ABSTRACT
We began this book by asking what holds societies together – in other words, how do societies and people’s lives become ordered? This overarching question was explored by examining the workings of some key social institutions in UK society following the Second World War. Throughout the four chapters of the book, we have discussed how our lives are shaped, and how people relate to each other, in terms of the exercise of power in social institutions. But we have also seen that the processes of ordering are not fixed. Our ‘story’ has been one of profound transformations in and across the institutions of the family, work and welfare in the UK over the last half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century.
