, despite constant agitation, it remained widespread and persistent in London and other great cities such as Manchester, Glasgow, and Liverpool well into the twentieth century.

"The Eternal Slum" is the first full-length examination of working-class housing issues in a British town. The city investigated not only provided the context for the development of a national policy but also, in scale and variety of response, stood in the vanguard of housing reform. The failure of traditional methods of social amelioration in mid-century, the mounting storm of public protest, the efforts of individual philanthropists, and then the gradual formulation and application of new remedies, constituted a major theme: the need for municipal enterprise and state intervention. Meanwhile, the concept of overcrowding, never precisely defined in law but based on middle-class notions of decency and privacy, slowly gave way to the positive idea of adequate living space, with comfort, as much as health or morals, the criterion.

Not just dwellings but people were at issue. There is little evidence in this period of the attitude of the worker himself to his housing. Wohl has extensively researched local archives and, in particular, drawn on the vestry reports which have been relatively neglected. Profusely illustrated with contemporary photographs and drawings, this book is the definitive study of the housing reform movement in Victorian and Edwardian London and suggests what it was really like to live under such appalling conditions. This important study will be of interest to social historians, British historians, urban planners, and those interested in how social policies developed in previous eras.

Should the public play a greater role within the financial system? Decisions about money are a part of our everyday lives. Supporters promote financial inclusion as a way of helping people navigate decisions about money. However, critics fear these policies promote the financialisation of the welfare state and turn citizens into consumers. Presenting a nuanced, critical analysis of financial inclusion, Rajiv Prabhakar brings together the supportive and critical literatures which have, until now, developed in parallel. Addressing key issues including the poverty premium, financial capability and housing, this essential dialogue advances crucial public, academic and policy debates and proposes alternative paths forward.

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In recent years, in both the specialist press and the tabloids, the idea of privatization of social security has become a shimmering catch phrase. Politicians base election campaigns on promises of more or less privatization in social security. Many governments introduce private business management methods into their social security systems. Representatives of social security institutions and academics prepare theory papers on the possible outcomes of privatization. And international financial organizations describe doomsday scenarios based on the premise of failure to privatize.

What is the role of privatization today in the development of national social security systems? How does privatization concern the developments in different social security programs such as old age, sickness, unemployment, accident insurance and family allowances? What are the visions and effects of privatization in social security?

This volume provides an overview of the various positions of supporters and opponents of privatization in the main branches of social security, followed by national experience of privatized or part-privatized social security systems. While the perspective of each of the contributors is markedly different, the overall objective cuts across differences: namely, to develop the most efficient and cost-effective system of social security protection.

The authors' views and knowledge are derived from their firsthand experiences with social security in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe. Representatives of the leading international organizations dealing with social security issues-the International Labour Organization, the OECD, the World Bank and the World Health Organization-further expand the parameters of the viewpoints and experiences expressed.

This multifaceted book allows the reader to learn about the challenge of privatization in the various forms of social security by assembling a set of highly up-to-date, technically complex and legal issues based on practical analysis and actual experience. It will be of interest to those concerned with national social policy in a comparative context. This is the sixth volume in an ongoing series that aims to review social security in a comparative, global context. Xenia Scheil-Adlung is program manager, International Social Security Association, Geneva, Switzerland.

This book is a comprehensive and indepth history of British council housing. For political and institutional reasons it operated as a law unto itself for most of its history, but is now undergoing major change and re-integration into mainstream housing and society. The bulk of research and literature on the subject has been from social policy and politics perpectives, and an overall history has not been attempted, other than as chapters or sections of chapters in more general books. This has resulted in a number of important omissions - notably the relation of design and management to the quality and performance of public housing, and the role and influence of users (tenants and their families) both in provision, quality and performance. This book should remedy these gaps and make clear the importance of council housing to 20th-century life and culture, both at a personal and a societal level. A major thread running through the book is the interaction of council housing with evolving working-class patterns and aspirations.

