Social Welfare in Western Society

Social Welfare in Western Society PDF Author: Gerald Handel
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 1412834562
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
Social welfare has a three-thousand-year history in Western society. This book offers a sociological framework that provides conceptual order to the countless details of that history, while highlighting its essentials. Social welfare in all its forms is based on one central concept--help. But there are many versions of help and multiple debates about those versions. The outcomes of some debates have led to withholding help, and these outcomes are an inescapable part of this domain, in the past and in the present. The major versions, their development, and the debates are carefully examined in this volume. Social Welfare in Western Society argues that in history five basic concepts of help have emerged. These five, explored and developed are: charity, based on a relationship between private donors and recipients; public welfare, based on a relationship between the state and its recipients; social insurance, based on a relationship between the state and beneficiaries of its programs; social service, based on people skilled in interaction providing skill-based time to their clients; mutual aid groups (sometimes misleadingly called self-help groups), whose members are simultaneously helpers and those helped. There are multiple versions of each of these five concepts now usually referred to as social policy issues. There are fierce disagreements about what is helpful and which supposed forms of help are harmful to the wider society. The book concludes that major debates have centered and continue to center around these major issues: Should the poor be helped or punished? Who is to blame? Do the poor have the same rights as other people? Who should pay? Who should decide? What is the effect of receiving welfare on incentive to work? Who should be helped? This is a masterful text designed for professional and public reading. Gerald Handel is professor emeritus of sociology at The City College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is the author of Making a Life in Yorkville: Experience and Meaning in the Life Course Narrative of an Urban Working-Class Man, editor of Childhood Socialization, and co-editor of The Psychosocial Interior of the Family, all published by Transaction Publishers.

Social Welfare in Western Society

Social Welfare in Western Society PDF Author: Gerald Handel
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 1412834562
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
Social welfare has a three-thousand-year history in Western society. This book offers a sociological framework that provides conceptual order to the countless details of that history, while highlighting its essentials. Social welfare in all its forms is based on one central concept--help. But there are many versions of help and multiple debates about those versions. The outcomes of some debates have led to withholding help, and these outcomes are an inescapable part of this domain, in the past and in the present. The major versions, their development, and the debates are carefully examined in this volume. Social Welfare in Western Society argues that in history five basic concepts of help have emerged. These five, explored and developed are: charity, based on a relationship between private donors and recipients; public welfare, based on a relationship between the state and its recipients; social insurance, based on a relationship between the state and beneficiaries of its programs; social service, based on people skilled in interaction providing skill-based time to their clients; mutual aid groups (sometimes misleadingly called self-help groups), whose members are simultaneously helpers and those helped. There are multiple versions of each of these five concepts now usually referred to as social policy issues. There are fierce disagreements about what is helpful and which supposed forms of help are harmful to the wider society. The book concludes that major debates have centered and continue to center around these major issues: Should the poor be helped or punished? Who is to blame? Do the poor have the same rights as other people? Who should pay? Who should decide? What is the effect of receiving welfare on incentive to work? Who should be helped? This is a masterful text designed for professional and public reading. Gerald Handel is professor emeritus of sociology at The City College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is the author of Making a Life in Yorkville: Experience and Meaning in the Life Course Narrative of an Urban Working-Class Man, editor of Childhood Socialization, and co-editor of The Psychosocial Interior of the Family, all published by Transaction Publishers.

Social Welfare in Global Context

Social Welfare in Global Context PDF Author: James Midgley
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780761907886
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
James Midgley provides a broad overview of social welfare, outlining key institutions, terminology, historical research, and approaches. He also details reasons for the existence of international social welfare and the challenges that arise from it. The author includes an important section on applied international social welfare that addresses the concerns of practitioners--concerns that have been neglected in much of the literature in the field. An entire section of the book is devoted to issues of social work practice, social developments, the activities of international agencies, and their collaborative efforts. While practical application is an important focus of the book, several chapters deal with key theoretical debates in the field. The author also includes descriptive chapters that provide comprehensive accounts of world social conditions and social welfare institutions.

Social Welfare in Western Society

Social Welfare in Western Society PDF Author: Bernice Neugarten
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351489364
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
Social welfare has a three-thousand-year history in Western society. Th is book off ers a sociological framework that provides conceptual order to the countless details of that history, while highlighting its essentials. Social welfare in all its forms is based on one central concept-help. But there are many versions of help and multiple debates about those versions. Th e outcomes of some debates have led to withholding help, and these outcomes are an inescapable part of this domain, in the past and in the present. Th e major versions, their development, and the debates are carefully examined in this volume.

The Welfare State

The Welfare State PDF Author: David Garland
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199672660
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
This Very Short Introduction discusses the necessity of welfare states in modern capitalist societies. Situating social policy in an historical, sociological, and comparative perspective, David Garland brings a new understanding to familiar debates, policies, and institutions.

