Hard and Unreal Advice: Mothers, Social Science and the Victorian Poverty Experts [Hardcover]

The first detailed and systematic?study of the social science of poverty as?practiced by the Victorian experts who had so much influence on relief policy in this area, and who were among the founders of British social science. The book examines what they knew, or what they thought they knew, about the poor.Prologue: Victorian Social Science in a Twentieth-Century World Introduction to Victorian Poverty Studies Two Royal Commissions Protestant Paradigms in Victorian Poverty Studies Political Economy and the New Poor Law From Political Economy to Social Science Ignoble Savages on Relief: Social Darwinism in Late Victorian Poverty Studies Science and Pseudoscience in Victorian and Edwardian Poverty Studies Three Case Studies in a priori Social Science Unanswered Questions, Unasked Questions, and an Experimental Counter-Hypothesis Why Critique the Victorian Social Science of Poverty? Notes Bibliography Index

'...a bold and timely work of cultural history...this tightly-structured study makes for stimulating and suggestive reading...in terms of a combative and thought-provoking contribution to current welfare debate, I suggest that this book merits a much wider audience.' - Victoria Le Fevre, Reviews in History

KATHLEEN CALLANAN MARTIN is Professor in the College of General Studies at Boston University, USA. Drawing on her background in both sociology and history, she examines in her research the interplay of culture, theory and methodology in social science.? She received her MA in Sociology from Ohio State University and her PhD in Comparative History from Brandeis University.