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The Politics of Social Work provides a major contribution to debates on the politics of social work, at the beginning of the 21st Century. It locates social work within wider political and theoretical debates and deals with important issues currently facing social workers and the organisations in which they work. By setting the current crisis of identity social workers are experiencing in international context, Fred Powell analyses the choices facing social work in postmodern society. Fred Powell explores in this text contemporary and historical paradigms of social work from its Victorian origins to the development of reformist practice in the welfare state to radical social work, responses to social exclusion, the rennaissance of civil society, multiculturalism, feminism and anti-oppressive practice. In conclusion the he examines the options facing social work in the 21st century and argues for a civic model of social work based on the pursuit of social justice in an inclusive society.
This book is a concise, accessible guide to help social workers understand how politics and policy making really work--and what they can do to help their clients and their communities. It offers informed, practical grounding in the mechanics of policy making and the tools that activists and outsiders can use to take on an entrenched system.
Across the world, welfare states are under challenge—or were never developed extensively in the first place—while non-state actors increasingly provide public goods and basic welfare. In many parts of the Middle East and South Asia, sectarian organizations and political parties supply basic services to ordinary people more extensively and effectively than governments. In sub-Saharan Africa, families struggle to pay hospital fees, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) launch welfare programs as states cut subsidies and social programs. Likewise, in parts of Latin America, international and domestic NGOs and, increasingly, private firms are key suppliers of social welfare in both urban and rural communities. Even in the United States, where the welfare state is far more developed, secular NGOs and faith-based organizations are critical components of social safety nets. Despite official entitlements to public welfare, citizens in Russia face increasing out-of-pocket expenses as they are effectively compelled to seek social services through the private market In The Politics of Non-State Social Welfare, a multidisciplinary group of contributors use survey data analysis, spatial analysis, in-depth interviews, and ethnographic and archival research to explore the fundamental transformation of the relationship between states and citizens. The book highlights the political consequences of the non-state provision of social welfare, including the ramifications for equitable and sustainable access to social services, accountability for citizens, and state capacity. The authors do not assume that non-state providers will surpass the performance of weak, inefficient, or sometimes corrupt states but instead offer a systematic analysis of a wide spectrum of non-state actors in a variety of contexts around the world, including sectarian political parties, faith-based organizations, community-based organizations, family networks, informal brokers, and private firms.
Revised papers from the second and third of three conference held in Chicago throughout 1984-1985, and sponsored by the Project on the Federal Social Role. Includes bibliographical references and index.
In The Politics of the Welfare State in Turkey, author Erdem Yörük provides a politics-based explanation for the post-1980 transformation of the Turkish welfare system, in which poor relief policies have replaced employment-based social security. This book is one of the results of Yörük’s European Research Council-funded project, which compares the political dynamics in several emerging markets in order to develop a new political theory of welfare in the global south. As such, this book is an ambitious analytical and empirical contribution to understanding the causes of a sweeping shift in the nature of state welfare provision in Turkey during the recent decades—part of a global trend that extends far beyond Turkey. Most scholarship about Turkey and similar countries has explained this shift toward poor relief as a response to demographic and structural changes including aging populations, the decline in the economic weight of industry, and the informalization of labor, while ignoring the effect of grassroots politics. In order to overcome these theoretical shortages in the literature, the book revisits concepts of political containment and political mobilization from the earlier literature on the mid-twentieth-century welfare state development and incorporates the effects of grassroots politics in order to understand the recent welfare system shift as it materialized in Turkey, where a new matrix of political dynamics has produced new large-scale social assistance programs.
