Moves to assist or protect the vulnerable now play a crucial role in welfare and criminal justice processes. This distinctive book draws on in-depth research with marginalised young people and the professionals who support them to explore the implications of a 'vulnerability zeitgeist', asking how far the rise of vulnerability serves the interests of those who are most disadvantaged.

This book explores aspects of the social and cultural history of nuclear Britain in the Cold War era (1945–1991) and contributes to a more multivalent exploration of the consequences of nuclear choices which are too often left unacknowledged by historians of post-war Britain. In the years after 1945, the British government mobilised money, scientific knowledge, people and military–industrial capacity to create both an independent nuclear deterrent and the generation of electricity through nuclear reactors. This expensive and vast ‘technopolitical’ project, mostly top-secret and run by small sub-committees within government, was central to broader Cold War strategy and policy. Recent attempts to map the resulting social and cultural history of these military–industrial policy decisions suggest that nuclear mobilisation had far-reaching consequences for British life. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Contemporary British History.

The notion of 'vulnerability' is now a prominent motif in social policy in the UK and beyond, with important implications for those deemed 'vulnerable'. Yet the effects of recalibrating welfare and criminal justice processes on the basis of vulnerability often escape attention. This distinctive book draws together lived experiences of vulnerability with academic and practical applications of the concept, exploring the repercussions of a 'vulnerability zeitgeist' in UK policy and practice. Through a focus on the voices and perspectives of 'vulnerable' young people and the professionals who support them, it questions how far the rise of vulnerability serves the interests of disadvantaged citizens. Illuminating where support shades into more controlling practices, the book is important reading for scholars, students and policy-makers interested in exclusion, precariousness, deviance and youth.

This book explores aspects of the social and cultural history of nuclear Britain in the Cold War era (1945-1991) and contributes to a more multivalent exploration of the consequences of nuclear choices which are too often left unacknowledged by historians of post-war Britain. In the years after 1945, the British government mobilised money, scientific knowledge, people and military-industrial capacity to create both an independent nuclear deterrent and the generation of electricity through nuclear reactors. This expensive and vast 'technopolitical' project, mostly top-secret and run by small sub-committees within government, was central to broader Cold War strategy and policy. Recent attempts to map the resulting social and cultural history of these military-industrial policy decisions suggest that nuclear mobilisation had far-reaching consequences for British life. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Contemporary British History.

Dear Comrades! Since the accident at the Chernobyl power plant, there has been a detailed analysis of the radioactivity of the food and territory of your population point. The results show that living and working in your village will cause no harm to adults or children. So began a pamphlet issued by the Ukrainian Ministry of Health-which, despite its optimistic beginnings, went on to warn its readers against consuming local milk, berries, or mushrooms, or going into the surrounding forest. This was only one of many misleading bureaucratic manuals that, with apparent good intentions, seriously underestimated the far-reaching consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe. After 1991, international organizations from the Red Cross to Greenpeace sought to help the victims, yet found themselves stymied by post-Soviet political circumstances they did not understand. International diplomats and scientists allied to the nuclear industry evaded or denied the fact of a wide-scale public health disaster caused by radiation exposure. Efforts to spin the story about Chernobyl were largely successful; the official death toll ranges between thirty-one and fifty-four people. In reality, radiation exposure from the disaster caused between 35,000 and 150,000 deaths in Ukraine alone. No major international study tallied the damage, leaving Japanese leaders to repeat many of the same mistakes after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. Drawing on a decade of archival research and on-the-ground interviews in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, Kate Brown unveils the full breadth of the devastation and the whitewash that followed. Her findings make clear the irreversible impact of man-made radioactivity on every living thing; and hauntingly, they force us to confront the untold legacy of decades of weapons-testing and other nuclear incidents, and the fact that we are emerging into a future for which the survival manual has yet to be written.

Demonstrating the relevance of theory to political and policy debates and practice, this lively and accessible second edition helps students to grasp the real-life implications of social policy theory. It considers contemporary shifts in welfare ideologies in the context of global austerity and the UK Coalition and Conservative governments (2010 onwards). With a new chapter focusing on critical debates about disability, sexuality and the environment, this textbook also includes fresh reflections on migration, social security conditionality, resilience, social justice and human rights. Key features include: • real-life examples from UK and international politics and policy to explain and illuminate the significance of social policy theory; • key questions for student reflection and engagement; • and bulleted chapter summaries and annotated further readings at the end of every chapter. This new edition is a dynamic, engaging and valuable introduction to the key theoretical perspectives and concepts deployed in social policy.

Three short stories, each focusing on the relationship between mother and child. 'The Piper Man' is structured around the legend of The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Marie Nicholls is a single mother bringing up her two boys, who are desperately missing their father. When a strange man arrives on their street, they are inexplicably drawn to him, much to Marie's horror. 'The Cherry Tree' tells the story of a musician, who finds her career at odds with being a mother, while 'Matryoshka' follows a woman's struggle with grief and loss following the death of her baby.

