Postmodernity and the Fragmentation of Welfare

Postmodern ideas have been influential in the social sciences and beyond. However, their impact on the study of social policy has been minimal. This work analyzes the potential for a modern or cultural turn in welfare as it treats postmodernity as an evolving canon - from the seminal works of Baudrillard, Foucault and Lyotard, through to recent theories of the risk society . Already disorientated by globalization, new technologies and the years of new right ascendancy, welfare faces a significant challenge in the postmodern. It suggests that, rather than universality and state provision, the new social policy will be consumerized and fragmented - a welfare state of ambivalence. With contributions from authors coming from a variety of fields offering very different perspectives on postmodernity and welfare the book also keeps social policy’s intellectual inheritance in view. By exploring ways in which theorizations of postmodernity might improve understanding of welfare issues in the 1990s and assessing the relevance of theories of diversity and difference to mainstream and critical social policy traditions, this book is aimed at students of social policy, social administration, social work and sociology.