There are two fundamental changes currently under way in the welfare state. These are the development of quasi-markets in welfare provision, and the supplementation of ‘fiscal’ welfare by ‘legal’ welfare: policies that rely on redistributing income through regulation and other legal devices, instead of through the tax and social security system. This article argues that these changes are in part the result of a fundamental shift in policy-makers' beliefs concerning human motivation and behaviour. People who finance, operate and use the welfare state are no longer assumed to be either public spirited altruists (knights) or passive recipients of state largesse (pawns); instead they are all considered to be in one way or another self-interested (knaves). However, since neither the ‘new’ nor the ‘old’ set of assumptions are based on evidence, policies based on the new set are as likely to fail as those based on the old. What is needed are ‘robust’ policies that are not dependent on any simple view of human behaviour.

The sociology of post-fordism has facilitated the development of a new welfarism which suggests that economic globalisation, labour market flexibility, more complex patterns of family life and the dissolution of traditional class structures require a new welfare settlement. Since full employment, redistribution and expensive universal services are no longer seen as feasible, the new welfare can only justify social spending as investment in human capital and as the enhancement of individual opportunities. Welfare states are all driven in the same direction by the imperatives of international competition.

A review of available evidence indicates that the progress of post-fordist social change is partial. Inequalities in life-chances have grown wider. Changes in patterns of employment and new legislation weaken the working class. The ruling class is well aware of its interests. Increases in productivity at a time when investment is not rising, the decline in union membership and militancy and the intensification of work coupled with a policy stance by both main parties that supports lower taxes, a shift in the tax burden downwards and a decline in state intervention all indicate that capital is in the ascendant in the UK. Comparative work shows that the policies pursued under different regimes can make a difference to welfare outcomes despite the increased stringency of competition. The traditional agenda of social policy – class inequality, the strength of capital and the policy programme of the nation-state – merits particular attention in Britain in the 1990s.

This article is concerned in part to inform the quest for an understanding of the perceptions which Muslim minorities have of Western welfare state provision, but its wider purpose is to explore the essence and the potential of the Islamic welfare state. Heuristic models constructed by social policy academics have provided insights into the influences of religion upon different kinds of welfare state, but no model exists by which specifically to understand Islamic welfare traditions. The article explains the Islamic tradition of Zakat; its significance as one of the central pillars of Muslim faith, and the principles through which it addresses the relief of poverty and the redistribution of wealth. Islamic conceptions of state and community are then explored and the ways in which Muslim faith and culture are adapting at both the global and community level. The article concludes with some speculative remarks about the scope for rapprochement between Western debates about the moral basis for welfare and Muslim perspectives on social justice.

Assistance with bathing at home for older and disabled people has long been an area of service tension and ambiguity. Lying across the principal faultline of community care, that of the medical/social divide, it is at the heart of current debates over welfare provision. But exploring the meaning of the ‘social bath’, as it is termed in the field, also challenges some of the traditional ways in which community care has been described and analysed particularly within the discipline of social policy. Bathing involves the negotiation of intimacy and the management of the body, and as such entails aspects of being and of social exchange that have not traditionally been part of the standard, rather rationalistic and disembodied account of social policy. Part of the aim of the paper is to redress this omission.

The article explores and deconstructs the three axes within which the ‘social bath’ is defined. The first is the boundary between the medical and the social; and the article outlines the complex and shifting ways, both institutional and ideological, in which this boundary is constructed. The second axis concerns the social meaning of the tasks themselves; and the paper explores recent historical and sociological literature concerning the body, washing, touching and nakedness. The third axis relates to the site where these practices take place: the home. The article explores the significance of home and the power that resides in private and domestic space as opposed to the public medical space of the ward or nursing home.

‘Race’ and ethnicity have been muted features of British academic social policy debates around lone motherhood and in the stance taken by organisations representing lone parents. However, black lone motherhood is now receiving attention in both black, and white-dominated media. In this article, we examine the ways different groups of people in Britain address – or avoid – black lone motherhood. We raise a number of questions for social policy researchers to consider around whether and how black lone motherhood may be constructed and discussed.

Contents

1 Social security and income maintenance

2 Health care

3 Education

4 Housing and environment

5 Personal social services

6 Law and the treatment of the offender

7 Unemployment and the labour market

8 Race relations

9 The voluntary sector

10 Local government

11 Gender

12 Demography