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Critical Thinking in Social Policy: The Challenges of Past, Present and Future
Author(s) -
Williams Fiona
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
social policy and administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.972
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1467-9515
pISSN - 0144-5596
DOI - 10.1111/spol.12253
Subject(s) - austerity , articulation (sociology) , sociology , intersectionality , critical theory , context (archaeology) , welfare state , mainstream , epistemology , political science , political economy , positive economics , politics , economics , gender studies , law , biology , paleontology , philosophy
This article reviews the development of critical thinking in social policy over four decades. First, it draws out the key insights of the early foundational critiques of the 1970s and 1980s especially around gender and race in their articulation with class. Second, it synthesizes two attempts in the 1990s to provide integrated critical analyses of the destabilization of the Keynesian welfare state and situates them in relation to the movement of mainstream theory at that time. Third, it looks at critical analyses that emerged in the first decade of this century in the wake of global neo‐liberalism and post‐structuralism. These are summarized as four ‘turns’: the agentic turn; the ethical turn; the global turn; and the (re)turn of intersectionality. The context of the decade since 2008 of financial and humanitarian crises and austerity provides the backcloth to argue, in conclusion, for a more integrated and multi‐dimensional critical approach which encompasses different spaces, claims and social relations in which alternatives can be articulated.