Foreword

Chapters in this book

1. Front Matter i
2. Contents iii
3. Acknowledgements iv
4. Foreword v
5. Introduction 1
6. ‘Virtue’ and the poor law in Britain and Ireland in the 1830s 11
7. Spencer and a liberal road to welfare: the eclipse of a vision 29
8. Free agent or ‘conscious automaton’? The individual in Spencer’s social theory 53
9. The case of older people: social thought and divergent prescriptions for care 75
10. Social policy and idealist versus non-idealist thought: the fundamental schism 95
11. Idealist thought, social policy and the rediscovery of informal care 129
12. Social theory and voluntary action in Britain since 1880 149
13. Epilogue: from poor law to Labour’s ‘new idealism’ 167
14. Notes 183
15. References 197
16. Index 215