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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Polity Short Introductions
- Sprache: Englisch
How do human societies provide for the wellbeing of their members? How far can we organize the ways in which we care for and about each other? And who should take responsibility for providing the support we need? These are some of the fundamental questions addressed by social policy today. In this introduction, Hartley Dean explains the extraordinary scope and importance of social policy. He explores its foundations and contemporary significance; the principal issues it addresses and their diverse economic, political and sociological dimensions, and concludes by looking anew at fundamental challenges facing social policy in a dramatically changing world. Introducing social policy as a broadly conceived study of human wellbeing, this revised and extensively updated third edition examines ways in which governments and peoples throughout the world attend to, promote, neglect or even undermine the things that make life worth living. These include essential services like healthcare and education; the means of livelihood - jobs and money - and sometimes intangible things such as physical and emotional security. Trying to understand these elements, which together constitute human wellbeing, is the stuff of social policy.
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Seitenzahl: 355
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Table of Contents
Cover
Figure, Tables and Boxes
Figure
Tables
Boxes
Preface
Acknowledgements
1
:
What
is
Social Policy?
Hey, Big Spender!
Butterflies
versus
Magpies
Who Cares?
A Good Life
Intermediate human needs satisfiers
Summary
2
:
Where did it Come From?
From Barbarianism to Civilization?
The Making of Capitalism
The Taming of Capitalism
The transition from Poor Laws to incipient welfare states
Welfare and Ideology
Summary
3
:
Why on Earth does it Matter?
The Threat of Globalization?
Globalization ‘camps’
Human population growth and its impact
Welfare Regimes
Ecology and Human Welfare
Global Social Policy
Summary
4
:
What does Human Wellbeing Entail?
Health and Education
Sustainable Development Goals and targets relating to health and education
Income Maintenance and Employment
Sustainable Development Goals and targets relating to income
Housing and the Environment
Sustainable Development Goals and targets relating to housing and the environment
The ‘Personal’ Social Services
Summary
5
:
Who Gets What?
Sharing Public Goods
Where's the Money?
Principles of Distribution
How does it All Pan Out?
Summary
6
:
Who's in Control?
The Problem of Power
Perspectives on powerlessness
Street-Level Organization and Local Governance
The Nation State and the Policy Process
Regional Governance
Summary
7
:
What's the Trouble with Human Society?
Diversity and Difference
Associated diversities
Class and Identity
Inequality and Exclusion
Social Change and the Life Course
Fluid families
Summary
8
:
Can Social Policy Solve Social Problems?
The (De-)construction of Social Problems
The Righting of Wrongs
Blaming the Victim
Crime and Anti-Social Behaviour
Summary
9
:
How are the Times a-Changing?
The Crisis of Welfare
New Perspectives in Social Policy
Welfare Pluralism and New Managerialism
The evolving face of new public managerialism: the process of marketization
The evolving face of new public managerialism: the process of modernization
Post-Modernity and ‘Risk Society’
Summary
10
:
Where is Social Policy Going?
Austerian liberalism
An Anti-Capitalist Agenda
Unprincipled Populism
Ameliorative Social Investment
Summary and Conclusion
References
Index
End User License Agreement
List of tables
Table 1.1 UK government spending 2018-19 (projected)
Table 3.1 Principal international governmental organizations
Table 5.1 UK government revenues 2018-19 (projected)
List of figures
Figure 2.1 Four ideological justifications for capitalist social policies Warnings: 1. This kind of diagram is what social scientists sometimes call a ‘heuristic device’. It is not meant to be an accurate depiction that accounts for every variation. It is a method that can be used to simplify and help us understand phenomena that are especially complex or dynamic. Such diagrams, however, don't work for everyone. If it doesn't work for you, don't worry! 2. This particular diagram has evolved and is slightly different from versions I have used elsewhere.
