ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some of the problems inherent in conceptualizing prevention, in associating it with ideas about causation and in relating these ideas to practice. It discusses a distinction between individual and social strategies and places them in the context of wider perspectives on social welfare. Prediction and intervention imply an understanding, or at least a hypothesis, of cause; in social scientific terms, the idea of cause tends to reflect positivist thinking. The chapter begins by explaining that positivistic applied social science is unlikely to resolve conflicts over the appropriateness of preventive policies. A possible relationship between models of prevention and models of welfare confirms that impression, begging in turn questions about the material and ideological forces which lie behind the making of social policy. The rhetoric of prevention contains an identifiable paradox: nowhere is there agreement about quite what prevention is, while everywhere there is agreement that it is a good thing.
