"This is a terrific book. Lyon-Callo's descriptions shatter stereotypes about homeless people and focus instead on the dysfunction of the system that allegedly serves them." - Susan Greenbaum, University of South Florida

""This is a terrific book. Lyon-Callo's descriptions shatter stereotypes about homeless people and focus instead on the dysfunction of the system that allegedly serves them.""--Susan Greenbaum, University of South Florida.

Cities continue to be key sites for the production and contestation of inequalities generated by an ongoing but troubled neoliberal project. Neoliberalism’s onslaught across the globe now shapes diverse inequalities -- poverty, segregation, racism, social exclusion, homelessness -- as city inhabitants feel the brunt of privatization, state re-organization, and punishing social policy. This book examines the relationship between persistent neoliberalism and the production and contestation of inequalities in cities across the world. Case studies of current city realities reveal a richly place-specific and generalizable neoliberal condition that further deepens the economic, social, and political relations that give rise to diverse inequalities. Diverse cases also show how people struggle against a neoliberal ethos and hence the open-endedness of futures in these cities.

This book offers a critical, sociological analysis of the domino effect of neoliberalism and austerity politics on the role of social work and wider welfare provision. It argues that social work should move away from the resultant emphasis on risk management and bureaucracy, and return to a focus on relational and community approaches as the cornerstone of practice. Applying theoretical frameworks to practice, including those of Bourdieu and the recent work of Wacquant, the book examines the development of neoliberal ideas and their impact on social welfare. It explores the implications of this across a range of areas of social work practice, including work with children and families, working with asylum seekers and refugees and mental health social work.

Disciplining the Poor explains the transformation of poverty governance over the past forty years—why it happened, how it works today, and how it affects people. In the process, it clarifies the central role of race in this transformation and develops a more precise account of how race shapes poverty governance in the post–civil rights era. Connecting welfare reform to other policy developments, the authors analyze diverse forms of data to explicate the racialized origins, operations, and consequences of a new mode of poverty governance that is simultaneously neoliberal—grounded in market principles—and paternalist—focused on telling the poor what is best for them. The study traces the process of rolling out the new regime from the federal level, to the state and county level, down to the differences in ways frontline case workers take disciplinary actions in individual cases. The result is a compelling account of how a neoliberal paternalist regime of poverty governance is disciplining the poor today.

Development’s current focus – poverty reduction and good governance – signals a turn away from the older neoliberal preoccupation with structural adjustment, privatization and downsizing the state. For some, the new emphases on empowering and securing the poor through basic service delivery, local partnership, decentralization and institution building constitute a decisive break with the past and a whole set of new development possibilities beyond neoliberalism. Taking a wider historical perspective, this book charts the emergence of poverty reduction and governance at the centre of development. It shows that the Poverty Reduction paradigm does indeed mark a shift in the wider liberal project that has underpinned development: precisely what is new, and what this means for how the poor are governed, are described here in detail. This book provides a compelling history of development doctrine and practice, and in particular offers the first comprehensive account of the last twenty years, and development’s shift towards a new political economy of institution building, decentralized governance and local partnerships. The story is illustrated with extensive case studies from first hand experience in Vietnam, Uganda, Pakistan and New Zealand.

Pt. 1. Development and the governance of poverty and inequality -- pt. 2. Bretton Woods and the amelioration of poverty and inequality -- pt. 3. Promising poverty reduction, governing indebtedness -- pt. 4. Complex multilateralism, public-private partnerships and global business -- pt. 5. Horizontal inequalities and faith institutions.