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
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Short Introductions series
Nicholas Abercrombie, Sociology
Michael Bury, Health and Illness
Raewyn Connell and Rebecca Pearse, Gender 3rd edition
Lena Dominelli, Introducing Social Work
Jonathan Gray and Amanda D. Lotz, Television Studies
Jeffrey Haynes, Development Studies
Stuart Henry, with Lindsay M. Howard, Social Deviance 2nd edition
Stephanie Lawson, International Relations 3rd edition
Ronald L. Mize, Latina/o Studies
Chris Rojek, Cultural Studies
Mary Romero, Introducing Intersectionality
Karen Wells, Childhood Studies
Social Policy
Third Edition
Hartley Dean
polity
Copyright © Hartley Dean 2019
The right of Hartley Dean to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First edition published in 2005
This third edition published in 2019 by Polity Press
Polity Press
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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-2405-1
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-2406-8(pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Dean, Hartley, 1949- author.
Title: Social policy / Hartley Dean.
Description: Third edition. | Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018019537 (print) | LCCN 2018022148 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509524099 (Epub) | ISBN 9781509524051 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509524068 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Social policy.
Classification: LCC HN18 (ebook) | LCC HN18 .D42 2019 (print) | DDC 306--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018019537
Typeset in 10 on 12 pt Sabon by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited
Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by Clays Ltd, Elcograph S.p.A.
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
Figure, Tables and Boxes
Figure
2.1
Four ideological justifications for capitalist social policies
Tables
1.1
UK government spending 2018-19 (projected)
3.1
Principal international governmental organizations
5.1
UK government revenues 2018-19 (projected)
Boxes
1.1
Intermediate human needs satisfiers
2.1
The transition from Poor Laws to incipient welfare states
3.1
Globalization ‘camps’
3.2
Human population growth and its impact
4.1
Sustainable Development Goals and targets relating to health and education
4.2
Sustainable Development Goals and targets relating to income
4.3
Sustainable Development Goals and targets relating to housing and the environment
6.1
Perspectives on powerlessness
7.1
Associated diversities
7.2
Fluid families
9.1
The evolving face of new public managerialism: the process of marketization
9.2
The evolving face of new public managerialism: the process of modernization
Preface
This book will, I hope, do exactly what it says on the cover. It will provide a short introduction to the subject of Social Policy (with a capital ‘S’ and a capital ‘P’). In the process, it will also touch upon some aspects of the social policy or policies (with a small ‘s’ and a small ‘p’) by which a variety of governmental and other organizations throughout the world attend to, promote, neglect or undermine our wellbeing. But its purpose is to serve as an introduction, not as a comprehensive textbook. It will identify key issues, but it cannot and will not explore them in any great detail. It will explain past, present and future trends in general terms, but it will contain few of the kinds of facts and figures that tend to go rapidly out of date. It will identify some of the most important or helpful literature sources, both classic and contemporary, but it will not contain exhaustive bibliographic references. I aim, as simply as I can, to convey my own passion for Social Policy as a field of study.
Passion is a strong word: a bit ‘over the top’ you might think. Let me therefore explain how I discovered Social Policy. When I left university with a generic degree in ‘Social Science’, I went to work at an independent advice centre in Brixton in inner south London. Brixton is known, on the one hand, for its cosmopolitan multi-ethnic community and, on the other, for the extent of the poverty that exists there in the midst of big city affluence. Sadly, it is also remembered for the riots that happened in the summer of 1981. I worked there for twelve exciting and eventful years (including the period in which the riots took place). In that time I became an expert on all sorts of things to do with social security, housing, education, health and social care. I became fascinated by the ways in which it is, or ought to be, possible to make systematic provision to meet diverse human needs. In the course of the battles with authority that I fought with and for people in Brixton I also became increasingly angry: angry, because systems that were supposed to help people often failed or, worse still, hindered or controlled them. I retreated to academia to try and find out why that was; to make sense of what I had been doing. I discovered that the things I had been learning about and the many questions I was asking were all central elements of a subject called Social Policy.
