Social Quality

Social quality thinking emerged from a critique of one-sided policies by breaking through the limitations previously set by purely economistic paradigms. By tracing its expansion and presenting different aspects of social quality theory, this volume provides an overview of a more nuanced approach, which assesses societal progress and introduces proposals that are relevant for policy making. Crucially, important components emerge with research by scholars from Asia, particularly China, eastern Europe, and other regions beyond western Europe, the theory’s place of origin. As this volume shows, this rich diversity of approaches and their cross-national comparisons reveal the increasingly important role of social quality theory for informing political debates on development and sustainability.

This collection sets out the latest research on the concept of 'social quality', developing its theoretical foundations and applying it to pressing policy issues such as the future of the European Union and sustainable global development.

This volume represents the outcome of two years of intensive debate about the future of Europe. It aims to provide the European Union with a vision: one that will unite all of its citizens and help to create the democratic legitimacy that the EU currently lacks. It builds on the first book on social quality, The Social Quality of Europe, which introduced the concept and which has been enthusiastically received by both the scientific and policy communities. The book develops three crucial elements of social quality: the theoretical validity of the concept, its practical application, and its identity or `genetic code'. It establishes an independent identity for social quality, with a unique focus on the quality of the social, which enables it to act as the rationale for economic, social, and cultural policies and, therefore, an escape route from the dominance of narrow economic thinking in policy making.

The search for ‘the Decent Society’ – a fit place in which to live – has informed policy at both governmental and international level. This book analyses its nature and devises a consistent way of measuring the concept world-wide on the basis of a coherent theory of agency within social structure. Influenced by classical sociology and by the economist Amartya Sen, the book posits that societies need to create (a) economic security, (b) social cohesion, (c) social inclusion, and (d) the conditions for empowerment. The model is interactive and recursive; each component provides the requirements for each of the others. This book outlines the sociopolitical framework underlying ’the Decent Society' and summarises a decade of research, some of which has had a formative impact on governments’ policies. The first half contains studies of social quality based on surveys in the former Soviet Union and sub-Saharan Africa, while the second half describes the construction of a Decent Society Index for comparing very different countries across the world. This book and the index it develops will be of interest both to academics and researchers in sociology, politics, economics, psychology, social policy and development studies and to policy-makers in government, local government and the NGOs.

The aim of the Handbook of Social Indicators and Quality of Life Research is to create an overview of the field of Quality of Life (QOL) studies in the early years of the 21st century that can be updated and improved upon as the field evolves and the century unfolds. Social indicators are statistical time series “...used to monitor the social system, helping to identify changes and to guide intervention to alter the course of social change”. Examples include unemployment rates, crime rates, estimates of life expectancy, health status indices, school enrollment rates, average achievement scores, election voting rates, and measures of subjective well-being such as satisfaction with life-as-a-whole and with specific domains or aspects of life. This book provides a review of the historical development of the field including the history of QOL in medicine and mental health as well as the research related to quality-of-work-life (QWL) programs. It discusses several of QOL main concepts: happiness, positive psychology, and subjective wellbeing. Relations between spirituality and religiousness and QOL are examined as are the effects of educational attainment on QOL and marketing, and the associations with economic growth. The book goes on to investigate methodological approaches and issues that should be considered in measuring and analysing quality of life from a quantitative perspective. The final chapters are dedicated to research on elements of QOL in a broad range of countries and populations.

Menschenrechtsdiskussionen, globale (Sozial-) Politik und die Bemühungen der UN für Menschliche Entwicklung ("Human Development") und Menschliche Sicherheit ("Human Security") geraten in zwei grundsätzliche "Sackgassen" Zum einen wird ein bestimmtes Mo-dell von existierenden "entwickelten Staaten", d.h. mit hoch entwickeltem Kapitalismus, als einziges Ideal vorgestellt, ohne dass andere fortschrittliche Modelle ernsthaft berücksichtigt werden. Eine mögliche denkbare Alternative ist höchstens die romantisierende Vorstellung einer "guten" Gesellschaft, welche sich in vielen Fällen auf eine Art naive "Güte" einer indi-genen Lebensweise bezieht. Zum anderen wird - nicht fern der erwähnten Alternativen - auf abstrakte Konzepte von Gerechtigkeit und Freiheit etc. hingewiesen, auf moralische Aussa-gen, die jedoch zur Trennung von systematischem sozioökonomischem ebenso wie politisch-rechtlichem Denken führen. Der vorliegende Band versucht, aus sozial-philosophischer Perspektive die politische Öko-nomie und das Sozialrecht zusammenzuführen, um ein Verständnis von allgemeiner Verant-wortlichkeit für soziale Qualität weltweit zu entwickeln. Besondere Beiträge sind eine Einfüh-rung in den theoretischen Ansatz der sozialen Qualität, ein Exkurs über islamische Gesell-schaften und ein Exkurs hinsichtlich asiatischer Sichtweisen. Das Buch "Social Quality - Looking for a Global Social Policy" mit dem Untertitel "Attemp-ting an Approximation to the Analysis of Distances of Social Systems" ist der zweite Band der Serie "Studien zu vergleichender Sozialpädagogik und internationaler Sozialarbeit und Sozialpolitik", welche eine Fortsetzung der fast gleichnamigen Serie ist, die von Franz Ham-burger beim Schäuble Verlag, Rheinfelden herausgegeben wurde. Die Serie thematisiert problemorientiert sozialpädagogischen Theorien und die Arbeit sozialer Strukturen im internatio-nalen Rahmen und Vergleich. Dabei wird die Serie als ein Forum für Diskussionen und Ver-öffentlichungen begriffen,

How we understand education quality is inextricably linked with perspectives on social justice. Questions of inclusion, relevance and democracy in education are increasingly contested, most especially in the global South, and improving the quality of education, particularly for the most disadvantaged, has become a topic of fundamental concern for education policy makers, practitioners and the international development community. The reality experienced by many learners continues to be of inadequately prepared and poorly motivated teachers, struggling to deliver a rapidly changing curriculum without sufficient support, and often using outmoded teaching methods in over-crowded or dilapidated classrooms. Education Quality and Social Justice in the South includes contributions from leading scholars in the field of education and development. The text draws upon state of the art evidence from the five year EdQual research programme, which focuses upon raising achievement in low income countries, and demonstrates how systems of high quality universal education can be sustained. By exploring recent research initiatives to improve education quality, the importance of supporting local policy makers, educators and parents as agents of change, and students as active inquirers is highlighted, and the challenge of taking successful initiatives to scale is explained. The book is divided into three main parts: -Framing Education Quality -Planning and Policies for Quality -Implementing Quality in Schools Education Quality and Social Justice in the South argues that implementing a high quality of education using theories of social justice can inform the understanding of inclusion, relevance and democracy in education. The book should be essential reading for both students and researchers within the fields of international and comparative education, along with educational policy, poverty and development studies.