Welfare and Culture in Europe

Comparing European welfare regimes at local, national and international levels, "Welfare and Culture in Europe" stresses the need for a concept of culture to be incorporated into welfare studies. The book analyzes the theoretical issues behind the emergence of the concept of culture in welfare during a time of crisis and change in Europe. Part 2 concerns administrative arrangements for welfare provision and how practitioners and users respond to them. Chapters highlight how different key social concepts - such as the nature of citizenship, the role of the family and the public/private dichotomy - shape the provision and use of welfare services. The final part develops possible directions for future policy research and presents alternative methodological bases for empirical work. It includes a major quantitative study of the ways in which welfare states reflect and reproduce patterns of social values, and a description of a new technique of biographical analysis of welfare users. "Welfare and Culture in Europe" proposes a redirection of social policy in welfare, moving away from the limitaions of the traditional, universal, bureaucratic politics of distribution to a "post-modern" participatory and innovative politics of recognition.