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Caught between the twin pressures of rising public expectations and falling resources, public services have become the subject of intense academic scrutiny and public debate. Much of this controversy has been fuelled by a growing realisation that where people live has an important influence upon their access to services. The so-called 'postcode lottery.'The first part of this book considers what is meant by the term 'collective consumption' and discusses the main differences between the British and American loyal government systems. It examines various geographical schools of analysis which fo

Throughout the world welfare systems have been experiencing a period of unprecedented change. Understanding these changes is difficult, not only because of their diversity, but also because they vary so much from place to place. Worlds of Welfare provides a clear and concise guide to these changes. The first part of the book examines the range of different welfare states around the world, describing the various reforms - such as privatisation and commercialisation - which have been introduced in recent years. The second part of the book tests the many theoretical perspectives for understanding

This paper uses the concept of knowledge communities to account for the relatively low impact of spatial perspectives on welfare policy (marginalization in the economic sphere; limited uptake in the social sphere). However, recent developments in the social sciences include a growing recognition of relationships between discourse, knowledge and power. Central to this work is a recognition of the territorialized nature of knowledge. These developments suggest that social policy has the potential to be reconfigured in a much more geographically sensitive manner.

1: Social geography and the sociospatial dialectic -- 2: The changing economic context of city life -- 3: The cultures of cities -- 4: Patterns of sociospatial differentiation -- 5: Spatial and institutional frameworks: citizens, the state and civil society -- 6: Structures of building provision and the social production of the urban environment -- 7: The social dimensions of modern urbanism -- 8: Segregation and congregation -- 9: Neighbourhood, community and the social construction of place -- 10: Environment and behaviour in urban settings -- 11: Bodies, sexuality and the city -- 12: Residential mobility and neighbourhood change -- 13: Urban change and conflict -- 14: Whither urban social geography? Recent developments.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to argue that neoinstitutional theory can provide insights into the conflicts between social ends and economic means within social enterprises (SEs). Tensions between these differing institutional logics may be seen as a manifestation of ambiguity and incoherence in an organizational field that is, despite many recent regulative and normative changes, still weakly institutionalized in the UK.Design/methodology/approach– The research design adopts a qualitative approach and is based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 40 SE managers in four major UK cities.Findings– Findings suggest that SE managers deal with the competing institutional logics of "the market" and "social care" in differing ways.Research limitations/implications– The case studies are derived from major UK cities where SEs are more likely to be dependent on state and quasi-public sector forms of support.Practical implications– Policies attempting to imbue a more commercial and business-like approach with the institutional field of SE should recognize the tensions imposed by such a shift. These tensions are especially pronounced in SEs affected by changes to state funding regimes and publicly sponsored markets. In some situations, such market logic may be largely inappropriate.Social implications– Changing institutional logics within an organizational field such as SE requires a recognition of the complex interrelationships between that factors that create and sustain such a field, most notably legal (regulative), educational (normative) and attitudinal (cognitive) factors.Originality/value– This is one of the few papers to explore the value of neoinstitutional theory in the context of SE.

Despite the rapid growth of interest in social enterprises (SEs) and the intense controversies over their merits in addressing pressing social and economic issues, there has been surprisingly little attention given to explicit theorization of how the markets for their goods and services are constructed and maintained. Towards this end this paper examines the conceptualization of market fields formulated by Jens Beckert. His approach conceptualizes firms as engaged in a constant struggle to defend or improve their position in relation to other firms by either protecting existing structures or changing them to realize new opportunities. This framework is used to analyze the reciprocal interactions between forces of institutions, networks, and cognitive frameworks as they serve to construct opportunities for SE. These relationships are exemplified with evidence from respondents in SEs in four cities in England—Liverpool, Birmingham, Southampton, and the London Borough of Newham. The analysis suggests that Beckert's approach helps to move beyond a singular notion of a single 'market logic' and allows us to unpack some of the hybrid character of SE markets. However, because of the way in the field perspective has been designed to explain agency in orthodox capitalist markets, it struggles to incorporate the motivations that drive agency in these markets.