From a Welfare State to a Welfare Society: The Changing Context of Social Policy in a Postmodern Era

The welfare state is being subjected to fundamental re-appraisal. It is now commonly argued that modern Western societies require a new ‘moral economy’ in which responsibility for welfare and social care is shifted from the state to the family and community. This text critically assesses the range of academic and political debates around the questions such a shift raises, exploring how far social solidarity is possible when social inequality has become so in evidence in the last two decades of the twentieth century.