Introduction

Abstract

Social policy is not what it used to be. Changes in the form and content of what we have come to call ‘social policy’ have rendered problematic and possibly archaic, the accounts produced in the heyday of British social policy analysis (Cahill, 1994, p. 1–7). While the writings of T. H. Marshall (1950) and Richard Titmuss (1958), for example, are both eloquent and humanistic, they portrayed social policy as a phenomenon that could be understood empirically in terms of the rules regarding citizenship and the rights of the individual and social collectivities within the ‘classic’ welfare state (Lowe, 1993). This tradition, inherited by the ‘social administration’ studies of the 1970s and early 1980s, emphasised the study of various political processes that established the legislative framework, implementation and social impact of particular policies. This volume does not seek to engage in a critique of this earlier tradition of social policy study; rather, one of our aims is to show through a number of illustrations how cultural and political changes in Britain under Conservative administration have complicated discussions of social policy and have made it necessary to consider issues that would have formerly lain outside of social policy analysis. Hence, the cases examined here include critiques of methodologies underpinning certain policy measures and debates; the expansion of the world of research contracting; racism and health care; citizenship, housing rights and use of public space; and environmental politics as a greatly expanded arena for social policy decision-making.