Martin O'Brien – författare

This book brings together leading scholars in the field to provide insights on economics of education.The book begins with an overview of education and human capacity development and looks at the production of education through individuals’ learning, education financing, and the role of individual circumstances. It also analyses the complex relationship between education and mobility and highlights what key challenges for education systems in a global world are. Each chapter provides detailed analysis of interesting and policy-relevant topics in the fields of education economics and human capacity development.This book is a useful reference for those who wish to understand the changing landscape and models of higher education in the context of digital advances and innovation. It will also be of interest to those in the areas of education and training.

This book brings together leading scholars in the field to provide insights on economics of education.The book begins with an overview of education and human capacity development and looks at the production of education through individuals’ learning, education financing, and the role of individual circumstances. It also analyses the complex relationship between education and mobility and highlights what key challenges for education systems in a global world are. Each chapter provides detailed analysis of interesting and policy-relevant topics in the fields of education economics and human capacity development.This book is a useful reference for those who wish to understand the changing landscape and models of higher education in the context of digital advances and innovation. It will also be of interest to those in the areas of education and training.

Criminology: The Key Concepts is an authoritative and comprehensive study guide and reference resource that will take you through all the concepts, approaches, issues and institutions central to the study of crime in contemporary society.Topics covered in this easy to use A-Z guide include: policing, sentencing and the justice systemtypes of crime, including corporate crime, cybercrime, sex and hate crimesfeminist, marxist and cultural approaches to criminologyterrorism, state crime, war crimes and human rightssocial issues such as anti-social behaviour, domestic violence and pornographycriminal psychology and devianceFully cross-referenced, with extensive suggestions for further reading and in-depth study of the topics discussed, this is an essential reference guide for students of Criminology at all levels.

Criminology: The Key Concepts is an authoritative and comprehensive study guide and reference resource that will take you through all the concepts, approaches, issues and institutions central to the study of crime in contemporary society.Topics covered in this easy to use A-Z guide include: policing, sentencing and the justice systemtypes of crime, including corporate crime, cybercrime, sex and hate crimesfeminist, marxist and cultural approaches to criminologyterrorism, state crime, war crimes and human rightssocial issues such as anti-social behaviour, domestic violence and pornographycriminal psychology and devianceFully cross-referenced, with extensive suggestions for further reading and in-depth study of the topics discussed, this is an essential reference guide for students of Criminology at all levels.

This book takes a measured look at the 'crisis of waste' in modern society and it does so historically, sociologically and critically. It tells stories about past and present ‘crises’ of waste and puts them in their appropriate social and industrial contexts. From Charles Dickens to Don DeLillo, from the internal combustion engine to fish fingers, from kitchen grease to the Tour de France this book digs deep into society’s dust piles and emerges with untold treasures of the imagination.

This book takes a measured look at the 'crisis of waste' in modern society and it does so historically, sociologically and critically. It tells stories about past and present ‘crises’ of waste and puts them in their appropriate social and industrial contexts. From Charles Dickens to Don DeLillo, from the internal combustion engine to fish fingers, from kitchen grease to the Tour de France this book digs deep into society’s dust piles and emerges with untold treasures of the imagination.

It is not only green thinkers who value the environment. Decisions on how to respond to global environmental change, energy policy or where to site a new road are all informed by values. People bring very different sets of values to the understanding of environmental issues depending on whether they come from developed or developing countries, are applying an expert or lay person judgment, are making policy decisions from a distance or are directly affected at their local level. This book examines the multitude of ways in which we value the environment from a social science perspective. This is a multidisciplinary collection with contributions from academics with backgrounds in philosophy, sociology, psychology, economics, geography, law and engineering. The book is divided into four sections: the first addresses fundamental theoretical and conceptual issues; the second explores the methodological problems of uncovering people s values; the third looks at some of the policy dilemmas which arise when different sets of values in relations to the environment conflict; and the final section deals with issues of value-change through education about the environment. The book will be of interest to social scientists whose work, either directly or indirectly, is concerned with the environment, whether looking at national and local government decisions, urban or rural planning, the response of business to environmental issues, protest movements and local democracy, education and value change. It is an excellent introduction to the conceptual and methodological issues and to the way in which researchers from different social science disciplines view values and the environment.

What is modernity? Do we all experience modernity in the same way? How should we understand contemporary social change? This volume explores questions of modernity through critical engagements with the work of Anthony Giddens, focusing in particular on the relationships between his social theory and political sociology. Three substantive areas - reflexivity, environment and identity - are examined theoretically through the relationships between reflexivity and rationality, life politics and institutional power, and universalism and 'difference'.As well as specifically addressing Giddens' reconstruction of sociology, the contributors also explore a wide variety of critical issues currently occupying centre stage in social theory. These include questions about the character of contemporary societies, the periodisation of social change, the processes of change by which societies are constantly made and remade by people, the relationships between the 'social' and the 'natural', the formation and maintenance of identities and matters of epistemology and methodology in social science.Theorising Modernity will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of sociology, modern political thought, social geography and social policy and to social scientists trying to make sense of the modernity debate.Martin O'Brien is Research at the University of Derby. Sue Penna is a Lecturer in Applied Social Science at Lancaster University. Colin Hay is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham (UK), a Visiting Fellow of the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US) and Research Affiliate of the Centre for European Studies at Harvard University (US).

