For decades, Brazilians with impairments have not been able to enjoy full citizenship rights because of the existing oppressive structures in their society. This study examines comprehensions of justice for citizens with impairments in Brazil and what the implications of those perspectives may be for policy arguments and for social change. The principal sources of these justice-related outlooks are three key stakeholder groups: policymakers, disability nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and people with impairments. The analysis is organized as follows. First, I provide an overview of the study, its aims and significance and research questions. Second, I discuss the theoretical foundations of the inquiry, focusing on debate among democratic theorists on the meaning of citizenship and social theorists on the significance and goals of social justice, as well as the key debates among disability theorists on the purport of disability, oppression, emancipation and social inclusion. Next, I describe the research design and methods employed in this effort, explaining the rationale behind my choice of a qualitative approach and offering details concerning the study's data collection, analysis and interpretation. Fourth, I summarize the issues and tensions implicit in Brazil\'s practices and institutions as these relate to the nation's disabled citizens. Fifth, I discuss the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), which has helped an already growing social movement in Brazil formalize and legitimate its aims and place disability justice on the national agenda. Sixth, I explore the major conceptions of justice expressed by disability NGOs and analyze what these views suggested for efforts to secure full citizenship for the disabled in Brazil. Next, I explore the conceptions of impairment, disability and justice as imagined and lived by Brazilians with impairments. Specific ideas and conceptions of disability informed the understandings of justice of the individuals with impairments whom I interviewed. Finally, I provide an interdisciplinary interpretation of the research findings, in which I create a dialogue among different perspectives in order to outline a new understanding of justice for people with impairments and the social change needed to reach that aspiration. After discussing the insights of different stakeholders on justice, I share my recommendations for further research. / Ph. D.

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Yes / What’s wrong with human rights discourse and equality legislation is their creation under the guise of neutrality. The practice of human rights and equality sit within administration systems that are in general sites of production and implementation of racism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism, transphobia and ableism. Whilst the people subject to these types of discrimination fight hard and make sacrifices to win the inclusion of their rights, whilst such privileges sit within archaic systems - can they ever be anything more than a temporary respite from oppression not a resolution?

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<p>This study investigates the responses of the labour movement, social policy advocacy organizations, and feminists to the downsizing and restructuring of the welfare state in Canada. Of interest in this research is whether these constituencies are in the initial stages of 're-conceptualizing' social welfare, given that the increasing degree of economic globalization and the rightward shift in political thinking in recent years have created a need for 'paradigm shift' in approaches to social policy among equality-seeking social movements.</p> <p>It is discovered that these three social movements (labour, social policy advocates, and feminists) are at varying stages in imagining and working to achieve a progressive alternative to the postwar welfare state. Some elements of the labour movement have clearly identified the economic and political roots of growing social inequality. Some elements of the social policy advocacy community are promoting comprehensive alternative economic and social policies to the ones currently dominating political discourse. The women's movement, as represented by the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, appears to be the furthest ahead in developing a theoretically grounded critique of neoconservative I neo-liberal social welfare restructuring, and in posing progressive alternatives to it.</p> <p>Theoretical issues which arise in regard to rethinking social welfare and reformulating social policy are discussed. There is also reference made to the strategic challenges which confront social movements within Canada and internationally, in their efforts to use social policy as a means of achieving greater social equality and an environmentally sustainable set of economic and political arrangements.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The effects of neoliberal practices on social policy decisions continues to favor a form of privatization in which corporatized marketplace practices are the guide for social institutional operations. One effect of this has been an increase of marketplace organizations as operators of social services programs, including welfare-to-work programs. These organizations adhere to the prevailing trends in business community for profit making, while ostensibly following the principles of welfare-to-work regulations for service delivery. However, the practices introduced by pursuing profit can conflict with the recognizing all the goals of workfare as outlined in the federal policy of TANF or the Temporary Aid for Needy Families. Under these regulations, providers are charged with assisting welfare recipients receiving cash support in addressing personal barriers to economic stability and in gaining employment intended to provide a catalyst to economic stability. This research examines a corporate social services provider, the practices instituted by its leaders, and the effects that those practices have on the staff of the welfare-to-work center and their clients. Specifically, this examines how the links between profit making and the statistical performance assessments of state funding agencies influenced an operational model, analogous to the manufacturing center for cheap labor. The emphasis on quick workforce attachment strategies exceeded the state's performance measures and allowed the maximization of profit; however, this research determines that these strategies denied workfare clients the services that they and the state expected them to receive. / Anthropology

