The Nordic welfare states have found themselves in the firing line of post-industrial developments, resulting in fundamental changes and new social needs to attend to. This book explores responses to changing social risks across areas such as structural unemployment, entrepreneurship, immigration, single parenthood, education and health.
This unique Handbook charts shifts in the relationship between risks and inequalities over the last few decades, analysing how inequalities shape risk and how risks condition and intensify inequalities. Expert contributors examine the impacts of environmental, financial, social, urban, economic, and digital risks on inequalities, at both national and global levels.
There is no precedent to the current economic crisis which looks set to redefine social policy debate throughout the globe. But its effects are not uniform across nations. Bringing together a range of expert contributions, the key lesson to emerge from this book is that 'the crisis' is better understood as a variety of crises, each mediated by national context. Consequently, there is an array of potential trajectories for welfare systems, from those where social policy is regarded as incompatible with the post-crisis economy to those where it is considered essential to future economic growth and security.
Academic experts review the impact of neoliberal politics and ideology on the status of care work in Nordic countries. They explore different understandings of the care crisis, the consequences for gender equality and the long-term sustainability of the Nordic welfare states.
The Uses of Social Investment provides the first study of the welfare state, under the new post-crisis austerity context and associated crisis management politics, to take stock of the limits and potential of social investment. It surveys the emergence, diffusion, limits, merits, and politics of social investment as the welfare policy paradigm for the 21st century, seen through the lens of the life-course contingencies of the competitive knowledge economy and modern family-hood. Featuring contributions from leading scholars in the field, the volume revisits the intellectual roots and normative foundations of social investment, surveys the criticisms that have leveled against the social investment perspective in theory and policy practice, and presents empirical evidence of social investment progress together with novel research methodologies for assessing socioeconomic 'rates of return' on social investment. Given the progressive, admittedly uneven, diffusion of the social investment policy priorities across the globe, the volume seeks to address the pressing political question as to whether the social investment turn is able to withstand the fiscal austerity backlash that has re-emerged in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.
This edited collection focuses on the global growth of privatisation and private sector medicine in both developed and lesser developed countries, and the impact of this on patients, health workers, managers and policy-makers. Drawing upon sociological theories, concepts and insights, as well as experts from several countries with extensive experience in researching the field either nationally or internationally, the collection offers a unique perspective on healthcare services and healthcare systems: a view from those trying to access healthcare services, working inside health systems, or responsible for managing and organising services. Collectively, the chapters contribute an international perspective on the navigation of healthcare systems, and addresses the growing salience of ‘choice’ between public and private medicine in a variety of different national systems and contexts.
This book revives the discussion on public social services and their redesign, with a focus on services relating to care and the social inclusion of vulnerable groups, providing rich information on the changes that occurred in the organisation and supply of public social services over the last thirty years in different European places and service fields. Despite the persisting variety in social service models, three shared trends emerge: public sector disengagement, ‘vertical re-scaling’ of authority and ‘horizontal re-mix’ in the supply system. The consequences of such changes are evaluated from different perspectives – governance, social and territorial cohesion, labour market, gender – and are eventually deemed ‘disruptive’ in both economic and social terms. The policy implications of the restructuring are also explored. This title will be Open Access on Elgaronline.com.
This book serves as a comprehensive reference for conducting political analyses of emerging welfare systems in the Global South. These countries have adopted a development-oriented approach, distinct from the social policy trajectory observed in industrialized capitalist states. However, the pervasive influence of globalization since the 1990s has significantly reshaped policy priorities in these regions. Notably, political discourse surrounding social policy concepts developed in the Northern capitalist states has gained prominence. Irrespective of the geographical focus of the chapters, the book delves into fundamental social policy concepts and debates. These include the ongoing discourse between "universalism" and "selectivity," the challenges posed by the welfare residuum, the intricate role of institutional norms and apparatuses in achieving justice or engendering feelings of shame among social assistance recipients, and the examination of "absolute" and "relative" poverty. Additionally, the book investigates the pendulum shift within social welfare policies, the complex politics surrounding the portrayal of welfare recipients, and the newly established link between poverty and shame. Comprising 12 chapters, the book employs a case study-based approach to test the applicability and universality of social policy theories and concepts. The central focus lies in assessing the adaptability of concepts and theories developed in the Global North to comprehend the intricacies of welfare politics in the Global South. These case studies contribute to theoretical generalizations capable of explaining universal principles that are relevant to both the Global South and North.
There is increasing academic interest in how Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology can be applied to management and organization studies (MOS). In a context of increasing complexity faced by organizations and those who work in them due to globalization, neoliberalism, austerity, financial crisis, ecological issues, populism and developing technologies, there is untapped potential to use Bourdieu’s theoretical inventions to arrive at greater understandings of how change, transition and crisis shape work, organizational life as well as relations between different organizational and sectorial fields. This book aims to take a specific focus on the relational nature of Bourdieu’s work and its relevance for contemporary organizations. It provides empirically-grounded examples that showcase the explanatory strength of Bourdieu ́s intellectual concepts, such as field, habitus, capital, hexis, hysteresis, symbolic power, symbolic violence, doxa, illusio as applied to the current challenges within MOS. Such challenges include issues resulting from globalization, neoliberalism, financial crisis, ecological crisis, populism and developing technologies, to name but a few; and added to those, a global pandemic. The twelve chapters presented in this book study a great variety and range of organizational phenomena that are organized into three thematic sections: ‘Neoliberalism, fields and hysteresis’, ‘Global and national movements as sites for competition and symbolic domination’ and the ‘The emergence and transformation of professional fields’. The chapters show a concern with the challenges and opportunities such developments offer to MOS scholars and to managers and employees in public and private sector organizations. It will be of interest to researchers, academics and students in the fields of organizational studies, critical management studies, human resource management and sociology.