While many transnational histories of the nuclear arms race have been written, Kate Brown provides the first definitive account of the great plutonium disasters of the United States and the Soviet Union. In Plutopia, Brown draws on official records and dozens of interviews to tell the extraordinary stories of Richland, Washington and Ozersk, Russia-the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium. To contain secrets, American and Soviet leaders created plutopias--communities of nuclear families living in highly-subsidized, limited-access atomic cities. Fully employed and medically monitored, the residents of Richland and Ozersk enjoyed all the pleasures of consumer society, while nearby, migrants, prisoners, and soldiers were banned from plutopia--they lived in temporary "staging grounds" and often performed the most dangerous work at the plant. Brown shows that the plants' segregation of permanent and temporary workers and of nuclear and non-nuclear zones created a bubble of immunity, where dumps and accidents were glossed over and plant managers freely embezzled and polluted. In four decades, the Hanford plant near Richland and the Maiak plant near Ozersk each issued at least 200 million curies of radioactive isotopes into the surrounding environment--equaling four Chernobyls--laying waste to hundreds of square miles and contaminating rivers, fields, forests, and food supplies. Because of the decades of secrecy, downwind and downriver neighbors of the plutonium plants had difficulty proving what they suspected, that the rash of illnesses, cancers, and birth defects in their communities were caused by the plants' radioactive emissions. Plutopia was successful because in its zoned-off isolation it appeared to deliver the promises of the American dream and Soviet communism; in reality, it concealed disasters that remain highly unstable and threatening today. An untold and profoundly important piece of Cold War history, Plutopia invites readers to consider the nuclear footprint left by the arms race and the enormous price of paying for it.

After the detonation of FANDEMONIUM the gods-as-pop-stars of THE WICKED + THE DIVINE try living in the long dark shadow. Team WicDiv are joined by a stellar cast of guest artists to put the spotlight of each of the gods. The multiple Eisner-award nominated series continues in the only way it knows how: darker, weirder, faster. Don't worry. It's going to be okay.

This is a biography of a borderland between Russia and Poland, a region where, in 1925, people identified as Poles, Germans, Jews, Ukrainians, and Russians lived side by side. Over the next three decades, this mosaic of cultures was modernized and homogenized out of existence by the ruling might of the Soviet Union, then Nazi Germany, and finally, Polish and Ukrainian nationalism. By the 1950s, this "no place" emerged as a Ukrainian heartland, and the fertile mix of peoples that defined the region was destroyed. Brown's study is grounded in the life of the village and shtetl, in the personalities and small histories of everyday life in this area. In impressive detail, she documents how these regimes, bureaucratically and then violently, separated, named, and regimented this intricate community into distinct ethnic groups. Drawing on recently opened archives, ethnography, and oral interviews that were unavailable a decade ago, "A Biography of No Place" reveals Stalinist and Nazi history from the perspective of the remote borderlands, thus bringing the periphery to the center of history. Brown argues that repressive national policies grew not out of chauvinist or racist ideas, but the very instruments of modern governance - the census, map, and progressive social programs - first employed by Bolshevik reformers in the western borderlands. We are given, in short, an intimate portrait of the ethnic purification that has marked all of Europe, as well as a glimpse at the margins of twentieth century "progress." Kate Brown is Assistant Professor of History at University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

The Golden Girls made its prime-time debut in 1985 on NBC, and the critically acclaimed show has been a constant television companion through cable reruns and streaming media services ever since. Most people know that The Golden Girls is a sitcom about four feisty, older women living together in Miami who love to eat cheesecake, but Kate Browne argues that The Golden Girls is about so much more. Drawing on feminist literary studies and television studies, Browne makes a case for The Golden Girls as a TV milestone not only because it remains one of the most popular sitcoms in television history but also because its characters reflect shifting complexities of gender, age, and economic status for women in the late twentieth century and beyond. Each chapter is dedicated to exploring what makes these remarkable characters defy expectations of how older women should look, act, and love. Chapter 1 focuses on Dorothy Zbornak's intriguing gender performance and shifting desirability. Chapter 2 digs into Blanche Devereux's difficult relationship with motherhood and aging. Chapter 3 highlights how Rose Nylund made all the "right" choices in life but consistently finds herself disenfranchised by the same social and economic institutions that promised to protect her at midlife. Chapter 4 centers on how Sophia Petrillo drives the action of the show as a trickster-bending plots to her own desires and offering moral lessons to the other characters. The book offers an important analysis of a hugely popular sitcom that extends the boundary of what makes TV groundbreaking and worthy of study. Browne argues that The Golden Girls is a "classic" sitcom in almost every way, which keeps audiences engaged and allows the show to make subversive moves when it matters most. Written with both superfans and scholars in mind, the book invites new, diverse ways of thinking about the show to spark future scholarship and conversation about four of the most beloved characters in sitcom history.