Presenting a periodic overview of the most significant developments and trends in the field of social security has become, for the International Social Security Association, a tradition and a firm commitment. Benefiting from the vast quantity of information uniquely available to the ISSA, its triennial review takes stock of the current state of social security world wide and focuses, through expert analyses, on some of the most pressing social security issues. Social Security at the Dawn of the 21st Century, the outcome of the most recent review, is intended to significantly extend the access of an international readership to accurate and up-to-date information and analyses on social security, which has without question developed during the twentieth century into one of the most important publicly financed and administered institutions in modern society. The chapters are grouped into two parts. Part one treats subjects related to policy trends and regional developments, with special emphasis on such important issues as redesigning social security programs, new management practices, and the informal care dilemma. It features major aspects of developments in Asia-Pacific and Latin America. Part two focuses on specific program areas, with special emphasis on problems and reforms in employment policy, pension systems, and public disability schemes. Information is also provided on new approaches to ensuring adequate access to health care and on policies in response to changes in family structures as well as an recent experience with social assistance programs. Dalmer D. Hoskins has held the post of Secretary General of the International Social Security Association (ISSA) since 1990. Before his election to this post, he held positions in the United States Social Security Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services. Donate Dobbernack is currently chief of communications and publications within the International Social Security Association (ISSA). Before assuming responsibilities in this area, she was chief of the technical activities program of the Association, dealing with international enquiries and studies on various aspects of social security and related fields. Christiane Kuptsch is a research officer with the International Social Security Association (ISSA) and the editor of the quarterly publication Trends in Social Security. She is a regular contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica on the issue of developments in social protection.

In this volume, Lena Sommestad explores the significance of rural womanhood in the formation of Sweden's gender-egalitarian welfare state in the early 20th century. Drawing on a rich array of documents, photographs, and interviews with women and men, she analyzes the changing gender division of labor in dairying and illuminates the dynamic processes and debates that shaped industrial workplaces. The book demonstrates the importance of rural women's gainful labor and organized activism to Sweden's citizenship-based social policies, which enabled married women to combine childrearing with breadwinning.

This title was first published in 2000: This volume is based on papers presented at the sixth International Research Seminar on "Issues in Social Security", held by FISS on 12-15 June 1999 in Sigtuna, Sweden. The book relates to the discussion about the merits of improving the incentive structure of social security programmes by privatization. The first part contains two important chapters - the first looks at the interaction between programmes and how they make one of them to serve the purposes of the other. This mechanism is termed "domain linkage". The second chapter deals with welfare state programmes that contain behavioural risks, like health insurance, sickness benefits, unemployment and disability insurance - where moral hazard is a potential problem. The second part of the book groups a number of international comparative studies. The first three deal with retirement issues, and the fourth looks at the development of poverty and income distribution.

This title was first published in 2002: When a developer wants to realize a housing scheme, what can the local planning authority do to assure that the resulting residential environment is of a high quality? This book explores the question through a cross-national comparison of housing development processes in The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany and France. It analyzes how decisions about the residential environment are made in different situations, and by whom. By applying this analysis to housing development processes in different countries, the book paints a picture of how public policy and market mechanisms together influence the development of housing. From this, conclusions are drawn about how local planning authorities can achieve their objectives concerning the quality of housing areas.

'This book heralds an exciting new chapter in the history of family-centred practice. It takes us a long way down the road toward the destination of strength-based family work.'From the foreword by Associate Professor Dorothy Scott, University of MelbourneLife can be a struggle for some families, and support from skilled family workers can make a real difference. Promoting Family Change is a guide to working with vulnerable and marginalised families outside formal therapy settings.Promoting Family Change introduces several approaches to family work which have proven to be very successful: solution-focused, narrative, cognitive, and community-building. These approaches assume that the starting point for change is the strengths and capacities of family members. The book is illustrated with detailed case studies drawn from actual practice, and it includes examples of innovative programs. It also looks at ways in which workers can incorporate these approaches into their practice to become more effective in their interventions with vulnerable families. Promoting Family Change is a good introduction to family practice for students and a valuable reference for welfare and community workers who wish to review and improve their practice skills. Bronwen Elliott is a social worker with wide experience in working with families and consults with a range of agencies to improve their services. Louise Mulroney has worked for the last twenty years in the field of child and family welfare, particularly in the areas of training and policy development. Di O'Neil is Director of Special Projects and Training for St Luke's Family Care in Bendigo, and co-author of Beyond Child Rescue.

Evidence-Based Counselling and Psychological Therapies assesses the impact of the international drive towards evidence-based health care on NHS policy and the provision of the psychological services in the NHS.
An outstanding range of contributors provide an overview of evidence-based health care and the research methods that underpin it, demonstrating its effect on policy, provision, practitioners and patients. Their thought-provoking chapters look at a variety of relevant issues including:
* generating and implementing evidence
* cost-effectiveness issues
* practical guidelines
* practitioner research
Evidence-Based Counselling and Psychological Therapies is essential for mental health professionals and trainees concerned with this movement which is having, and will continue to have a huge impact on the purchasing, provision and practice of health care.