The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State

The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State PDF Author: Francis G. Castles
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019162828X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 907

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State is the authoritative and definitive guide to the contemporary welfare state. In a volume consisting of nearly fifty newly-written chapters, a broad range of the world's leading scholars offer a comprehensive account of everything one needs to know about the modern welfare state. The book is divided into eight sections. It opens with three chapters that evaluate the philosophical case for (and against) the welfare state. Surveys of the welfare state 's history and of the approaches taken to its study are followed by four extended sections, running to some thirty-five chapters in all, which offer a comprehensive and in-depth survey of our current state of knowledge across the whole range of issues that the welfare state embraces. The first of these sections looks at inputs and actors (including the roles of parties, unions, and employers), the impact of gender and religion, patterns of migration and a changing public opinion, the role of international organisations and the impact of globalisation. The next two sections cover policy inputs (in areas such as pensions, health care, disability, care of the elderly, unemployment, and labour market activation) and their outcomes (in terms of inequality and poverty, macroeconomic performance, and retrenchment). The seventh section consists of seven chapters which survey welfare state experience around the globe (and not just within the OECD). Two final chapters consider questions about the global future of the welfare state. The individual chapters of the Handbook are written in an informed but accessible way by leading researchers in their respective fields giving the reader an excellent and truly up-to-date knowledge of the area under discussion. Taken together, they constitute a comprehensive compendium of all that is best in contemporary welfare state research and a unique guide to what is happening now in this most crucial and contested area of social and political development.

Social Welfare in Western Society

Social Welfare in Western Society PDF Author: Gerald Handel
Publisher: Random House Incorporated
ISBN: 9780394322131
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description


The Oxford Handbook of the Social Science of Poverty

The Oxford Handbook of the Social Science of Poverty PDF Author: David Brady
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199914052
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 937

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of the Social Science of Poverty builds a common scholarly ground in the study of poverty by bringing together an international, inter-disciplinary group of scholars to provide their perspectives on the issue. Contributors engage in discussions about the leading theories and conceptual debates regarding poverty, the most salient topics in poverty research, and the far-reaching consequences of poverty on the individual and societal level.

Working Mothers and the Welfare State

Working Mothers and the Welfare State PDF Author: Kimberly J. Morgan
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804754149
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
This book explains why countries have adopted different policies for working parents through a comparative historical study of four nations: France, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States.

The Winding Road to the Welfare State

The Winding Road to the Welfare State PDF Author: George R. Boyer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691183996
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
How did Britain transform itself from a nation of workhouses to one that became a model for the modern welfare state? The Winding Road to the Welfare State investigates the evolution of living standards and welfare policies in Britain from the 1830s to 1950 and provides insights into how British working-class households coped with economic insecurity. George Boyer examines the retrenchment in Victorian poor relief, the Liberal Welfare Reforms, and the beginnings of the postwar welfare state, and he describes how workers altered spending and saving methods based on changing government policies. From the cutting back of the Poor Law after 1834 to Parliament’s abrupt about-face in 1906 with the adoption of the Liberal Welfare Reforms, Boyer offers new explanations for oscillations in Britain’s social policies and how these shaped worker well-being. The Poor Law’s increasing stinginess led skilled manual workers to adopt self-help strategies, but this was not a feasible option for low-skilled workers, many of whom continued to rely on the Poor Law into old age. In contrast, the Liberal Welfare Reforms were a major watershed, marking the end of seven decades of declining support for the needy. Concluding with the Beveridge Report and Labour’s social policies in the late 1940s, Boyer shows how the Liberal Welfare Reforms laid the foundations for a national social safety net. A sweeping look at economic pressures after the Industrial Revolution, The Winding Road to the Welfare State illustrates how British welfare policy waxed and waned over the course of a century.

The Welfare State Revisited

The Welfare State Revisited PDF Author: José Antonio Ocampo
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231546165
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
The welfare state has been under attack for decades, but now more than ever there is a need for strong social protection systems—the best tools we have to combat inequality, support social justice, and even improve economic performance. In this book, José Antonio Ocampo and Joseph E. Stiglitz bring together distinguished contributors to examine the global variations of social programs and make the case for a redesigned twenty-first-century welfare state. The Welfare State Revisited takes on major debates about social well-being, considering the merits of universal versus targeted policies; responses to market failures; integrating welfare and economic development; and how welfare states around the world have changed since the neoliberal turn. Contributors offer prescriptions for how to respond to the demands generated by demographic changes, the changing role of the family, new features of labor markets, the challenges of aging societies, and technological change. They consider how strengthening or weakening social protection programs affects inequality, suggesting ways to facilitate the spread of effective welfare states throughout the world, especially in developing countries. Presenting new insights into the functions the welfare state can fulfill and how to design a more efficient and more equitable system, The Welfare State Revisited is essential reading on the most discussed issues in social welfare today.