The development of social policy in Europe is explored in this accessible intellectual history and analysis of the welfare state. From the Industrial Revolution onwards, the book identifies three important concepts behind efforts to address social concerns in Europe: social democracy, Christian democracy and liberalism. With guides to the political and ideological protagonists and the beliefs and values that lie behind reforms, it traces the progress and legacies of each of the three traditions. For academics and students across social policy and the political economy, this is an illuminating new perspective on the welfare state through the last two centuries.
Fully embracing the wide range of challenges liberal democracy has faced in recent years, this book offers a deepened understanding of contemporary changes and challenges to liberal democracy.
Alternative Pathways to Complexity focuses on the themes of architecture, economics, and power in the evolution of complex societies. Case studies from Mesoamerica, Asia, Africa, and Europe examine the relationship between political structures and economic configurations of ancient chiefdoms and states through a framework of comparative archaeology. A group of highly distinguished scholars takes up important issues, theories, and methods stemming from the nascent body of research on comparative archaeology to showcase and apply important theories of households, power, and how the development of complex societies can be extended and refined. Drawing on the archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic records, the chapters in this volume contain critical investigations on the role of collective action, economics, and corporate cognitive codes in structuring complex societies. Alternative Pathways to Complexity is an important addition to theoretical development and empirical research on Mesoamerica, the Old World, and cross-cultural studies. The theoretical implications addressed in the chapters will have broad appeal for scholars grappling with alternative pathways to complexity in other regions as well as those addressing diverse cross-cultural research. Contributors: Sarah B. Barber, Cynthia L. Bedell, Christopher S. Beekman, Frances F. Berdan, Tim Earle, Carol R. Ember, Gary M. Feinman, Arthur A. Joyce, Stephen A. Kowalewski, Lisa J. LeCount, Linda M. Nicholas, Peter N. Peregrine, Peter Robertshaw, Barbara L. Stark, T. L. Thurston, Deborah Winslow, Rita Wright
An industrial city on the outskirts of Stockholm, Södertälje is the global capital of the Syriac Orthodox Christian diaspora, an ethnic and religious minority group fleeing persecution and discrimination in the Middle East. Since the 1960s, this Syriac community has transformed the standardized welfare state spaces of the city’s neighborhoods into its own “Mesopotälje,” defined by houses with Mediterranean and other international influences, a major soccer stadium, and massive churches and social clubs. Such projects have challenged principles of Swedish utopian architecture and planning that explicitly emphasized the erasure of difference. In The Construction of Equality, Jennifer Mack shows how Syriac-instigated architectural projects and spatial practices have altered the city’s built environment “from below,” offering a fresh perspective on segregation in the European modernist suburbs. Combining architectural, urban, and ethnographic tools through archival research, site work, participant observation (among residents, designers, and planners), and interviews, Mack provides a unique take on urban development, social change, and the immigrant experience in Europe over a fifty-year period. Her book shows how the transformation of space at the urban scale—the creation and evolution of commercial and social districts, for example—operates through the slow accumulation of architectural projects. As Mack demonstrates, these developments are not merely the result of the grassroots social practices usually attributed to immigrants but instead are officially approved through dialogues between residents and design professionals: accredited architects, urban planners, and civic bureaucrats. Mack attends to the tensions between the “enclavization” practices of a historically persecuted minority group, the integration policies of the Swedish welfare state and its planners, and European nativism.
A short history of economics starting from 400 BCE to the present. As the fable goes, in the summer when the ants were busy gathering food, grasshoppers lived a carefree life. Come winter, the ants lived off their store, while the grasshoppers were left starving. It appears that this lesson was eventually learnt by humans, who shifted from hunting and gathering to agriculture. The wisdom of ants that they borrowed did not end here but helped to lay the foundation of economics as a distinct discipline. This book takes the reader through the history of economics through the ages and the four major world civilisations: European, Islamic, Indian and Chinese, pointing out the ways in which we think of economics today were formed. In the process, Shankar Jaganathan asks us to question our ideas of the importance of these ideas and their ability to drive the world. Written in a lucid, easy style, with many historical examples, The Wisdom of Ants views economic ideas through an ethical, social and political lens, allowing readers to understand the relevance of this history to their own daily lives.
Taking nine European countries as case studies, the contributions to this volume analyze the ways that citizenship has changed in key areas such as social security, labor market policies and social services.
How does one make disciples and plant the church in a secular environment? Does it take technical production? Is a great venue or “mother” church necessary? Does it take a well-networked team? Tangible factors such as these are easily remedied by consulting seasoned, church planting experts. Yet, what if some obstacles to plant the church aren’t tangible at all? The Spirit and the Secular examines the ways that Spirit-led Christians trust the Holy Spirit while church planting amidst a secular cultural backdrop. A review of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles traces a Spirit-led Christ and Spirit-led church as they make disciples. To better discern the challenge of what it means to be a contemporary church planter in Sweden, a historical review of Swedish culture reveals the rise of secularism alongside of the flourish of the Pentecostal church of the 1900s. What follows is a groundbreaking fieldwork study using a current, investigative interview method, Q-Methodology, measuring the perceptions of thirty church planters in Sweden who reveal their collective ideal and differing practices. The study wraps with a comprehensive analysis grounding the research in a theory of Spirit-led church planting.
Interlacing varied approaches within Historical Ecology, this volume offers new routes to researching and understanding human–environmental interactions and the heterarchical power relations that shape both socioecological change and resilience over time. Historical Ecology draws from archaeology, archival research, ethnography, the humanities and the biophysical sciences to merge the history of the Earth’s biophysical system with the history of humanity. Considering landscape as the spatial manifestation of the relations between humans and their environments through time, the authors in this volume examine the multi-directional power dynamics that have shaped settlement, agrarian, monumental and ritual landscapes through the long-term field projects they have pursued around the globe. Examining both biocultural stability and change through the longue durée in different regions, these essays highlight intersectionality and counterpoised power flows to demonstrate that alongside and in spite of hierarchical ideologies, the daily life of power is heterarchical. Knowledge of transtemporal human–environmental relationships is necessary for strategizing socioecological resilience. Historical Ecology shows how the past can be useful to the future.
This book is a highly original exploration of what life could and should be. It juxtaposes a philosophical enquiry into the nature of the good life with an ethnography of people living in a small Irish town. Attending carefully to the everyday lives of these people, the ethnographic chapters examine topics ranging from freedom and inequality to the creation of community and the purpose of life. These chapters alternate with discussions of similar topics by a wide range of philosophers in the Western tradition, from Socrates and the Stoics through Kant, Hegel and Heidegger to Adorno, Rawls, MacIntyre and Nussbaum. As an ethnography, this is a book of praise that reveals just how much we can learn from a respectful acknowledgment of what ordinary modest people have achieved. By creating community as a deliberate and social project that provides the foundation for a more fulfilling life, where affluence has not led to an increase in individualism, the people in this town have found a way to live the good enough life. The book also shows how anthropology and philosophy can complement and enrich one another in an inquiry into what we might accomplish in our lives.
