This volume draws together an impressive series of papers that explore enduring and new problems in the construction and analysis of British social policy. Critical but accessible, the various chapters cover methodological issues and the nature of competing claims about social policy 'knowledge', racism and health services, citizenship and access to housing and other amenities, and the importance of the environment as an emerging area for social policy debate.

Introduction - Introduction: Social Policy isn't what it used to be: the Social Construction of Social Policy in the 1980s and 1990s; C.Samson & N.South - CRITIQUES OF THE POLICY RESEARCH PROCESS - Probably Minister: The 'Strong Programme' Approach to the Relationship between Research and Policy; M.Bartley - How (and how not) to design Research to inform Policy-Making; R.Pawson & N.Tilley - RACISM, HEALTH AND POLICY THINKING - Naming Difference: Race thinking, Common Sense and Sociology; M.Green & B.Carter - Consanguinity and Related Demons: Science and Racism in the Debate on Consanguinity and Health; W.Ahmad - Representing the Asian Client in Social Policy Discourse; C.Watters - CITIZENSHIP, RIGHTS AND INEQUALITIES - Difference in the City: Locating Marginal Use of Public Space; K.Evans & P.Fraser - No Key, No Door? Young People's Access to Housing; G.Jones - Island Homes for Island People: Competition, Conflict and Racism in the Battle over Public Housing on the Isle of Dogs; J.Foster - ENVIRONMENT, PLANNING AND BUREAUCRACY - Contracting Knowledge: Commissioned Research and the Sociology of the Environment; E.Shove - Us and Them: the Construction and Maintenance of Divisions in a Planning Dispute; K.Burningham - Inter-Organisational Negotiations in Political Decision Making: Brussels' EC Bureaucrats and the Environment; C.Ruzza - Index