Originally published in 1971, this social science classic outlines the social functions of welfare programs. "Uncompromising and provocative....By mixing history, political interpretation and sociological analysis, Piven and Cloward provide the best explanation to date of our present situation...no future discussion of welfare can afford to ignore them."

What is the nature of law and what is the best way to discover it? This book argues that law is best understood in terms of the social functions it performs wherever it is found in human society. In order to support this claim, law is explained as a kind of institution and as a kind of artefact. To say that it is an institution is to say that it is designed for creating and con...(展开全部)

What is the nature of law and what is the best way to discover it? This book argues that law is best understood in terms of the social functions it performs wherever it is found in human society. In order to support this claim, law is explained as a kind of institution and as a kind of artefact. To say that it is an institution is to say that it is designed for creating and con...(展开全部)

"When thinking about Oxford, don't forget the classics like The Theory of Functions by Titchmarch [sic] ... I love the old writing style ... should be on everyone's bookshelf."The Bulletin of Mathematics Books

Claus Offe is one of the leading social scientists working in Germany today, and his work, particularly on the welfare state, has been enormously influential both in Europe and the United States. Contradictions of the Welfare State is the first collection of Offe's essays to appear in a single volume in English, and it contains a selection of his most important recent work on t...(展开全部)

Claus Offe is one of the leading social scientists working in Germany today, and his work, particularly on the welfare state, has been enormously influential both in Europe and the United States. Contradictions of the Welfare State is the first collection of Offe's essays to appear in a single volume in English, and it contains a selection of his most important recent work on t...(展开全部)

The welfare states of the affluent democracies now stand at the centre of political discussion and social conflict. In these path-breaking essays, an international team of leading analysts rejects simplistic claims about the impact of economic 'globalization'. Economic, demographic, and social pressures on the welfare state are very real, but many of the most fundamental challe...(展开全部)

Francis G. Castles is Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University and at the Center for Social Policy Research (CeS) in Bremen. Stephan Leibfried is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Bremen, Director of the Collaborative Research Center "Tra...(展开全部)

The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State is the authoritative and definitive guide to the contemporary welfare state. In a volume consisting of nearly fifty newly-written chapters, a broad range of the world's leading scholars offer a comprehensive account of everything one needs to know about the modern welfare state. The book is divided into eight sections. It opens with thr...(展开全部)

Few discussions in modern social science have occupied as much attention as the changing nature of welfare states in Western societies. Gosta Esping-Andersen, one of the foremost contributors to current debates on this issue, here provides a new analysis of the character and role of welfare states in the functioning of contemporary advanced Western societies. Esping-Andersen di...(展开全部)