First published in 1998. This book attempts to contribute a new framework for social research in the welfare field. As such, it engages with new theories, new approaches and new methods, alongside a constructive critique of both the old and the new. It attempts to illustrate approaches to conceptualization and operationalization within policy-relevant research, to reflect and explore both тАЬnewтАЭ thinking in social theory and in welfare policy, as well as to maintain a connection with тАЬoldтАЭ concerns. Our concern is with welfare researchтАФboth theory and methodтАФ broadly defined as the wider landscape of policy and provision captured, in the past at least, by the notion of the тАЬwelfare stateтАЭ. The тАЬnewтАЭ thinking with which the book is primarily concerned involves a shift away from seeing people as the passive beneficiaries of тАЬwelfareтАЭ provided through state interventions and professional expertise and from seeing them as fixed single social categories of тАЬpoorтАЭ, тАЬoldтАЭ, тАЬsingle parentтАЭ or as one dimensional, objective socio-economic classifications.