The attraction of Social Policy, for me, is that it is a subject with few, if any, boundaries. It is relevant to every facet of our lives. It is genuinely multi-disciplinary. It reaches beyond the febrile controversies of everyday politics to grasp critically at underlying issues and injustices. It is outward looking, encompassing both the global and the local; the universal and the personal. In the ten short chapters that follow I start in chapter 1 by explaining the scope and importance of Social Policy; in chapters 2 and 3, I discuss its foundations and contemporary significance; in chapters 4, 5 and 6 I explore the principal issues it addresses and their economic, political and sociological dimensions; in chapters 8 and 9 I address some of the fundamental challenges it faces; and, finally, in chapter 10 I consider its future in light of most recent developments.
The book has been written as an invitation to potential students of Social Policy and for students who are new to the subject. It may also, however, be of interest to colleagues and to academics from both inside and outside the subject, because there is a sense in which I am attempting here to refresh our understanding of how Social Policy may be approached. I present the subject positively as the study of human wellbeing. I do so not because this is the only approach that may be taken, but because I am persuaded that it is the most attractive way of introducing the subject to new or potential students.
Social Policy has, until relatively recently, been a peculiarly British academic subject and, insofar as I am an English academic working in an English university, several of the illustrations on which I draw will relate to English or UK social policies. Given the breadth of the subject and the brevity of the book I have made these examples very general and kept their number to a minimum. Social Policy is about real life and, in the classroom, one way to bring it alive is through real-life case studies and the sharing of everyday experiences. But in view of the complexity and diversity of real lives and the wide audience at which this short introduction is aimed, I have been mindful of the risk that even the most carefully chosen illustrative materials may appear parochial or puzzling to some readers. This, therefore, is where the reader's own imagination must come into play. To get the best out of this book, you are invited to apply the ideas, concepts and arguments that I shall outline to your own life and experiences; to your own concerns and beliefs. For those of you who take up that invitation, you will discover that this is a vital element in the study of Social Policy.
By resisting the trappings of a conventional text-book I wanted to provide a continuous discursive explanation of Social Policy: something to be read as a whole (or even in one go). Though I do include a relatively extensive range of bibliographic references at the end of the book, I would not expect anybody to read everything that is listed there: I seek rather to demonstrate the breadth of the literature on which Social Policy can draw. I do not prescribe particular readings but invite readers to explore the subject of Social Policy – using this as a jumping off point – in whichever direction they wish to go.
This is meant to be a book for anybody who might be interested in Social Policy, whatever they are doing and wherever in the world they find themselves. A book of this length can only scratch the surface, but I hope it will reveal something of the vibrancy, diversity and humanity that lies beneath.
Hartley Dean,
London School of Economics and Political Science
Acknowledgements
As in previous editions, I should acknowledge that all sorts of people contributed to the thinking that went into the writing of this short book. They are too many to enumerate, but that doesn't mean I am not grateful. If you have ever discussed the meaning of Social Policy with me, you have probably had an influence in some way or at some point.
I must, however, specifically acknowledge my considerable gratitude to those who kindly took the time and trouble to read and comment on earlier drafts of the original version or some or all of these chapters, namely Catherine and Hugh Bochell, Pam Dean, Bill Jordan, Eileen Munro, David Piachaud and many of the amazing students who I have over the years had the privilege to teach. They all offered valuable advice and, where I have heeded it, I'm sure it will have enhanced the offering I now present. If, out of stubbornness or misjudgement, I ignored their advice, and whenever there is error, deficiency or confusion in the pages that follow, it is I alone who am to blame. This third edition of the book has benefited from feedback from anonymous reviewers appointed by the publishers and from several published reviews of earlier editions. I am also especially grateful to Louise Knight from Polity Press for encouraging me to write this book in the first place and to generate subsequent revised and updated editions. And I am grateful to those at Polity Press and to Susan Beer who so ably assisted with handling its production.
To Pam, upon whom my human wellbeing most depends.
