ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the book's aims more fully, locates it in the wider literature, and outlines some of the key conceptual apparatus which we will draw upon. This includes outlining what Thatcherism was and (arguably) still is, and thinking about “when” Thatcherite outcomes can be started to be detected, how one goes about that task, and what the impacts of this might have been. We also discuss the levels of explanation which a project like this needs to consider, and how one conceptualises a legacy in empirical social science studies. Our project has messages for life-course studies, especially those in criminology. So we also outline and critique this approach, before describing some of the tools which we have adopted from historical and constructivist institutionalisms and closing with an outline of our model of how macro-level social, economic, and political change can affect individual-level life-courses and offending careers.
