Contested Concepts in Gender and Social Politics

An important contribution to the current literature on gender and social politics, this book challenges mainstream thinking on welfare states, citizenship, family, work, and social policy. Contested Concepts in Gender and Social Politics analyses the corresponding shifts in political discourse, and the changes in socio-political configurations that mirror changing gender relations. The discussion is both international and interdisciplinary, and focuses on topics that include citizenship, social exclusion and inclusion, care, social capital and representation, amongst others. The contributors examine these issues in relation to current policy debates and consider how they are embedded in particular European intellectual traditions. They also explore how feminist scholarship has engaged with these issues, and assess how these contested concepts can improve understanding both of the position of women and of gender relations more broadly. This is the first major transnational attempt to address the conceptual basis for current work in the field of social policy and social politics from both a feminist and genuinely comparative viewpoint. As such it will be invaluable to undergraduate and graduate students of social policy, politics and sociology.