1 What is Social Policy?
When I tell people I teach Social Policy, a fairly common response is ‘Oh! . . . [pause]. What's that exactly?’ Social Policy textbooks have sometimes suggested that Social Policy is hard to define. Or else they have contended there is something ‘confusing’ about the distinction to be drawn between Social Policy as an academic subject on the one hand and the specific outcomes of the social policy-making process on the other; or about whether Social Policy is an interdisciplinary ‘field of study’, rather than a social science discipline in its own right (Alcock 2008). For my part, however, I don't find the question difficult at all. Social Policy is the study of human wellbeing, to which there can be two kinds of response:
So it's all about doing good for people?
So it must be about pretty much everything really?
The answer to both comments is ‘Well, yes and no’. More specifically, Social Policy entails the study of the social relations necessary for human wellbeing and the systems by which wellbeing may be promoted or, for that matter, impaired. You may have noticed that I choose the word ‘wellbeing’ rather than ‘welfare’ and I shall return to my reasons for this later in the chapter. In using the term wellbeing, however, I am focusing not on how people ‘fare’ (on their goings or doings), but on their ‘being’ (on the essence of their lives). Social Policy is about the many and various things that affect the kinds of life that you and I and everyone can live. Think for a moment about the things you need to make life worth living: essential services, such as healthcare and education; a means of livelihood, such as a job and money; vital but intangible things, such as love and security. Now think about the ways in which these can be organized: by government and official bodies; through businesses, social groups, charities, local associations and churches; through neighbours, families and loved ones. Understanding these things is the stuff of Social Policy. In this chapter I aim to illustrate, first, the immense scale of the phenomena with which Social Policy is concerned, but also its quite specific nature; second, the fabulous diversity of the social scientific traditions on which Social Policy can draw, but also the strict rigour of its focus; third, the relevance of Social Policy to everybody's individual, everyday lives; but fourth, the importance of Social Policy to human society in general.
Before I begin, however, let me return just for one moment to the ‘confusion’ alluded to above between Social Policy, the subject, and the social policy or policies that are the object of our study. As I have already signalled in my Preface, I propose throughout this book to adopt a rather simple convention that is not in general use, but which may, I hope, allay confusion. When I refer to Social Policy with a capital ‘S’ and a capital ‘P’, I am writing about the academic study of social policy. When I refer to social policy with a lower-case ‘s’ and a lower-case ‘p’, I shall be talking about the general or the particular policy or policies that have been determined in the fields of social security, health, education, social care and protection or – as you will see – in any number of spheres that may bear upon human wellbeing.
Hey, Big Spender!
Social Policy is concerned with much, much more than the things that governments spend our money on. Nevertheless, though it refers only to the visible tip of the Social Policy iceberg, the most conspicuous evidence of the importance of social policies is ‘social spending’. If we take a country such as the UK, at a time of supposed fiscal austerity in the continuing aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2007-8 (IMF 2009; Farnsworth and Irving 2015), the government planned in the 2018-19 tax year to devote roughly £572 billion to what may broadly be defined as ‘social’ or social policy spending (see table 1.1 below); that is to say, to things like pensions, hospitals and schools. That amounts to more than two thirds of total public spending and getting on for a third of this particular nation's annual income (or what is usually called Gross Domestic Product or ‘GDP’). It is a huge sum of money: more than most people can really comprehend or even imagine. If one were searching for a comparison, £572 billion is over three thousand times more than the biggest ever jackpot on the EuroMillions pan-European Lottery, which was ‘only’ £171 million in October 2017, but is still perhaps more than any ordinary person could really envisage owning, let alone spending. What the UK spends on social policy is hardly small change!
Table 1.1
UK government spending 2018-19 (projected)
a The term ‘social protection’ refers to all forms of social security provision, including benefits, credits and pensions.
Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/autumn-budget-2017-documents/autumn-budget-2017
And yet, the UK is by no means exceptional. In fact, as a proportion of GDP the UK's social policy spending is rather less than in many other developed countries. When the social policy spending of different countries is compared using comparable methods of calculation, it may be seen that countries such as Finland and France can spend as a proportion of GDP nearly half as much again as the UK, while a mighty nation such as the USA may spend somewhat less than the UK (OECD 2016: table 5.9). Of the world's larger developing economies, the proportion of GDP devoted to social spending in Brazil, for example, falls not far short of that in the USA, while that in India, relatively speaking, is tiny. And, of course, smaller and poorer developing countries can afford to spend very little on social policy at all. In chapter 3 we shall try to understand a bit more about the differences between different countries’ approaches to social policy.
