Hartley Dean – författare

This book develops a very particular concept of sociality: a holistic way of understanding how human beings have come to care about and collectively provide for their welfare as a species and to recognise each other’s needs in terms of shared social rights. It tells not so much a success story as a hopeful story. It provides a new way of looking at how our rights to life’s essentials have been in the past, are now and can in the future be understood. It is, potentially, a book for anyone interested in the human condition but will be especially interesting for those engaged in human service provision, community action, social development, welfare law and political debate, and particularly useful to students of social policy and human rights.

It is a radically revised edition of Social Rights and Human Welfare, first published in 2015. It provides modified, re-organised and updated versions of chapters from that book while offering a wholly new underlying narrative through which further to develop and apply the author’s alternative theory of social rights. It is a book about the connections between social rights and human welfare; between theory and practice; between debate and reality in the spheres of human service provision and human livelihoods.

This book develops a very particular concept of sociality: a holistic way of understanding how human beings have come to care about and collectively provide for their welfare as a species and to recognise each other’s needs in terms of shared social rights. It tells not so much a success story as a hopeful story. It provides a new way of looking at how our rights to life’s essentials have been in the past, are now and can in the future be understood. It is, potentially, a book for anyone interested in the human condition but will be especially interesting for those engaged in human service provision, community action, social development, welfare law and political debate, and particularly useful to students of social policy and human rights.

It is a radically revised edition of Social Rights and Human Welfare, first published in 2015. It provides modified, re-organised and updated versions of chapters from that book while offering a wholly new underlying narrative through which further to develop and apply the author’s alternative theory of social rights. It is a book about the connections between social rights and human welfare; between theory and practice; between debate and reality in the spheres of human service provision and human livelihoods.

First published in 1991, Social Security and Social Control (now with a new preface by the author) takes a fresh look at social security policy and demonstrates how the disciplinary effects of social security and relief programmes are more extensive, pervasive, and subtle than is commonly supposed. Based on his academic research, drawing particularly upon the post-structuralist ideas of Foucault, and aided by twelve years’ practical experience as a front-line advice worker at a centre in Brixton, South London, Hartley Dean re-interprets the historical development of the British Poor Laws and the modern social security system. Thus, he provides a new context within which to analyse social security reforms and the significance of poverty as a contemporary phenomenon in advanced western societies. Also included is a unique case study of the Social Security Appeal Tribunal and the development of the tribunal system is presented as a commentary upon the disciplinary mechanisms inherent within the social security system as a whole. The book concludes with a reappraisal of debates of the time about social security policy and alternative social security systems.

Invaluable reading for undergraduates and lecturers in social policy, welfare law, sociology, socio-legal studies, politics, and social history, Social Security and Social Control will also be of particular interest to anyone involved in welfare rights, advice work, or legal services.

First published in 1991, Social Security and Social Control (now with a new preface by the author) takes a fresh look at social security policy and demonstrates how the disciplinary effects of social security and relief programmes are more extensive, pervasive, and subtle than is commonly supposed. Based on his academic research, drawing particularly upon the post-structuralist ideas of Foucault, and aided by twelve years’ practical experience as a front-line advice worker at a centre in Brixton, South London, Hartley Dean re-interprets the historical development of the British Poor Laws and the modern social security system. Thus, he provides a new context within which to analyse social security reforms and the significance of poverty as a contemporary phenomenon in advanced western societies. Also included is a unique case study of the Social Security Appeal Tribunal and the development of the tribunal system is presented as a commentary upon the disciplinary mechanisms inherent within the social security system as a whole. The book concludes with a reappraisal of debates of the time about social security policy and alternative social security systems.

Invaluable reading for undergraduates and lecturers in social policy, welfare law, sociology, socio-legal studies, politics, and social history, Social Security and Social Control will also be of particular interest to anyone involved in welfare rights, advice work, or legal services.

Welfare Rights and Social Policy provides an introduction to social policy through a discussion of welfare rights, which are explored in historical, comparative and critical context.

At a time when the cause of human rights is high on the global political agendathe authorasks why the status of welfare rights as an element of human rights remains ambiguous. Rights to social security, employment, housing, education, health and social care are critical to human well-being. Yet they are invariably subordinate to the civil and political rights of citizenship, they are often fragile and difficult to enforce, and because of their conditional nature they may be implicated in the social control of individual behaviour.

Welfare Rights and Social Policy provides an introduction to social policy through a discussion of welfare rights, which are explored in historical, comparative and critical context.

At a time when the cause of human rights is high on the global political agendathe authorasks why the status of welfare rights as an element of human rights remains ambiguous. Rights to social security, employment, housing, education, health and social care are critical to human well-being. Yet they are invariably subordinate to the civil and political rights of citizenship, they are often fragile and difficult to enforce, and because of their conditional nature they may be implicated in the social control of individual behaviour.

How do human societies provide for the wellbeing of their members? How far can we organize the ways in which we care for and about each other? And who should take responsibility for providing the support we need? These are some of the fundamental questions addressed by social policy today.

In this introduction, Hartley Dean explains the extraordinary scope and importance of social policy. He explores its foundations and contemporary significance; the principal issues it addresses and their diverse economic, political and sociological dimensions, and concludes by looking anew at fundamental challenges facing social policy in a dramatically changing world.

Introducing social policy as a broadly conceived study of human wellbeing, this revised and extensively updated third edition examines ways in which governments and peoples throughout the world attend to, promote, neglect or even undermine the things that make life worth living. These include essential services like healthcare and education; the means of livelihood – jobs and money – and sometimes intangible things such as physical and emotional security. Trying to understand these elements, which together constitute human wellbeing, is the stuff of social policy.