Karen Healy profoundly challenges, in the context of the postmodernity of late capitalism, many of the assumptions upon which the critical tradition in social work has been founded. This is a book which interrogates not only the emancipatory metanarratives of left perspectives from her position within the left, but also questions many of the received ideas about her professional power and identity, and about the kinds of social work practices necessary in order to continue to pursue welfare as an emancipatory (...) project under transformed ideological and material circumstances. This is a most significant contribution to the debates which confront social work, worldwide, at the present time.' - Peter Leonard, McGill University, Canada. (shrink)