effective (marketisation); individuals should be responsible for themselves and run their own lives (consumerisation); and the private sector can supply management knowledge and techniques to the public and voluntary sectors (managerialisation). The extent to which these processes have taken hold and the precise combinations in which they appear vary but they constitute a direction of travel in many countries. In this article each process is considered in turn with regard to its impact on social work. key words consumerisation • managerialisation • marketisation
Responding to increasing interest in the movement of policies between places, sites and settings, this timely book presents a critical alternative to approaches centred on ideas of policy transfer, dissemination or learning. Written by key people in the field, it argues that treating policy’s movement as an active process of ‘translation’, in which policies are interpreted, inflected and re-worked as they change location, is of critical importance for studying policy. The book provides an exciting and accessible analytical and methodological foundation for examining policy in this way and will be a valuable resource for those studying policy processes at both undergraduate and post-graduate levels. Mixing collectively written chapters with individual case studies of policies and practices, the book provides a powerful and productive introduction to rethinking policy studies through translation. It ends with a commitment to the possibilities of thinking and doing ‘policy otherwise’.
The idea of policy is ripe for critical reappraisal. Whilst the context for policy making changes constantly, multiple questions endure, such as how policy is conceived and why; what is taken for granted and what gets problematised; and how policy should be informed, analysed and understood.
This book identifies key topics within the policy arena and subjects them to theoretical and practical analysis. It explores the meaning and framing of policy, and examines its practice from the micro- to the supra-national levels, using illustrative case studies to demonstrate how policy is contested, shaped and accounted for. Given the significance of policy as a means to organise and direct social, economic and political life, this book presents the case for a critical restatement of its origins, development and form - without which we risk being caught up in a cycle of change without understanding why or how.
The book presents a productive encounter between the three themes of meanings, politics and practices, themes normally not brought together in a single text. It emphasizes the multiplicity of perspectives that can be directed towards understanding the policy world, opening up new ground as well as visiting anew some familiar terrain. Targeted at upper undergraduate and postgraduate students and their teachers, it will also be of interest to researchers and policy actors wanting insight to their project.
Rogowski’s second edition of this bestselling textbook responds to the major changes to social work practice since the first edition was published. It is fully revised and updated to include new material that is essential for students and practising social workers today.
Taking a critical perspective, Rogowski evaluates social work’s development, nature and rationale over approximately 150 years. He explores how neoliberalism is at the core of the profession’s crisis and calls for progressive, critical and radical changes to social work policy and practices based on social justice and social change.
This new edition is substantially updated to explore:
• the impact of austerity policies since 2010;
• failures to realise the progressive possibilities which followed the death of ‘Baby P’;
• contemporary examples of critical and radical practice.
It also includes a range of student-friendly features including chapter summaries, key learning and discussion points, and further reading.
There is a need to understand the Italian welfare state, but as yet it has received little academic research attention. The Italian Welfare State in a European Perspective is the first book to explore the evolution of Italy’s welfare state in the decades since the ‘Trente Glorieuses’ (1945–75).
It offers a rare overview and analysis of the Italian situation based on an in-depth study of the main social policy fields (including education, higher education and taxation policies), a detailed analysis of the connection between policies and their outputs/outcomes and a comparative perspective framing the Italian case within the European context.
This is the first English-language book to take a comparative look at the Italian welfare state as a whole since the 2008 economic crisis, It will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers, as well as students.
Ageing, meaning and social structure is a unique book advancing critical discourse in gerontology and makes a major contribution to understanding key social and ethical dilemmas facing ageing societies. It confronts and integrates approaches that have been relatively isolated from each other, and interrelates two major streams of thought within critical gerontology: analyses of structural issues in the context of political economy and humanistic perspectives on issues of existential meaning. The chapters, from a wide range of contributors, focus on major issues in ageing such as autonomy, agency, frailty, lifestyle, social isolation, dementia and professional challenges in social work and participatory research. This volume should be valuable reading for scholars and graduate students in gerontology and humanistic studies, as well as for policy makers and practitioners working in the field of ageing.
Social development work takes place in the grey area between government and the voluntary and community sectors. This book, written by three well-known educators and researchers in the social policy and development field, explores the ways in which front-line professionals working with communities identify and address the dilemmas inherent in the current policy context.
Drawing upon original material, the authors examine how ‘community engagement’ workers negotiate the ethical and emotional challenges they face; how they work through problems of community representation at interpersonal and team levels; how they manage the conflicting roles of local activist and paid worker and what role colleagues, management and others play when responding to such challenges.
The dilemmas of development work reconnects to, and updates, an important tradition in social policy which explores the dilemmas of ‘street-level’ work. It draws on contemporary political theory and current debates concerning the modernisation of governance and psycho-social perspectives on identity, values and agency. Combining theory and practice, it will appeal to practitioners, policy makers and undergraduates in social and public policy.
This book addresses the social, political and economic turbulence in which the UK is embroiled. Drawing on Cultural Studies, it explores proliferating crises and conflicts, from the multiplying varieties of social dissent through the stagnation of rentier capitalism to the looming climate catastrophe.
Examining arguments about Brexit, class and ‘race’, and the changing character of the state, the book is underpinned by a transnational and relational conception of the UK. It traces the entangled dynamics of time and space that have shaped the current conjuncture.
Questioning whether increasingly anti-democratic and authoritarian strategies can provide a resolution to these troubles, it explores how the accumulating crises and conflicts have produced a deepening ‘crisis of authority’ that forms the terrain of the Battle for Britain.
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence
This book assesses how the practice of contracting-out public employment services via competitive tendering and Payment-by-Results is transforming welfare-to-work in Ireland.
It offers Ireland’s introduction of a welfare-to-work market as a case study that speaks to wider international debates in social and public policy about the role of market governance in intensifying the turn towards more regulatory and conditional welfare models on the ground.
It draws on unprecedented access to, and extensive survey and interview research with, frontline employment services staff, combined with in-depth interviews with policy officials, organisational managers and jobseekers participating in activation.
Mass youth unemployment is now endemic and almost ubiquitous in the global north and south alike. This book offers an original and challenging interpretation of the ways in which young people’s unemployment and general non-participation is becoming marginalised and criminalised. It re-examines the causes and consequences of non-participation from an unusually wide range of disciplines, using an innovative theorisation of the fast-changing relationships between extended studentship, welfare provision, labour market restructuring and crime. This approach offers an important contribution for understanding what it means for young people to be socially re-positioned and economically excluded in increasingly unequal societies, in and beyond the UK.
