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Radical social work is often associated with an understanding of society based on Marxist ideas, above all, the idea that we live in a society in which the central division (though clearly not the only division) is class. While that tradition has been important in shaping radical social work theory and practice both in the 1970s and currently, it has not been the only source of critical thinking within social work. Feminist and anti-racist approaches, for example, have also been influential, as have approaches based on identity politics more generally (essentially, the idea that only those experiencing a particular form of oppression can either define it or fight against it). While postmodern and post-structuralist approaches have had less influence in social work than in other academic disciplines, in Australia, Canada and, especially, the US, they have shaped much of the critical social work literature.

In previous publications, we have sought to provide an assessment of different strands of critical social work thought including postmodernism, post-structuralism and identity politics, as well as exploring the roots of oppression and alienation. Rather than repeating the arguments presented there, we would refer readers to these earlier writings (Ferguson and Lavalette, 1999; Ferguson et al, 2002; Ferguson, 2008; Lavalette, 2011). Rather, our intention here is to look at what are often new takes on older questions.

As an example, two prominent social work academics, Mel Gray and Stephen Webb, have suggested that current developments in political theory and political philosophy, notably, the work of Nancy Fraser, Axel Honneth and Alain Badiou, ‘have the potential to galvanize a new politics of social work by innovatively reworking agendas on social justice and solidarity, of political possibility, and transformative ideas relating to universal emancipation and freedom’ (Gray and Webb, 2013: 4).

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In consideration of all these qualities, I would speak about one last quality of an intellectual and political nature that progressive social workers ought to cultivate, to develop, to perfect, in their practice and that is an understanding of what is historically possible. As I perceive history, it is not something that happens necessarily but something that will be made, can be made, that one can make or refrain from making. I recognize, therefore, the role of the subjective in the process of making or of being made by history. And this then gives me a critical optimism that has nothing to do with, on the one hand, a critical pessimism and an immobilizing fatalism; and on the other hand, nothing to do with history marching on without men, without women, that considers history outside. No, history is not this; history is made by us and we make it, we are made and remade by it. (Freire, 1988)

In this book, we have explored the ways in which the roles and activities of social workers have been shaped by political and economic forces. Too often, such shaping has been a top-down process driven by political actors with their own interests and agendas and in opposition to the core values of the profession. What is also the case, however, is that there have been periods when social workers, often in alliance with wider social movements, have sought to create new forms of theory and practice based on opposition to oppression and to the economic and social forces that constrain people’s lives.

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Radical perspectives

How is social work shaped by global issues and international problems and how should it address them? This book employs a radical perspective to examine international social work.

Globalisation had opened up many issues for social work, including how to address global inequalities, the impact of global economic problems and trends towards neoliberalism. By examining the origins of modern social work, problematising its definition and addressing the care/control dichotomy the book reveals what we can learn from different approaches and projects across the globe.

Case studies from the UK, the US, Canada, Spain, Latin America, Australia, Hungary and Greece bring the text to life and allow both students and practitioners to apply theory to practice.

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As we approach the end of the second decade of the 21st century, the world is facing a growing number of, seemingly intractable, problems. Where does social work sit in relation to these problems and how should social work respond? Let us map out the terrain upon which these problems rest.

What Michael Roberts (2016) calls the ‘long depression’ shows no signs of ending. Financial instability and low economic growth continue to have an impact on global economic performance. In response to this crisis, large units of capital and states across the globe have been involved in a concerted attempt to reduce living standards, for the majority, as a means of restoring profitability across the system. This has been enshrined in policies of ‘austerity’, the claim that we can no longer afford what is thought of as the ‘post-war welfare settlement’ and that, as a result, ‘there is no alternative’ to savage cuts and welfare restructuring.

The attempt to transform the ‘welfare state’ (in all their variety across the globe) is important for social work. It has a significant impact on those who social work services work with (who find their services cut and stigmatised). For front-line practitioners, it means fewer resources to support service users, but it has also been matched by attempts to restructure and narrow the social work task. How do we understand these processes and, as social workers, how do we respond?

The 10-year depression and ‘austerity politics’ have also had the effect of eroding public confidence in ‘mainstream’ politicians and state actors.

