Sociology & Anthropology

In 2008, sociologist Peter Townsend celebrated his 80th birthday. It has been 60 years since his first published work. The range of his work is exceptional, including research on the UK's inner city deprivation; older people contemplating retirement; exclusion on the basis of class, race, gender, age, and disability; individual versus state responsibility for health; the social purposes and viability of residential institutions and hospitals; child and extended family development; and persistent poverty. This reader is a collection of his most distinctive work. The Peter Townsend Reader looks at the changes in social policy that have taken place in the UK, as well as internationally, over the past six decades. Each section of the book is introduced by an editor who is acquainted with Peter Townsend's work. It provides insight into the development of one social scientist's entire intellectual approach, particularly in choosing to place social policy at the center of social theory. The book concludes with a new chapter by Peter Townsend about the present and the future of social policy.