Also, the amount governments spend on social policy can go up or down, depending on changing priorities. In democratic countries such priorities will to some extent reflect the wishes of the electorate and the taxpayers who must finance such spending. But it depends just as much on the fluctuating needs of the population and on the state of the country's economy. To take the UK as an example once again, the extent of its social spending had grown from around 2 per cent of GDP at the very beginning of the twentieth century to somewhere around its present level by the 1970s. Since then spending has fluctuated as Conservative governments during the 1980s and 1990s attempted, in spite of a variety of pressures, to ‘keep the lid on’ (Glennerster 1998). Following this, Labour governments, after an initial period of restraint, allowed social spending to increase again until after 2010, when Coalition and then Conservative governments began once more to try and rein spending back in. We shall try to understand a bit more about the ideological, demographic and economic causes of such variations in the chapters that follow.
For the moment, however, let us focus on the scale and nature of social policy spending. Table 1.1 provides a simplified explanation of the UK government's budget plans for the year in which this book was written. The expenditure headings are very broadly defined, so the picture that is presented is rather rough and ready. None the less, this tells us that the UK government was planning to spend roughly twelve times as much on social policy as it was on defence, and sixteen times as much as on public order. By this criterion we might say that social policy in fact receives a much higher priority than war making or crime busting.
However, table 1.1 also shows us that, for example, the government expected to spend more than eight times as much on pensions and social security benefits as on housing and the environment. In a country such as the UK, that is perhaps hardly surprising these days. The UK is unusual compared to some countries because a high proportion of householders (around 60 per cent in England) own their own homes and so most spending on housing tends to be ‘private’, rather than ‘public’. In other words, it's not that we don't as a nation spend money on housing, it's simply a question of how we organize this. In chapter 4 we shall see that although the government's social policies in respect of housing may not entail massive amounts of public spending, they do, for example, entail the regulation of housing provision.
We shall also see that although governments may spend a great deal of public money on pensions for older people, this may be more than matched by private spending on occupational and personal pension schemes, all of which, like private housing, may be closely regulated by social policy. On top of this, as we shall see in chapters 8 and 9, the definition of what does and doesn't count as a social policy or as social spending is increasingly being challenged. Social Policy is about more than the services governments provide. Even when we take account of the staggering sums of public money that are recorded as being spent on social policy, particularly in the countries of the developed world, this is still not a true indicator of the extent to which social policy may touch our lives as we grow up and grow old, as workers and as citizens, in our private lives and through the public institutions with which we engage.
None the less, in a world where money matters, Social Policy is a very substantial subject.
Butterflies versus Magpies
In the last section we adopted a very simple approach to the economics of public spending. Social Policy as an academic subject is in the habit of adopting all kinds of different approaches. That is one of its greatest attractions. It brings in ideas and analytical methods from sociology, from political science and from economics; it employs insights from social anthropology, demography, socio-legal studies, social psychology, social history; it overlaps with aspects of criminology, human geography and development studies; it will frequently draw upon philosophy; in fact it will go pretty much wherever it needs to find the best way to study issues relevant to the achievement of human wellbeing. What is more, Social Policy is not just multi-disciplinary, it is also inter-disciplinary. In other words it combines approaches from the different social sciences.
This may sound as if Social Policy is just a sort of ‘pick-and-mix’ subject; a subject that's good for people who can't make up their minds. This is not the case. Certainly, Social Policy is a wonderful subject for people who don't want to tie themselves down to just one discipline, but that doesn't mean it is suitable for ditherers, or for the kind of intellectual butterflies that flutter aimlessly from idea to idea. Students of Social Policy are more like magpies than butterflies. They are pragmatic, even ruthless, in the way they pick whatever they need from across the social sciences in order to fashion answers to real life issues. There is an element of sheer promiscuity about Social Policy in its willingness to seize upon attractive and workable ideas from across the social scientific spectrum. But it remains a highly rigorous subject because it retains a highly specific commitment to the cause of human wellbeing.
