This title was first published in 2001. A classic ethnographic study of the interactions between paediatricians and parents of children thought to be neurologically handicapped. Strong used this work to systematize the often chaotic ideas of Erving Goffman, to explore the connections between micro and macro analysis in sociology and to reflect on the nature of medical practice in modern liberal societies. The book stands as a testament to Strong’s pursuit of methodological rigour in qualit...

This textbook brings together a wide range of expert voices from the field of disability studies and the disabled people′s movement to tackle the essential topics relevant to this area of study. From the outset disability is discussed from a social model perspective, demonstrating how future practice and discourse could break down barriers and lead to more equal relationships for disabled people in everyday life.An interdisciplinary and broad-ranging text, the book includes 50 chap...

For women experiencing domestic violence, narrative therapy can be a powerful tool to help them gain self-confidence and a sense of identity, resist violence, and make the transition from abuse to safety.Drawing on the narratives of women who have experienced domestic violence, this book explores how women employ strategies of resistance, and how strengthening their sense of identity can contribute to this resistance. It demonstrates how narrative therapy can be used as an effectiv...

Childhood has become central to socio-political debates and policy initiatives both nationally and globally. Despite the privileges afforded to children in the West, Western childhoods are no longer seen as the 'ideal' to which all should aspire. Recent reports and policy concerns suggest that growing up in the West may be marked by the commercialisation of childhood, leading to unhappiness, poor health, loss of innocence and a general lack of wellbeing among children themselves.Un...

Social workers need to recognize the critical role that theory plays both in the way they make sense of what is going on and in the way they order their work. Such recognition clarifies practice for both the worker and the client. David Howe's classic text provides a framework to help social workers develop an understanding of the theories which inescapably underpin their thoughts and actions. This edition contains a new preface by the author, written in 2008, in which he examines the cont...

Organised Sexual Abuse offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary investigation of this phenomenon. Since the early 1980s, social workers and mental health professionals around the globe have encountered clients reporting sexual abuse by organized groups or networks. These allegations have been amongst the most controversial in debates over child sexual abuse, raising many unanswered questions. Are reports of organized abuse factual or the product of moral panic and false memories?...

Deborah Marks examines current theories and practices relating to disability. The focus of the work is not disabled people as 'objects' of study but rather an analysis of disability as it has been historically and culturally constructed and psychically experienced. The chapters cover:* language and discourse* the disabled people's movement* the 'disability' professions* public policy* unconscious investments and interpersonal relationships* knowled...

This book examines pupils' experience of school from their own perspectives, showing a range of responses involving both pain and pleasure. It brings together a wide range of material to evoke pupil realities, to describe pupil cultures, and to consider the meanings of activities.

Taking as its focus a highly emotive area of study, The Dying Process draws on the experiences of daycare and hospice patients to provide a forceful new analysis of the period of decline prior to death.Placing the bodily realities of dying very firmly centre stage and questioning the ideology central to the modern hospice movement of enabling patients to 'live until they die', Julia Lawton shows how our concept of a 'good death' is open to interpretation. Her study examine...

It is often argued that education is concerned with the transmission of middle-class values and that this explains the relative educational failure of the working class. Consequently, distinctive culture needs a different kind of education. This volume examines this claim and the wider question of culture in British society. It analyses cultural differences from a social historical viewpoint and considers the views of those applying the sociology of knowledge to educational problems. The a...

In this ground-breaking new work, Dan Goodley makes the case for a novel, distinct, intellectual, and political project – dis/ability studies – an orientation that might encourage us to think again about the phenomena of disability and ability.Drawing on a range of interdisciplinary areas, including sociology, psychology, education, policy and cultural studies, this much needed text takes the most topical and important issues in critical disability theory, and pushes them into new ...

This open access edited collection contributes a new dimension to the study of mental health and psychiatry in the twentieth century. It takes the present literature beyond the ‘asylum and after’ paradigm to explore the multitude of spaces that have been permeated by concerns about mental well-being and illness. The chapters in this volume consciously attempt to break down institutional walls and consider mental health through the lenses of institutions, policy, nomenclature, art, lived ex...