This book is in the key concepts series, and tackles the notoriously difficult-to-pin-down concept of ‘welfare’. It does this by considering how ‘welfare’ has been conceptualised within some theoretical and philosophical perspectives, how such concepts become mobilised in political discourse and programmes, and how, in practice, realising something we might call welfare is achieved through a variety of different arrangements within and between the state, markets and family. The book starts from the premise that welfare is always situated within these sets of social arrangements, so that understanding anything at all about welfare involves situating understandings of welfare within the contexts in which different understandings arise and are realised in practice – or, at least, where attempts are made to embed conceptual understandings within practical arrangements or organise programmes and initiatives around particular understandings of welfare.

However, simply stating the above doesn't do justice to the ambition of the book. It has three main objectives overall (p. 155): ‘to identify the meaning and relevance of welfare as a concept; to explore welfare as a focus of political debate; and. . .to identify welfare as an aspect of people's individual endeavour and collective effort and shared institutions’. The book is split into three parts which roughly correspond to each of these objectives. The first part – Chapters 1 and 2 – takes the reader through several understandings of welfare. Chapter 1 considers accounts of welfare that are described as conventional, with the aim of establishing that the concept of welfare is disputed. It begins by stating that the concept can be traced back to at least the fourteenth century, has fallen out of academic favour in recent years, has negative connections in certain circles and countries because of its association with the moral fibre or otherwise of the poor, their behaviour, and the assumed problems welfare support might generate for the moral character of society as a whole. The chapter then highlights discussions of welfare in relation to economic concerns, to political philosophy and political science, and in terms of questions raised within social policy, social work and sociology. It then distils the various different emphases into a set of key questions. As all this occurs within twenty-two pages, I have to say that my head was spinning by the time I reached the end. I felt that there was an elision between welfare as understood in theoretical, philosophical and policy terms which made it difficult – for me at any rate – to keep track of the narrative. The second chapter considers aspects of welfare unexamined in the conventional accounts presented in Chapter 1, namely subjective well-being, individual agency, personal relationships and sociological insights into aspects of welfare, such as those just mentioned, together with poverty, social exclusion, and social capital. The author points out (p. 55) that in this chapter ‘we have only been able to skirt a very large literature’ and I found myself at this point wondering what readership the book is aimed at. The amount of material introduced in these chapters means that each author or position that is mentioned can only be discussed very briefly, so it might be difficult to grasp if one knew nothing of this material. On the other hand, for those who are already acquainted with the material, the discussion is too brief to add much. However, the helpful and unobtrusive boxes in each Chapter summarising key points and distinctions suggest the book is aimed primarily at a student audience.

For me, the second part of the book worked better. Chapter 3 returns to political philosophy and outlines four philosophical traditions implicated in the development of political perspectives on welfare. This chapter ‘has three layers: first the general philosophies, then the political versions of these philosophies as they view the appropriate organisation and form of welfare, and third change and reform’ (p. 62). Liberalism, Democratic socialism, Marxism and Conservatism form the first layer, their appropriations within articulations of different political projects the second layer, and their recent revision within communitarian, ‘third way’, neo-conservative and neo-liberal perspectives is indicated in the third layer. The chapter shows that welfare is embroiled within disputed sets of political and normative meanings. Following on, Chapter 4 addresses three sets of questions; ‘how is the welfare state defined and structured and how has it evolved . . . how do welfare states differ from each other and how are such variations to be explained . . . how are welfare states being reformed’ (p. 84). Each of these questions is, of course, worthy of a book in its own right, but the questions are systematically tackled. Although as the chapter is headed ‘The State and Public Welfare’ I was expecting to find some discussion of state forms, or nation-building, but other than the claim that the welfare state is a particular form of the state, the chapter focuses on the development of social insurance, social assistance and other welfare measures, utilising models of welfare state variation to highlight differences in institutional arrangements.

The third part of the book deals with the ways in which welfare is secured, or not, in the course of everyday life. This section aims at ‘linking macro and micro, connecting formal arrangements for organising the distribution of resources and opportunities with how people organise themselves to obtain what is important to them in terms of material welfare’ (p. 109). Chapter 5 tackles the macro level through examining role of the state and of labour markets in affording or withholding material benefits, whilst Chapter 6 looks at more intimate experiences of personal relationships and care giving and receiving. Chapter 5 marshals a wealth of data from various sources including the OECD and EU to highlight the role of state and market in structuring inclusion and exclusion, income distribution and income polarisation, poverty and the life course of different social groups, security and insecurity, in the context of global capitalist restructuring. Whilst the treatment of the different countries discussed is rather uneven, the increased inequalities associated with Anglo-American neo-liberal arrangements are clear. Chapter 6 returns to a theme in the first part of the book, charting the ways in which welfare cannot be reduced to material circumstances, but embraces affective relations found in family life, community and activities generating trust, support and social integration. This chapter focuses mainly on family, for whilst households have an economic function, ‘the family is a form of social organisation that provides for care needs, arranges intergenerational and gender relations and through these and other means plays a key role in individual and collective welfare’ (p. 135). The key point is that ‘families need to be conceived of as complex, multilayered and diverse’ (ibid.). This complexity and diversity means it is difficult to detail a number of aspects of family−welfare relationships, but by making a distinction between material and relational aspects of welfare, the chapter can direct attention to welfare-generating resources, such as emotional security and support, that contribute to positive welfare outcomes but do not lend themselves to measurement and are consequently often overlooked in discussions of welfare.

By the end of the book, it was becoming clearer that there is a central thesis running through it. If I am right about this, the thesis is that welfare itself is complex, multilayered and diverse, both as a concept and as a condition, involving both material and affective relations, spread throughout a number of sites of social life, and embroiled in normative conflicts. Specifying the theoretical relations between these diverse phenomena is difficult, to say the least, and, for me, the numerous questions internal to each chapter distracted from the central thread running through them. Nevertheless, this is a knowledgeable book, packed with data and ideas that are important for understanding the complexity of social relations within which welfare is articulated and realised (or not).