Understanding what is required to achieve human wellbeing means studying social, political and economic processes. It can entail attention to the complex details of policy design or to abstract theories and generalized overviews. It may require the ability to analyse statistical information; to evaluate the successes and failures of particular policies; to interpret popular aspirations; to investigate the perceptions of marginalized or vulnerable people; to understand the past; and to anticipate the future. We refer to Social Policy as a social science, and the term ‘science’ might suggest that it is cold and clinical, hard and objective. Originally, however, the term ‘science’ was applied to all branches of human knowledge, including creative and philosophical forms of thinking. Social Policy is self-evidently concerned with the policy-making process, which has always entailed an element of intuition and creativity. Aneurin Bevan, the firebrand Labour politician who was responsible in the 1940s for hammering out the political compromises that established the UK's National Health Service, once said:
By the study of anthropology, sociology, psychology and such elements of social and political economy as are relevant, we try to work out our correct principles to guide us in our approach to the social problems of the time. Nevertheless, the application of those principles to a given situation is an art.
(1952: 35–6)
To my mind, this is a pretty good explanation of what Social Policy is about. Social Policy is concerned with hard evidence, technical theories and logical analysis, but it must also be creative. It often calls for imagination and insight. Social Policy is as much about feelings as about facts. To study Social Policy properly one needs commitment; one needs to be able to empathize with others; one needs to interpret the world around.
Who Cares?
This leads us to the question of why we should be concerned about the attainment of human wellbeing. Human societies are complex associations of interdependent beings. In other words, human beings are social creatures who depend upon each other. Since the dawn of human history, in order to survive, human communities have developed social strategies, customs and practices, elements of which we might look back upon and identify as social policy (cf. Sahlins 1974). Sociologists, such as Emile Durkheim (1893), endeavoured to understand the complexity of modern societies in terms of the increasingly sophisticated ways in which people collaborate to produce life's necessities. The social policies to which societies give birth may be understood as the way in which any particular society recognizes and gives expression to the interdependency of its members. Writing in the same era as Aneurin Bevan, an academic and founding father of Social Policy, Richard Titmuss, argued that what we have come to know as the ‘welfare state’ was then emerging because
. . . more ‘states of dependency’ have been defined and recognized as collective responsibilities, and more differential provision has been made in respect of them. These ‘states of dependency’ arise for the vast majority of the population whenever they are not in a position to ‘earn life’ for themselves and their families …. In industrialized societies, there are many causes of dependency; they may be ‘natural’ dependencies as in childhood, extreme old age and child-bearing. They may be caused by physical and psychological ill health and incapacity; in part, these are culturally determined dependencies. Or they may be wholly or predominantly determined by social and cultural factors. These, it may be said, are the ‘man-made’ dependencies.
(1955: 64)
Since Titmuss wrote these words the world has moved on. In the age of information technologies, most industrialized societies are better described as ‘post-industrialized’. The so-called ‘golden age’ of the welfare state – which was dawning as Titmuss wrote – has passed (see Esping-Andersen 1996: ch. 1). None the less, though they may be reluctant to admit it (see Dean 2004: ch. 4) people are still as interdependent as ever they were. The ways in which we meet our welfare needs may have been changing, but the welfare state – as we have seen above – is still very much in evidence in most developed nations of the world. And Titmuss was right. Many of the dependencies we experience are fashioned by social and cultural factors: for example, by changes in the nature of labour markets and by changing patterns of household formation. The way we can or can't depend on jobs and our families is forever changing and this in turn affects how we might depend on the wider community or on the state.
