Jose Harris – författare

This new and revised edition of William Beveridge remains the only documented biography of the most influential social reformer of the twentieth century. In Britain and Europe the Beveridge Plan of 1942 is still widely regarded as the seminal document of the modern `welfare state'. Yet if Beveridge was the `father of the welfare state' he was also, as this study shows, one of its earliest and most severe critics. Jose Harris explores Beveridge's life - the young social worker at Toynbee Hall; the `New Liberal' reformer in Edwardian Whitehall; the stormy director of the London School of Economics; and the `People's William' of the reconstruction movement after the Second World War. She combines biography with social and intellectual history, revealing many of the underlying principles and contradictions of social policy at different periods of the twentieth century. This new edition draws upon extensive new archive material to expand Harris's account of the origins and the aftermath of the Beveridge Plan. It also explores much more fully than was possible in the first edition the tortuous history of Beveridge's personal and emotional life, and its role in shaping his ideas and public career.

This book explores the many different strands in the language of civil society from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. Through a series of case-studies it investigates the applicability of the term to a wide range of historical settings. These include 'state interference', voluntary associations, economic decision-making, social and economic planning, the 'bourgeois public sphere', civil society in wartime, the 'inclusion' and 'exclusion' of women, and relations between the state, the voluntary sector, and individual citizens. The contributors suggest that the sharp distinction between civil society and the state, common in much continental thought, was of only limited application in a British context. They show how past understandings of the term were often very different from (even in some respects the exact opposite of) those held today, arguing that it makes more sense to understand civil society as a phenomenon that varies between differenc cultures and periods, rather than a universally applicable set of principles and procedures.

This book explores the many different strands in the language of civil society from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. Through a series of case-studies it investigates the applicability of the term to a wide range of historical settings. The contributors show how past understandings of the term were often very different from (even in some respects the exact opposite of) those held today.

Ferdinand Tönnies' Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (first published in 1887) is a classic of social and political theory, which explores the clash between small-scale neighbourhood-based 'communities' and large-scale competitive market 'societies'. Tönnies considers all aspects of life - political, economic, legal and family; art, religion and culture; the construction of 'selfhood' and 'personhood'; and modes of cognition, language and understanding. Often recognised as one of the founding texts of sociology, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft is also a highly significant contribution to European political thought and philosophy, with particular relevance to the legacies of Hobbes and Kant. It is at once a response to modernity, a theoretical exercise in social, political and moral science, and an unusual commentary on the inner character of 'democratic socialism'. This new English rendition will introduce Tönnies' work to a fresh generation of English-speaking readers with interests in social and political theory and the history of European ideas.

Ferdinand Tönnies' Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (first published in 1887) is a classic of social and political theory, which explores the clash between small-scale neighbourhood-based 'communities' and large-scale competitive market 'societies'. Tönnies considers all aspects of life - political, economic, legal and family; art, religion and culture; the construction of 'selfhood' and 'personhood'; and modes of cognition, language and understanding. Often recognised as one of the founding texts of sociology, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft is also a highly significant contribution to European political thought and philosophy, with particular relevance to the legacies of Hobbes and Kant. It is at once a response to modernity, a theoretical exercise in social, political and moral science, and an unusual commentary on the inner character of 'democratic socialism'. This new English rendition will introduce Tönnies' work to a fresh generation of English-speaking readers with interests in social and political theory and the history of European ideas.