Social policy : a critical and intersectional analysis / Fiona Williams.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Welfare states face profound challenges. Widening economic and social inequalities have been intensified by austerity politics, sharpened by the rise in ethno-nationalism and exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, recent decades have seen a resurgence of social justice activism at both the local and the transnational level. Yet the transformative power of feminist, anti-racist and postcolonial/decolonial thinking has become relatively marginal to core social policy theory, while other critical approaches - around disability, sexuality, migration, age and the environment - have found recognition only selectively.

This book provides a much needed new analysis of this complex landscape, drawing together critical approaches in social policy with intersectionality and political economy. Fiona Williams contextualizes contemporary social policies not only in the global crisis of finance capitalism but also in the interconnected global crises of care, ecology and racialized borders. These shape and are shaped at national scale by the intersecting dynamics of family, nation, work and nature. Through critical assessment of these realities, the book probes the ethical, prefigurative and transformative possibilities for a future welfare commons.

This significant intervention will animate social policy thinking, teaching and research. It will be essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the complexities of social policy for the years ahead.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgements (p. vii)
• A Note on Terminology (p. viii)
• 1 Introduction (p. 1)
• Continuities and changes (p. 4)
• Structure of the book (p. 8)
• Part I Orientation
• 2 A Critical and Intersectional Approach to Social Policy (p. 15)
• Introduction (p. 15)
• Remarginalization of the social (p. 15)
• An intersectional approach for social policy (p. 23)
• A critical approach to social policy (p. 29)
• Conclusion (p. 32)
• 3 Intersecting Global Crises and Dynamics of Family, Nation, Work and Nature: A Framework for Analysis (p. 34)
• Introduction (p. 34)
• Neoliberalism, welfare and austerity (p. 35)
• Frame 1: Intersecting global crises (p. 38)
• Frame 2: The intersections of family, nation, work and nature (p. 53)
• Conclusion (p. 58)
• Part II Analysis
• 4 Unsettling/Settling Family-Nation-Work-Nature: From Austerity to Pandemic (p. 63)
• Introduction (p. 63)
• 1 Work, family and nation: the depletion and devaluation of care (p. 67)
• 2 Bordering practices in the post-racial settling (p. 82)
• 3 Necropolitics, nation and nature (p. 93)
• 4 Not all of a piece (p. 111)
• Conclusion (p. 117)
• 5 The Social Relations of Welfare: Subjects, Agents, Activists (p. 121)
• Introduction (p. 121)
• The turn to agency (p. 122)
• The dynamics of agency (p. 124)
• Agency in the social relations of welfare (p. 132)
• Logics of contestation and resistance (p. 137)
• Conclusion (p. 147)
• 6 Intersections in the Transnational, Social and Political Economy of Care (p. 149)
• Introduction (p. 149)
• A story of changes and continuities (p. 150)
• Micro-intersections layered in close encounters (p. 154)
• Institutional intersections at the meso-scale (p. 157)
• The transnational political and social economy of care (p. 161)
• Conclusion: towards care-ethical global justice (p. 166)
• Part III Praxis
• 7 Towards an Eco-Welfare Commons: Intersections of Political Ethics and Prefigurative Practices (p. 173)
• Introduction (p. 173)
• Ethics grounded in the struggles of care, the environment and decoloniality (p. 174)
• Translating ethics into practical eco-social politics (p. 187)
• Towards the eco-welfare commons (p. 196)
• Conclusion (p. 204)
• 8 Conclusion: Multidimensional Thinking for Social Policy (p. 206)
• Introduction (p. 206)
• Reconstituting the knowledge base of social policy (p. 209)
• Relational knowledge and practices (p. 211)
• Reconstruction and reimagination in post-Covid-19 futures (p. 213)
• Appendix I Elaborating Family-Nation-Work-Nature and Welfare (p. 217)
• Appendix II Situating the Author in Social Policy (p. 221)
• Notes (p. 232)
• References (p. 237)
• Index (p. 282)

Author notes provided by Syndetics