Author Description

The discussion and analysis of social problems in this reader is aimed both at those who study them in the context of specific academic disciplines and also at those who, through their experience of British society, have formed definite views about social problems; how they are created, and how they may be 'cured7. The editors central argument is that social problems do not exist in isolation, but in relation to the social framework and organisation in which they occur. Nor can they be solved without changing the values and institutions on which society is based.Each chapter focuses on a particular problem: poverty, housing, health, old age, the family, urbanisation, crime, ecology; and each has a comprehensive introduction which discusses the views expressed and presents the problems in the wider context of the intense pressures to whiqh British or indeed any industrial society is subject.Eric Butterworth is Reader in Community Studies at the University of York, David Weir is Lecturer in Sociology at the Manchester Business School.This book is a companion to their first successful reader The Sociology of Modern Britain.