Book Review: Social Welfare in Global Context
Abstract
B O O K R E V I E W S u Social Welfare in Global Context James Midgley Sage, London, 1997, 261pp, ISBN 0761907874, 53 hbk, 0761907882, 29 pbk The re-structuring of welfare and the attack on 'welfare dependency' both in Europe and in America is, in many ways, a microcosm of the broader international re-structuring of markets and social relations we have come to call 'globalization'. It is vital that social workers feel able to participate in debates on a topic which is rapidly coming to impact on almost every facet of their working lives and yet, all too often, they stand apart or bury their heads in the sand. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is simply the lack of texts written specifically for social workers in a language that they can understand, focusing on the issues which mean something to them. With social work students, the problem is particularly acute. Even if lecturers and practice teachers are committed to making the links between the personal and the political in this area, one of the major obstacles to the incorporation of global perspectives in the Diploma in Social Work curricu- lum