The underlying frame of social work is the nation state, and it is from within the state that welfare strategies and social policies are devised and implemented. However, post-colonialism, globalisation, migration and the associated implications for human rights, social justice and social welfare policies contest the idea of a clearly defined space for social work and present new challenges for…
Social scientists have only recently begun to explore the link between health and political engagement. Understanding this relationship is vitally important from both a scholarly and a policy-making perspective. This book is the first to offer a comprehensive account of health and political engagement. Using both individual-level and country-level data drawn from the European Social Survey, …
This book develops an examination and critique of human extinction as a result of the ‘next pandemic’ and turns attention towards the role of pandemic catastrophe in the renegotiation of what it means to be human. Nested in debates in anthropology, philosophy, social theory and global health, the book argues that fear of and fascination with the ‘next pandemic’ stem not so much from an …
This book explores the diversity of methodological approaches to researching ageing, considering which methodological paradigm best captures the phenomenon. Interdisciplinary in scope, it brings together research from scholars from Austria, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Israel, Poland, UK and USA to uncover the conditions under which qualitative and quantitative approaches to research on ageing ca…
Current understandings of ageing and diversity are impoverished in three main ways. Firstly, with regards to thinking about what inequalities operate in later life there has been an excessive preoccupation with economic resources. On the other hand, less attention has been paid to cultural norms and values, other resources, wider social processes, political participation and community engagemen…
The social position of learning disabled people has shifted rapidly over the last 20 years, from long-stay institutions, first into community homes and day centres, and now to a currently emerging goal of "ordinary lives" for individuals using person-centred support and personal budgets. These approaches promise to replace a century and a half of "scientific" pathological models based on expert…
For the Common Good is an anthology of selected essays by Dr. Harold Lewis, one of the intellectual leaders of the social work profession. Social work literature often reflects powerful ahistorical tendencies which, in recent years, have produced analyses of social issues that lack awareness of both the contemporary environment and the historical forces that shaped it. Lewis' insights into the …
The processes of migration and health are inextricably linked in complex ways, with migration impacting on the mental and physical health of individuals and communities. Health itself can be a motivation for moving or a reason for staying, and migration can have implications on the health of those who move, those who are left behind, and the communities that receive migrants. This volume bri…
This book offers critical explorations of how the psy-disciplines, Michel Foucault’s collective term for psychiatry, psychology and psycho-analysis, play out in contemporary educational spaces. With a strong focus on Foucault’s theories, it critically investigates how the psy-disciplines continue to influence education, both regulating and shaping behaviour and morality. The book provides i…
A sociological and historical study of the development of reproductive technologies, this book focuses on key technological developments through a biomedicalization lens with special attention to gender. Using in vitro fertilization (IVF) as a hub, it critically examines the main areas of related socio-technical developments: reproductive science, birth control, animal husbandry, genetics and r…