Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

An interesting and promising piece of research, involving public consultation and focus groups soliciting people's thoughts on 'contemporary social evils' faced in Britain today. Not surprisingly, key concerns focussed on things like: perceived increases in individualism, selfishness and materialism; declines in community, family, values and responsibility; crime and violence; inequality; and drugs and alcohol. The book reports on the results of this research, and includes commentary by a number of writers.

I had expected to enjoy this more than I did – the subject matter was interesting, but none of the contributors really seemed to make strong arguments backed by empirical evidence, so they struck me as more opinion pieces.

More information can be found at: http://www.jrf.org.uk/socialevils… (altro)