The public inquiry that followed the death of Maria Colwell in 1973 had profound implications for the developing profession and practice of social work in the UK. This book describes the politics, pro
This topicalbook uses the recent Dano Sonnex and Baby Peter cases to analyze the problems facing both probation and child protection under conditions of economic recession and public spending cuts.
This topicalbook uses the recent Dano Sonnex and Baby Peter cases to analyze the problems facing both probation and child protection under conditions of economic recession and public spending cuts.
Maria Colwell was a seven year old child, well known to social workers, who died in 1973 after continued neglect and abuse. Butler (social work, U. of Bath, UK) and Drakefored (social policy and appli
Polly Hill's provocative book examines the disastrous gulf that separates development economics from its sister discipline, economic anthropology. Working with material from the rural tropical world, much of it collected at first hand in West Africa and South India, Dr Hill demonstrates in the first, polemical part of her book, how unreliable and western-biased assumptions most development economists base their theoretical work. She shows in particular that misleading official statistics are handled uncritically, that the significance of innate rural inequality is consistently ignored and the revered concepts such as the 'population explosion' are in anthropological terms largely meaningless. The longer, second part of the book illustrates the enormous relevance and potential of economic anthropology for economists by looking in turn at the true complexity of farming households, labour and inheritance; at debt, social stratification and economic inequality, and at problems connected wi
Every form of behaviour is shaped by trial and error. Such stepwise adaptation can occur through individual learning or through natural selection, the basis of evolution. Since the work of Maynard Smith and others, it has been realised how game theory can model this process. Evolutionary game theory replaces the static solutions of classical game theory by a dynamical approach centred not on the concept of rational players but on the population dynamics of behavioural programmes. In this book the authors investigate the nonlinear dynamics of the self-regulation of social and economic behaviour, and of the closely related interactions between species in ecological communities. Replicator equations describe how successful strategies spread and thereby create new conditions which can alter the basis of their success, i.e. to enable us to understand the strategic and genetic foundations of the endless chronicle of invasions and extinctions which punctuate evolution. In short, evolutionary
This 1992 work is intended to be a 'taster' to sociological method for students of the New Testament. Richard Fenn demonstrates how fruitful the relationship between the social sciences and biblical studies can be when sociological method is imaginatively applied to the New Testament. Fenn's point of departure is the particular historical event of the death of Herod the Great. He focuses on Josephus' account of the trials of Herod's sons, the death of Herod himself, and the crisis of succession which followed his death. Josephus' account is shown to provide a rich sociological resource, in that he observes how speech was used to conceal rather than to convey individuals' true interests and commitments. His account also reveals the failure of the trial as a critically important institution for restoring confidence in public discourse. The result, the author argues, is the intensification of conflict within, and between, generations, at every level of Palestinian society.
This 1992 work is intended to be a 'taster' to sociological method for students of the New Testament. Richard Fenn demonstrates how fruitful the relationship between the social sciences and biblical studies can be when sociological method is imaginatively applied to the New Testament. Fenn's point of departure is the particular historical event of the death of Herod the Great. He focuses on Josephus' account of the trials of Herod's sons, the death of Herod himself, and the crisis of succession which followed his death. Josephus' account is shown to provide a rich sociological resource, in that he observes how speech was used to conceal rather than to convey individuals' true interests and commitments. His account also reveals the failure of the trial as a critically important institution for restoring confidence in public discourse. The result, the author argues, is the intensification of conflict within, and between, generations, at every level of Palestinian society.
