Social Policies and Social Control: New Perspectives on the 'Not-So-Big Society'

Drawing on a wide array of policy domains and events, this book provides an innovative account of social control and behaviourism within welfare systems and social policies, and the implications for disadvantaged groups. This accessible collection reviews the controls, assumptions and persuasions applied to individuals and households; indicates how interventions have tightened selectivity, increased obligations, and narrowed social rights; illuminates links between social control developments, welfare systems and economic liberalism; and highlights the significance of behaviourist assumptions and strategies as growing influences shaping social policies negatively for the disadvantaged. It also explores broader themes, including how 'new behaviourism' emerged and how it was consolidated during the New Labour and Cameron periods. Social policy and social control offers timely engagements with key issues for researchers and policy makers, and is relevant for students in social policy, sociology, socio-legal studies, social work and social care, disability studies, human geography, politics and public policy, and gender, family and life course studies.