No / Prompted by findings from the Munro Review of Child Protection, this paper provides a critical analysis of the combination of changes that appear to have undermined social workers' ability to develop strong partnerships with children and their families. Here, we engage with a number of now familiar lines of critique that have exposed the negative consequences of aspects of New Labour's modernisation agenda (such as excessive standardisation). However, we challenge our readers to think more broadly about the political foundations of the New Labour project and, in particular, to consider how neo-liberal policies have in the past and are likely in the future to lead to the intensification of inequalities, thus undermining effective family work. Efforts to deal with excessive rules and procedures, or the revision of performance targets, as suggested in the Munro Review, will not mitigate the corrosive effects of rising social inequality. If we are to think systemically, as Munro suggests, then we must consider the likely regressive impact of impending public sector and welfare cuts and challenge any moves to sideline family support and restrict social work to a narrow focus on child protection.

Policymakers, public administrators, the media, and others are celebrating the "success" of the latest version of welfare reform, codified into law in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Most often, success is defined in terms of declining caseloads or in some other economic form - a practice that does not provide a true sense of the impact of policy changes such as welfare reform. Assessing the human impact of policy change requires more than the evaluation of economic outcomes; it requires knowing about the resources of beneficiaries of social services and their conditions of life from various perspectives. Thus, we have to strive for greater understanding about the socio-cultural aspects of people's lives that create the whole person, aspects such as health, family and friendship networks, housing situations, public and private support service and program use, conditions of work, and so forth (Erikson, 1993). This is how we come to understand one;s quality of life. The present research creates a conceptual model called quality of life, and illustrates the model using data from a follow-up study of former welfare recipients in a county in northern Virginia. Evaluation activities premised on a quality of life model will assist policy actors in understanding policy impacts and how to strategically manage public institutions within their very complex contexts, especially in an era of welfare reform. / Ph. D.

This essay examines the persistent and penetrating role of philanthropy in the institutional life of Western Europe. Whatever knowledge has been gained in the collective survival of <i>Homo sapiens,</i> our species derives its authority over history from a purpose more significant than simply the survival of the fittest or the maximization of individual utilities. Our shared history expresses surprisingly consistent levels of organized compassion. Altruism and philanthropy, born of individual need, persist in collectivities. This is a study of public policy outcomes at those interstices where religious, political, and economic forces have taken shape, however transient, as human institutions or collectivities. The analysis yields a more comprehensive understanding of how public policy is made, particularly the unique comparative context of the new European Union. The individual and social choices made within this continuing process tell us a great deal about both the philanthropic impulse and the major institutions which comprise European life at the end of the twentieth century. The description of each important institutional intersection—religion and philanthropy in France, politics and philanthropy in Germany, and economics and philanthropy in England—is framed within the institution of social welfare. The modern European welfare system illustrates the acceptance of public obligations and commitments by the collective institutions of governance has altered over the course of time. Such adjustments, it seems, culminate in our own time in a fuller sense of collective and public responsibility for relationships. The role of altruism, charity, and philanthropy in that institutional shift—from a private to a public conscience—is at the heart of this essay. The "new tempered spirit" which can come to "comfort" the next century may be found in an unexpected intimacy between near and distant obligations as well as in the startling connectedness between ourselves as private individuals and ourselves as an increasingly diminutive portion of national and transnational institutions. The very limited human and institutional possibilities within what we now know as the modern nation-state may well come to an end with this century. The possibilities for new forms of both obligation and commitment to the endless variety of human needs and aspirations are unlimited. In much the same manner that the dissolution of the medieval life of old Europe permitted the discovery and construction of a new spirit of individual human potential, the dissolution of the political boundaries of contemporary Europe should permit the discovery and construction of a new spirit of human interdependence. / Ph. D.