Power and Welfare: Understanding Citizens’ Encounters with State Welfare

The authors (both of Copenhagen Business School, Denmark) inquire into the nature of power in encounters between citizens and welfare professionals in the United States, Denmark, France, Sweden, Canada, and Australia. They structure their exploration around the critical theoretical approaches of Michel Foucault, Erving Goffman, Pierre Bourdieu, and Niklas Luhmann as well as new institutionalist theory and risk theory, treating each theoretical perspective separately in order to highlight their various strengths and weaknesses for analyzing the role of power in welfare encounters. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)