"In the opening chapters, the editors outline their proposition that social policy in successive periods of welfare capitalism has been constituted by three corporeal discourses. The imperative of 'physical efficiency' to dominate the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century was succeeded by a drive for 'social efficiency' after the Second World War. Since the early 1970s, and the disappearance of the social body on which postwar welfare states were founded, the discourse of the 'independent body' has dominated welfare regimes globally with citizens exhorted to make provision for their own bodily welfare. Placing the body at the centre of welfare regimes opens up a novel and potentially rich seam of enquiry for academics and students of social policy."--BOOK JACKET.