Summary
Contents
Subject index
Social Policy and Social Justice </em></strong>provides today's students and tomorrow's practitioners with a comprehensive overview of U.S. social policy and the policymaking process. Author and editor Michael Reisch brings together experts in the field to help students understand these policies and prepare them for the emerging realities that will shape practice in the 21st century. This text explores the critical contextual components of social policy—including history, ideology, political-economy, and culture—and demonstrates major substantive areas of policy such as income maintenance and health/mental health.
U.S. Social Policy in the New Century
U.S. Social Policy in the New Century
The Meaning of Social Welfare
There is no universal definition of social welfare; each society creates its own definition based on its history, culture, and institutions. In general, however, the concept of social welfare implies recognition of human need and human interdependence, what Trattner (1999) termed collective responsibility for collective need. Systems of social welfare also create mechanisms of social control; various means to distribute (or redistribute) societal resources, power, opportunities, rights, and status; and ways to reproduce or change prevailing economic, social, and political relationships (Gorz, 2010).
Systems of social welfare reveal a great deal about the societies that create them. They reflect a society's priorities and goals; its view ...
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