Full Description
The 2008 global economic crisis was unprecedented in living memory and its impact on economic and social life immense. Large-scale social policy interventions played a crucial role in helping to mediate the crisis, and yet the welfare state continues to come under attack. A new age of austerity, based more on politics than economics, is threatening to undermine the very foundations of the welfare state.
However, as this important book illustrates, there is still room for optimism - resistance to the logic of austerity exists within organisations and governments, and among peoples, demonstrating how essential social policies remain to human progress.
The second of a three-book series covering the post-2008 global economic crisis and the period of austerity, this volume draws together edited chapters from leading scholars engaged in the debate and will be equally suitable for academics and other researchers studying international and comparative social policy, as well as upper level undergraduate and postgraduate students.
Contents
Introduction: social policy in the age of austerity ‾ Kevin Farnsworth and Zoë Irving;
Austerity: more than the sum of its parts ‾ Kevin Farnsworth and Zoë Irving;
Conventional wisdom on government austerity: UK politics since the 1920s ‾ Michael Hill;
The economics of austerity ‾ Stephen Mcbride;
Neoliberalism, finance-dominated accumulation and enduring austerity: a cultural political economy perspective ‾ Bob Jessop;
Alternatives to austerity ‾ Dexter Whitfield and John Spoehr;
Crisis, convulsion and the welfare state ‾ Frances Fox-Piven and Lorraine Minnite;
Conclusion: a new politics of welfare ‾ Kevin Farnsworth and Zoë Irving.