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In this chapter, we will explore the relationship between social work, neoliberalism and the state. Such a focus is unusual in a social work text. Theoretical discussion of the state seldom figures in contemporary social work literature. There are a number of possible reasons for this. One may be the assumption that what is sometimes referred to as the ‘retreat of the state’ from welfare over the past three decades, as well as the development of globalisation, has rendered nation states less important than was previously the case. Another reason may be the influence within the critical social work literature of Foucauldian or post-structuralist perspectives, which see power as omnipresent, ‘saturating’ all relationships, with the state simply one source of power among many others. Probably the main reason for the neglect of the state within the mainstream literature, however, is the continuing influence of a view of social work as essentially a non-political project, an ethical or professional response to human need in particular societies in which the state provides, at most, a context in which this activity takes place. All of these views will be challenged in the course of this chapter. Before then, however, it is necessary to make some preliminary observations. First, it is not the case that all currents within social work have ignored the state–social work relationship. The Marxist-influenced radical social work literature of the 1970s, while acknowledging the gains provided by post-war welfare states, nevertheless questioned the then dominant social-democratic view of such states as essentially benign, highlighting instead the repressive features of the welfare state and seeking to address in theory and in practice the challenges and contradictions of working ‘in and against the state’ (Bailey and Brake, 1975; LEWRG, 1979; Simpkin, 1983).

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Radical social work is often associated with an understanding of society based on Marxist ideas, above all, the idea that we live in a society in which the central division (though clearly not the only division) is class. While that tradition has been important in shaping radical social work theory and practice both in the 1970s and currently, it has not been the only source of critical thinking within social work. Feminist and anti-racist approaches, for example, have also been influential, as have approaches based on identity politics more generally (essentially, the idea that only those experiencing a particular form of oppression can either define it or fight against it). While postmodern and post-structuralist approaches have had less influence in social work than in other academic disciplines, in Australia, Canada and, especially, the US, they have shaped much of the critical social work literature.

In previous publications, we have sought to provide an assessment of different strands of critical social work thought including postmodernism, post-structuralism and identity politics, as well as exploring the roots of oppression and alienation. Rather than repeating the arguments presented there, we would refer readers to these earlier writings (Ferguson and Lavalette, 1999; Ferguson et al, 2002; Ferguson, 2008; Lavalette, 2011). Rather, our intention here is to look at what are often new takes on older questions.

As an example, two prominent social work academics, Mel Gray and Stephen Webb, have suggested that current developments in political theory and political philosophy, notably, the work of Nancy Fraser, Axel Honneth and Alain Badiou, ‘have the potential to galvanize a new politics of social work by innovatively reworking agendas on social justice and solidarity, of political possibility, and transformative ideas relating to universal emancipation and freedom’ (Gray and Webb, 2013: 4).

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Writing in the early 1990s, the veteran British-Palestinian Marxist Tony Cliff described the new decade as being like ‘a film of the 1930s in slow motion’. As in the 1930s, Cliff argued, there was a global recession that had resulted in millions of people becoming unemployed. Also, as in the 1930s, accompanying that recession was the emergence of fascist movements such as Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National in France. Cliff’s conclusion, however, was far from fatalistic: ‘The 1930s was a decade of extremes…. The fact that the film of the 1930s returns, but in slow motion, means there is much greater opportunity to stop the film and direct it in the way we want’ (Cliff, 2000: 81). Like the Marxist literary critic Walter Benjamin some 60 years previously, Cliff was sounding a kind of ‘fire alarm’ to his contemporaries, ‘a warning bell attempting to draw attention to the imminent dangers threatening them, to the new catastrophes looming on the horizon’ (Löwy, 2005: 16). More than two decades on and some 10 years after the onset of a global recession that began in the US sub-prime housing market before morphing into an economic and political crisis in the Eurozone area, there is a sense that the film has sped up, both economically and politically. Economically, the recovery from the crisis of 2008 has been very weak indeed. Commenting on separate reports from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) issued in autumn 2016, an editorial in The Guardian newspaper described them as being ‘thick with cloud and short on silver lining’.

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The privatisation of what were previously state-controlled services has been a key plank of the neoliberal project since its beginnings in the 1970s. One of the first acts of the military junta that overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973 was to institute the wholesale privatisation of the Chilean economy under the supervision of the ‘Chicago Boys’, economists from Chicago University committed to market fundamentalism. Since then, privatisation has been a key element of neoliberal economic ‘reform’ everywhere, from the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) imposed on countries in the Global South from the 1990s onwards by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, to the more recent crippling austerity packages imposed on the people of Greece by the Troika of the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF.

Social work and social care have not been immune from this process. While the privatisation of professional social work is at an earlier stage in most countries, it is clearly in the sights of governments keen to open up the profession to market forces and, in the process, create a more compliant workforce, less informed by social science theories or committed to the value of social justice (Murphy, 2016). The first part of this chapter will explore the rationales – ideological, political and economic – for privatisation. Privatisation, like neoliberalism, is often viewed, first and foremost, as ideology and there is no question that the rhetoric of ‘private good, public bad’ has been enormously influential, taking on the mantle of a kind of common sense among global elites.

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