Titmuss has relevance for another reason. In a later work (Titmuss 1970), he drew on social anthropological evidence to suggest that preindustrial societies were based on gift giving. The interdependency of the members of supposedly ‘primitive’ societies could be sustained through an array of unilateral transactions or gift-relationships. The function of social policies in advanced capitalist societies, according to Titmuss, is to perpetuate such gift-relationships. In an age when societies are more complex, more differentiated and most transactions take the form of bilateral market exchanges, a system of taxes, benefits and public services enables us to give to one another: not just to our immediate neighbours, but also, importantly, to distant and anonymous strangers. Not only is it still possible to sustain the interdependent nature of our human existence, but – in theory at least – it is possible through the development of social policies to compensate for some of the ‘person-made’ or manufactured dependencies that contemporary society generates.
This might make it sound as if social policies are simply a vehicle for human altruism. If this were so, Social Policy, by implication, would be a naïvely warm-hearted, ‘cuddly’ sort of academic subject. There is, however, more to it than that: first, because our dependencies are inevitably bound up within unequal relations of power; second, because the ethical basis of social policy provision, or ‘giving’, are inevitably contested.
Compensating individuals for their dependency may entail making material provision for them at various stages in their lives, but it can also entail protecting them against the exploitation that may be associated with particular kinds of dependency. Most people would agree that society should protect children and older people from child or elder abuse and policies to this end are by and large uncontroversial. We are all against sin! However, the idea that we should protect workers from exploitation by their employers raises issues to do with class and class conflict. Social policies may to a greater or lesser extent enable workers to avoid dependency on an employer other than upon socially acceptable terms: this is more controversial. There are other forms of dependency which social policies in developed welfare states have not only ignored or failed to address, but may have perpetuated. Of particular concern is women's dependency within families and issues of gender inequality. Social policies can be framed in ways that either reinforce or refashion social assumptions about who should care for whom and in what ways. These are issues to which we shall return in chapter 7, but the point for now is that Social Policy is concerned with the different ways in which – with or without a welfare state – we as human beings care for and about each other.
The distinction between ‘caring for’ and ‘caring about’ (see Parker 1981) is an important one. ‘Caring for’ is a practical business and most of it, even in developed welfare states, is undertaken within families and by women. Responsibility for caring for children, for sick, disabled or frail elderly people tends to fall, in the first instance at least, upon mothers and female family members. ‘Caring about’, on the other hand, is something that can be addressed through, or consigned to, the public sphere of social policy making. The public policy-making sphere continues by and large to be male dominated and its ethos is informed, not by the nature of human relationships, but by abstract principles concerning the importance of Work, Family and Nation (Williams 1989). Such principles have tended in many welfare states to accord rights selectively to white male working breadwinners, at the expense, it has been argued, of women, disabled people, minority ethnic groups and foreigners. Certain feminists have argued that social policies should be founded on a different ethos (e.g. Sevenhuijssen 2000), an approach that would start from the idea that we are all – men and women alike – equally interdependent and equally capable of caring for one another. This opens up new ways of thinking about the relevance of policy to our everyday lives – for example, about the relative importance of care work, as opposed to paid work. But as societies become ever more differentiated and the world as a whole becomes ever more dynamically interconnected, we also need to rethink some of those abstract principles by which we define and care about the rights of strangers, of excluded minorities and of distant peoples (see Dean 2004: ch. 10).
The role of Social Policy, as a critical academic subject, is to engage with such debates and to reflect on the scope and the attainable limits of the pursuit of human wellbeing.
