Holger Ziegler - Böcker

This book examines human development in times of crisis, and its effect on social justice and democracy, with a focus on the delay in developmental progress caused by the ‘Great Recession’, the worst economic crisis in decades.

How can unjust societies be overcome with a better distribution of opportunities to flourish? How can human development be revitalised in countries where social welfare is being questioned? In short, how can human development be fostered in practice? These are some of the important questions asked in this volume through analysis of existing policies and conceptualisations of coherent and systematic strategies for human development policies at the local, national and international level.International contributors innovatively combine the hitherto unpaired perspectives of the capability approach and the tradition of critical social policy with empirical examples using case studies from South-Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and North and South America. The result is a call for a new, feasible approach towards more socially balanced, democratic and innovative capability-promoting policy activities, models and programmes that reduce social and human suffering to promote an enhanced social quality of current societies around the world.

The (European) welfare state as well as the political space of “the social” is currently being reorganised in a fundamental way. This has major implications for any attempt to contribute to a more just or even emancipatory way of shaping “the social”. The authors discuss what the Capabilities Approach may contribute to this attempt. Rather than assessing the philosophical foundation of this approach, “Shaping the Social” critically discusses the potentials and pitfalls of analysing social and labour-market policy and in particular social services from a capabilities perspective.

In April 2009, an inspiring international conference was held at Bielefeld on the topic "Children and the Good Life: New Challenges for Research on Children." The focus was on how we can define and measure a "good life" for children growing up in the modern world. This tied in with discussions on how convincing universalistic theories are, what research on children can contribute, and how children themselves can be integrated into the research process and debates on the "good life."Discourses and the production of knowledge on the "good life" or "well-being" require a guiding idea or a theoretical frame. This frame can come from the feminist ethic of care or from the Human and Children's Rights Convention, from the idea of welfare, or from the Capability Approach.