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'This book will be a valuable resource for all students, researchers and practitioners interested in the welfare state.' - European Access [February 2002]

'Skilfully packaged papers ... the book represents a rich and comprehensive documentation of the current status.' - Building Research & Information

'Deserves to join the other essential texts on the bookshelves of all those concerned with eradicating fuel poverty'. - Energy Review

Numerous important issues arise in relation to the health of, and healthcare for (and by), migrants. Much commentary on the migrant crisis and healthcare has focused on the allocation of resources, with less discussion of the needs of, and provision for, migrants. Presenting a comparative perspective on the UK and Germany, this volume increases knowledge of a broad spectrum of challenges in healthcare provision for migrants. 'Migration' is deliberately understood in its broadest sense and includes not only migrant patients but also migrant healthcare professionals. The book's content is diverse, with insights from healthcare ethics, healthcare law, along with clinical perspectives as well as perspectives from the social sciences. The collection provides normative reflections on current issues, and presents data from empirical studies. By informing researchers, politicians and healthcare practitioners about approaches to challenges arising in healthcare provision for migrants, the collection seeks to inform the development of adequate and ethically appropriate strategies.

Social Security forms a major area of government policy and social expenditure. Government activity in this area impacts directly on all citizens, and consequently social security policy is the focus for much debate. People are affected by social security whether by funding it through taxation, or using it when claiming unemployment or other benefits. Introduction to Social Security is an up-to-date text on this important and complex social policy issue. It provides a second introduction for students of social policy and administration and includes contributions from some of the best known and most respected names in the field.

Social Security forms a major area of government policy and social expenditure. Government activity in this area impacts directly on all citizens, and consequently social security policy is the focus for much debate. People are affected by social security whether by funding it through taxation, or using it when claiming unemployment or other benefits. Introduction to Social Security is an up-to-date text on this important and complex social policy issue. It provides a second introduction for students of social policy and administration and includes contributions from some of the best known and most respected names in the field.

In this unique and provocative contribution to the literatures of political science and social policy, ten leading experts question prevailing views that federalism always inhibits the growth of social solidarity. Their comparative study of the evolution of political institutions and welfare states in the six oldest federal states - Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, the US - reveals that federalism can facilitate and impede social policy development. Development is contingent on several time-dependent factors, including degree of democratization, type of federalism, and the stage of welfare state development and early distribution of social policy responsibility. The reciprocal nature of the federalism-social policy relationship also becomes apparent: the authors identify a set of important bypass structures within federal systems that have resulted from welfare state growth. In an era of retrenchment and unravelling unitary states, this study suggests that federalism may actually protect the welfare state, and welfare states may enhance national integration.

WILL SOCIAL SECURITY BE THERE WHEN YOU NEED IT?

Since its creation in 1935, the Social Security System has provided millions of Americans with a dependable safety net of retirement income, disability help, medical assistance, and other benefits. But today there are serious concerns about the future of the system, along with alarming and confusing proposals for its reform, repair, abandonment, or preservation.

THE SOCIAL SECURITY PRIMER cuts through the confusion and explains clearly what the problems are, how they came about, and what solutions are being proposed. Written by the author of the award-winning newspaper column "Money in America", it shows you what needs to be done to put the system on a sound footing well into the next century.

With this concise, easy-to-read primer, you'll know exactly how Social Security works and how it evolved ... see how the system is viewed by different generations ... and learn the real nature of the Social Security crisis. You'll discover new ways of looking at the system and its problems ... understand the full implications of the push for privatization ... and see clearly the pros and cons of the various proposals for reform.

Whether you are already receiving benefits, about to retire, or just starting to work, you will be profoundly affected by whatever changes are made in the system. Get the information to decide for yourself what needs to be done to save Social Security!

Presenting up-to-date empirical research on the subject of young people, housing and social policy in contemporary Britain, this book considers the issue of young people's early housing histories in the context of a range of government policy initiatives aimed at the group. It offers a critique of aspects of social policy that specifically address the housing of young people. Topics covered include:
*young people leaving care
*young people in the parental home
*youth homelessness
*housing services for young people
*students in the private rented sector
*young owner occupiers
*housing benefit for the under 25s
*young single parent families
*young people and housing in rural areas
*social housing.

Presenting up-to-date empirical research on the subject of young people, housing and social policy in contemporary Britain, this book considers the issue of young people's early housing histories in the context of a range of government policy initiatives aimed at the group. It offers a critique of aspects of social policy that specifically address the housing of young people. Topics covered include:
*young people leaving care
*young people in the parental home
*youth homelessness
*housing services for young people
*students in the private rented sector
*young owner occupiers
*housing benefit for the under 25s
*young single parent families
*young people and housing in rural areas
*social housing.

Economists and political scientists deal with three major areas of concern: the effect of moving large numbers of welfare recipients into labor markets, the planned federal reforms in the health-care field that will shift costs to the state and local sectors, and trends in federal aid. Focusing on the impact of US devolution of responsibility and costs to the states, they find that the state economies can accommodate the challenges generally, but that the effect of welfare reform is too long-range to be adequately assessed in the near-term.