Interpreting Official Statistics examines the official statistics produced about the current state of British society. It documents some of the ways in which information has been suppressed, manipulated and misinterpreted since 1979. This invaluable guide is designed to help students know what figures are available, and to discover when and how politicians are misusing statistics.
Data sets covered include:
* Households below average income
* Administrative and survey methods of unemployment and crime
* Population census data on ethnicity
* Data sources on women and...

The idea of social exclusion is part of the new political language. When Labour came into government in 1997, it launched the Social Exclusion Unit to pursue this central theme. But what exactly does social inclusion mean? This revised and updated edition of The Inclusive Society? identifies three competing meanings of the term in contemporary British Politics, emphasising poverty, employment and morality. Ruth Levitas argues that there has been a shift away from understanding social exclusion as primarily a problem of poverty, towards questions of social integration through paid work and...

Interpreting Official Statistics examines the official statistics produced about the current state of British society. It documents some of the ways in which information has been suppressed, manipulated and misinterpreted since 1979. This invaluable guide is designed to help students know what figures are available, and to discover when and how politicians are misusing statistics.
Data sets covered include:
* Households below average income
* Administrative and survey methods of unemployment and crime
* Population census data on ethnicity
* Data sources on women and...

A topical critical examination of the idea of social exclusion and the new political language of social cohesion, community, stakeholding and inclusion. The Inclusive Society? examines the actions and rhetoric of the Labour Party and Labour Government under Tony Blair's leadership. It identifies three different discourses of social exclusion. Using this model, it explores views of inclusion put forward by Will Hutton and other stakeholders, by communitarians including Etzioni and Gray, and by the Labour Party from the Borrie and the Commission on Social Justice to Blair and the Social...

This book is the most authoritative study of poverty and social exclusion in Britain at the start of the 21st century. It reports on the most comprehensive survey of poverty and social exclusion, ever to be undertaken in Britain: The Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey. This enormously rich data set records levels of poverty not just in terms of income and wealth but by including information about the goods and services which the British public say are necessary to avoid poverty.The relationship between poverty and factors such as age, gender and paid work are explored, as well as other...

Utopia should be understood as a method rather than a goal. This book rehabilitates utopia as a repressed dimension of the sociological and in the process produces the Imaginary Reconstitution of Society, a provisional, reflexive and dialogic method for exploring alternative possible futures.