A Good Life
This brings us finally in this introductory chapter to say something about ‘wellbeing’. There has been something of a debate in Social Policy as to whether we should use the term ‘wellbeing’ or ‘welfare’. It is a debate that generates perhaps more heat than light. Each term refers to related concepts associated with understandings of human need (Dean 2010) while the meanings of both are equally subject to the vagaries of discursive fashion. Welfare is a concept with deep and diverse roots (George 2010), albeit a term that has become, perhaps, a bit ‘old and jaded’ (Daly 2011: 57). The term is widely applied as a synonym or metonym for state social policy provision or for aspects of such provision. Wellbeing on the other hand is a concept that has recently attracted some excitement as psychologists focus on new ways to measure ‘subjective wellbeing’ (Diener 2000), as economists have discovered a ‘science of happiness’ (Layard 2011) and as policy makers have called for the development of non-economic indicators of national wellbeing; calls that are beginning to bear fruit and suggest, possibly, the rise of a new agenda (Stiglitz et al. 2009; Bache and Reardon 2016). But the term ‘wellbeing’ is more than a current fad. It is a concept that connects with the age-old ethical quest for the meaning of ‘a good life’; with the realization of our humanity. In this sense, it may be argued, the term ‘refers to the totality of an individual's social relations’ (Hoggett 2000: 145). Over 2,000 years ago Aristotle sought to define what is required to live a good life. His answer, according to Alberto – the mysterious philosophy teacher in Jostein Gaarder's novel, Sophie's World – was that:
Aristotle held that there are three forms of happiness. The first . . . is a life of pleasure and enjoyment. The second . . . is a life as a free and responsible citizen. The third . . . is a life as a thinker and philosopher. Aristotle then emphasized that all three criteria must be present for Man to find happiness and fulfilment.
(Gaarder 1996: 97)
To Aristotle, a good life is no trivial quest, it requires the attainment of virtue. To later philosophers it has meant different things. One of the foremost philosophers of our present era, Amartya Sen, has through the influential concept of ‘capabilities’ developed a distinctively liberal-individualist notion of wellbeing. Capabilities refer not simply to what people are able to do, but to their freedom to choose and to lead the kind of lives they value – and have reason to value (see, for example, Sen 1985; 1999). Sen's argument is that our need for material goods is relative: it depends entirely on the social and economic context in which we find ourselves. But our need for capabilities – for the freedom properly to function as human beings – is absolute.
There is a sense in which this emphasis on individual freedom elides the extent to which human beings are essentially social beings and unavoidably interdependent. Sen's approach has nevertheless been an important influence on the development of a particular theory of human need, espoused by Len Doyal and Ian Gough (1991). In opposition to those who argue that it is impossible to define basic human needs, they insist there are universal preconditions for participation in a good life that are applicable to all human beings. These are defined as physical health and personal autonomy. Not only do we need to be healthy enough physically to survive, but as human beings we also need to be able to make informed choices about our lives. Although these basic needs can be met in a multitude of different ways, it is possible to define certain ‘universal satisfier characteristics’ or intermediate needs – see box 1.1.
Box 1.1 Intermediate human needs satisfiers
adequate nutritional food and water;
adequate protective housing;
non-hazardous work and physical environments;
appropriate healthcare;
security in childhood;
significant primary relationships;
physical and economic security;
safe birth control and child-bearing;
appropriate basic and cross-cultural education. (Doyal and Gough
1991
: 157-8)
The ‘needs satisfiers’ that Doyal and Gough identify would guarantee a dignified, if potentially a rather frugal, existence. It should be emphasized, however, that this is a theory with a ‘normative’ purpose. Not only does it say this is how we can objectively define what human beings need, it is also saying that this is how we may specify social policies that optimize the satisfaction of human needs.
We must always be mindful that social policies, when they are implemented, do not necessarily promote human capabilities or wellbeing. They can also undermine them. As we shall see in chapter 8, the study of Social Policy must contend with the reality that social policies often have a ‘dark side’ (e.g. Squires 1990). On the one hand, ensuring that some of us have a good life may necessarily mean that we must protect ourselves from the predations of ‘others’, whose criminal or antisocial behaviour we may seek to curtail. In this context, criminal justice policies – and their consequences both for the victims and the perpetrators of crime – are also a necessary concern of Social Policy.
On the other hand, there are many social policies that impose rules or conditions upon the day-to-day behaviour of all kinds of people: rules and conditions that may, for example, enforce particular interpretations of work and family responsibility. In the process, social policies, intentionally or unintentionally, may stigmatize, exclude or control certain individuals or groups and so deny them the personal autonomy that is necessary to human wellbeing. It was once contended by Karl Marx (1844
