Understanding Social Welfare Movements Jason Annetts, Alex Law, Wallace Mcneish, Gerry Mooney

This volume examines the role and function of religious-based organizations in strengthening associational life in a representative sample of West European countries: newly democratized and long-established democracies, societies with and without a dominant religious tradition, and welfare states with different levels and types of state-provided social services. It asks how faith-based organizations, in a time of economic crisis, and with declining numbers of adherents, might contribute to the deepening of democracy. Throughout, the volume invites social scientists to consider the on-going role of faith-based organizations in Western European civil society, and investigates whether the concept of muted vibrancy aids our theoretical understanding.

Mooney, Knox, and Schacht's Understanding Social Problems uses a theoretically balanced approach, student-centered approach to provide a comprehensive exploration of social problems. The text progresses from a micro- to macro-level of analysis, focusing first on such problems as illness and health care, drugs and alcohol, and family problems, and then broadening to the larger issues of poverty and inequality, population growth, environmental problems, and conflict around the world.

Using Indianapolis as its focus, this book explores the relationship between religion and social welfare. Arising out of the Indianapolis Polis Center’s Lilly-sponsored study of religion and urban culture, the book looks at three issues: the role of religious social services within Indianapolis’s larger social welfare support system, both public and private; the evolution of the relationship between public and private welfare sectors; and how ideas about citizenship mediated the delivery of social services.