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 "new" thinking in social theory and in welfare policy, as well as to maintain a connection with "old" concerns. Our concern is with welfare research-both theory and methodbroadly defined as the wider landscape of policy and provision captured, in the past at least, by the notion of the "welfare state".