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Editors' Introduction

As a special feature of this issue, we are pleased to extend to a wider audience, an edited transcript of the plenary lectureFootnote ^* delivered by Professor Frances Fox Piven, at the July 2014 Annual UK Social Policy Association Conference which took place at the University of Sheffield. The lecture spoke to the theme of the conference: ‘Social Policy confronting change: Resistance, Resilience and Radicalism’, taking a global perspective on the social and political transformations wrought by neoliberalism, the particular US experience and the place of protest in contesting change. The lecture provides a conversational insight into themes developed in Frances Fox Piven's extensive academic writing over the last five decades, which has proved both progressive and provocative in its contribution to the theory and practice of social policy internationally.