' Theorising Welfare is very well written and painstakingly clear. It is an accessible and original textbook on the welfare state and the idea of welfare. There is nothing available like it in terms of its scope and intellectual sweep' - Scott Lash, University of Lancaster

There are many interpretations of welfare and welfare states, each providing insights into different aspects of welfare and pointing to different possibilities for its future. Theorising Welfare provides a guide to these debates through an examination of seven theoretical perspectives - liberalism, Marxism, neo-liberalism, post-structuralism, political economy, political ecology and postmodernism - situating them within their historical and political contexts.

' Theorising Welfare is very well written and painstakingly clear. It is an accessible and original textbook on the welfare state and the idea of welfare. There is nothing available like it in terms of its scope and intellectual sweep' - Scott Lash, University of Lancaster

There are many interpretations of welfare and welfare states, each providing insights into different aspects of welfare and pointing to different possibilities for its future. Theorising Welfare provides a guide to these debates through an examination of seven theoretical perspectives - liberalism, Marxism, neo-liberalism, post-structuralism, political economy, political ecology and postmodernism - situating them within their historical and political contexts.

What is modernity? Do we all experience modernity in the same way? How should we understand contemporary social change? This volume explores questions of modernity through critical engagements with the work of Anthony Giddens, focusing in particular on the relationships between his social theory and political sociology. Three substantive areas - reflexivity, environment and identity - are examined theoretically through the relationships between reflexivity and rationality, life politics and institutional power, and universalism and 'difference'.As well as specifically addressing Giddens' reconstruction of sociology, the contributors also explore a wide variety of critical issues currently occupying centre stage in social theory. These include questions about the character of contemporary societies, the periodisation of social change, the processes of change by which societies are constantly made and remade by people, the relationships between the 'social' and the 'natural', the formation and maintenance of identities and matters of epistemology and methodology in social science.Theorising Modernity will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of sociology, modern political thought, social geography and social policy and to social scientists trying to make sense of the modernity debate.Martin O'Brien is Research at the University of Derby. Sue Penna is a Lecturer in Applied Social Science at Lancaster University. Colin Hay is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham (UK), a Visiting Fellow of the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US) and Research Affiliate of the Centre for European Studies at Harvard University (US).

This open access book investigates waiting as one of healthcare’s core experiences. Waiting is there in the time it takes to access services; the uncertain temporalities of diagnosis and treatment; and in the elongated time-frames of recovery, relapse, remission, and dying. Yet it can be felt to be intolerable when we are in need of care and when we want to offer timely care. This book investigates both the difficulties and vital significance of waiting in and for practices of care.Waiting times in many health services across the Global North have been at historic levels since the Covid-19 pandemic. Although this crisis of waiting is culturally and historically specific, Covid-19 made visible broader questions about the relationship between waiting, time, and care, and the fate of welfare infrastructures. Who waits for (and on) whom? If all care entails forms of elongated time, what waiting do we want to eliminate, and what waiting needs to be noticed, supported, and preserved as an offer and practice of care? This book takes the UK National Health Service (NHS) as a particular site of collective waiting and caring. The authors argue that care is not straightforwardly aligned with the time of production, progress, or growth, but is bound instead to the chronicity of practices that sustain interdependence: pausing to assess what is needed, staying alongside suffering, and returning to sites of vulnerability. Cutting across the marketization, provision rationalization, ideas of crisis, and the linear models of time that can dominate health and welfare policies, this book reckons with care’s essential ‘untimeliness’. By moving away from the idea that waiting is merely a form of service failure or abandonment, the authors trace out a more complex understanding of how ‘timely’ care might be offered, made, and sustained. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The Wellcome Trust.

This open access book investigates waiting as one of healthcare’s core experiences. Waiting is there in the time it takes to access services; the uncertain temporalities of diagnosis and treatment; and in the elongated time-frames of recovery, relapse, remission, and dying. Yet it can be felt to be intolerable when we are in need of care and when we want to offer timely care. This book investigates both the difficulties and vital significance of waiting in and for practices of care.Waiting times in many health services across the Global North have been at historic levels since the Covid-19 pandemic. Although this crisis of waiting is culturally and historically specific, Covid-19 made visible broader questions about the relationship between waiting, time, and care, and the fate of welfare infrastructures. Who waits for (and on) whom? If all care entails forms of elongated time, what waiting do we want to eliminate, and what waiting needs to be noticed, supported, and preserved as an offer and practice of care? This book takes the UK National Health Service (NHS) as a particular site of collective waiting and caring. The authors argue that care is not straightforwardly aligned with the time of production, progress, or growth, but is bound instead to the chronicity of practices that sustain interdependence: pausing to assess what is needed, staying alongside suffering, and returning to sites of vulnerability. Cutting across the marketization, provision rationalization, ideas of crisis, and the linear models of time that can dominate health and welfare policies, this book reckons with care’s essential ‘untimeliness’. By moving away from the idea that waiting is merely a form of service failure or abandonment, the authors trace out a more complex understanding of how ‘timely’ care might be offered, made, and sustained. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The Wellcome Trust.