Cambridge Scholars Publishing The Welfare System and the Social Lifeworld: Paradox and Agency in the Policy Process

Product Description The key questions addressed in this book relate to how we should understand social welfare today. Is it a mechanism for promoting the virtues of altruism and other-regarding social values through the design of compassionate social policies which seek to enhance the quality of social relationships between citizens, or, is it a self-reproducing sub-system of law and politics which operates in accordance with its own internal logic, independently of the human agents who try to steer it towards benign social outcomes? This book questions whether the language of the enlightenment is the most appropriate to describe a socio-political project that is struggling to keep pace with the rapidly changing economic and political conditions which now exist in a neo-liberal global world. The main sociological theorists guiding the analysis here are Niklas Luhmann, Jürgen Habermas and Norbert Elias, among others. The key themes analysed in the book are street-level bureaucracy and the interface between the welfare system and the citizen; sensemaking in welfare organisations and in society; the relationship between lay morality and the policy making process; the link between the third sector and philanthrocapitalism; and the emotional dimension of social policy, especially in relation to social work practice. It will appeal to social science students of social and political theory, as well as those seeking an understanding of the changing context of contemporary issues in social policy. About the Author John J. Rodger, BA, PhD, taught in the School of Social Sciences at the University of the West of Scotland for 36 years. He served as an Associate Dean and was a Reader in Sociology and Social Policy, before retiring in 2014. He is currently Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the School of Education and Social Sciences at the institution. He is the author of Family Life and Social Control: A Sociological Perspective (1996), From a Welfare State to a Welfare Society (2000; translated into Italian as Il Nuovo Welfare Societario, 2004) and Criminalising Social Policy (2008). He has published widely in major academic journals such as the Journal of Social Policy, Critical Social Policy, British Journal of Social Work, Sociology, Sociological Review, and Political Studies.