Child abuse policy in the United States contains dangerous contradictions, which have only intensified as the public slowly accepted it as a middle class problem. One contradiction is the rapidly expanding child abuse industry (made up of enterprising psychotherapists and attorneys) which is consuming enormous resources, while thousands of poor children are seriously injured or killed, many while being "protected" by public agencies. This "rediscovery" has also led to the frenzied pursuit of offenders, resulting in the sacrifice of some innocent people. Moreover, the media's focus on the sensational details of high-visibility sexual abuse cases has helped to trivialize, if not commercialize, the child abuse problem. As such, child abuse has gone from a social problem to a social spectacle. By the 1980s the child welfare system had become a virtual "nonsystem," marked by a staggering turnover of staff, unmanageable caseloads, a severe shortage of funding, and caseloads composed of highly dysfunctional families (many with drug-related problems). To make room for these families, public agencies rationed services by increasingly screening-out child abuse reports which contained little likelihood of serious bodily harm. In The Politics of Child Abuse in America, the authors argue that child abuse must be viewed as a public safety problem. This redefinition would make it congruent with other family-based social trends, including the crackdown on domestic violence. Children must have the same legal protection currently extended to physically and sexually abused women. This can be done by creating a "Children's Authority," which would have the overall charge for protecting children. Specifically, Children's Authorities would have the responsibility for providing the six main functions of child protection: investigation, enforcement, placement services, prevention and education, family support, and research and development. Offering a unique perspective on the cold reality of this crisis, The Politics of Child Abuse in America will be a provocative work for social workers and human service personnel, as well as the general reader concerned with this timely issue.
A vital collection bringing together Black Lives Matter and COVID-19 from the acclaimed political and literary magazine Boston Review. From the COVID-19 pandemic to uprisings over police brutality, we are living in the greatest social crisis of a generation. But the roots of these latest emergencies stretch back decades. At their core is a politics of death: a brutal neoliberal ideology that combines deep structural racism with a relentless assault on social welfare. Its results are the failing economic and public health systems we confront today--those that benefit the few and put the most vulnerable in harm's way. Contributors to this volume not only protest these neoliberal roots of our present catastrophe, but they insist there is only one way forward: a new kind of politics--a politics of care--that centers people's basic needs and connections to fellow citizens, the global community, and the natural world. Imagining a world that promotes the health and well-being of all, they draw on different backgrounds--from public health to philosophy, history to economics, literature to activism--as well as the example of other countries and the past, from the AIDS activist group ACT-UP to the Black radical tradition. Together they point to a future, as Simon Waxman writes, where "no one is disposable." CONTRIBUTORS Robin D. G. Kelley, Gregg Gonsalves and Amy Kapczynski, Walter Johnson, Anne L. Alstott, Melvin Rogers, Amy Hoffman, Sunaura Taylor, Vafa Ghazavi, Adele Lebano, Paul Hockenos, Paul Katz and Leandro Ferreira, Shaun Ossei-Owusu, , Colin Gordon, Jason Q. Purnell, Jamala Rogers, Dan Berger, Julie Kohler, Manoj Dias-Abey, Simon Waxman, Farah Griffin. A co-publication between Boston Review and Verso Books.
Polls tell us that most Americans--whether they earn $20,000 or $200,000 a year--think of themselves as middle class. As this phenomenon suggests, "middle class" is a category whose definition is not necessarily self-evident. In this book, historian Daniel Walkowitz approaches the question of what it means to be middle class from an innovative angle. Focusing on the history of social workers--who daily patrol the boundaries of class--he examines the changed and contested meaning of the term over the last one hundred years. Walkowitz uses the study of social workers to explore the interplay of race, ethnicity, and gender with class. He examines the trade union movement within the mostly female field of social work and looks at how a paradigmatic conflict between blacks and Jews in New York City during the 1960s shaped late-twentieth-century social policy concerning work, opportunity, and entitlements. In all, this is a story about the ways race and gender divisions in American society have underlain the confusion about the identity and role of the middle class.
By analyzing the competing concerns of different social "actors" behind the evolution of social policy, this study explains why some nations had an easy time in developing a welfare state while others fought long entrenched battles.
Examines nursing as it has developed under different regimes and ideologies and at different times around the world. Highlights the role of politics and gender and proposes strategies for achieving greater recognition for the profession.