Best wishes to you all for 2005.
This is a response to the invitation contained in the first issue of the new (and quite excellent) SPA newsletter, "Policy World". It is my contribution to the debate, 'Where next for Social Policy?' Specifically, it is a response to Paul Spicker's article, based on the presentation he gave at the SPA conference in July 2004. Paul quotes comments he received from an anonymous peer reviewer upon a proposal he had submitted to a publisher for an introductory text on Social Policy: a proposal reflecting the approach that Paul favours. Having been 'outed' in this fashion, I have decided I should come clean and admit to Paul - and to the world at large - that I was that anonymous reviewer. This is the passage of the report from which Paul quotes:
"[M]y primary objection to the proposal ... is the negative framing of the subject. The study of Social Policy comes across as a dismal pursuit, concerned with problems, burdensome needs and disadvantage. It is possible to introduce Social Policy in a much more positive frame - as the study of human well-being and of systems for achieving well-being; in a way that celebrates human interdependency, that embraces diversity, etc. Of course it is concerned with policy responses to social problems and strategies to combat social disadvantage, but it is also concerned with the means of providing or underpinning the things upon which a good life depends: health, learning, security, care, etc.; with the things that everybody should/can enjoy."
Paul contends that this is "just plain wrong". In the process of rejecting my argument, however, he attempts to caricature it. Social Policy, he says, isn't about "love, partnership and emotional nurturing ... aesthetics, music poetry, comedy, leisure, or entertainment". Well, that isn't what I said. Insofar as all these things can have bearing upon human well-being, they are by no means irrelevant, but Paul is missing the point.
Allow me to expand a little upon the idea that Social Policy, as an academic subject, may be defined as the study of human well-being. More precisely, I would contend, it is the study of the social relations necessary for human well-being and the systems by which well-being may be promoted. The things that human beings need to make life worthwhile include essential services, such as health and education; the means of livelihood that are obtained through jobs and money; and yes, intangible things, like love and security of which we can only be assured when social, economic and political structures permit.
In practice, the Social Policy community is pretty much agreed that at the core of our subject is the study of all the human services that the governments of the world do or don't provide, pay for, or regulate; and all the ways in which livelihoods can be maintained or constrained. The point, however, particularly in the developed world, is that the huge sums that are spent on such things affect the well-being of us all - whether directly or indirectly - at some stage within the life-course. The substantive social policies that are the subject of our study shape our lives and well-being. Why should we not emphasise this? And why should we not celebrate the uniquely inter-disciplinary and creative ways in which we can approach such study? I don't see that Paul has occasion to object to any of this.
What Paul seems to be most wary of, however, is any engagement by our subject with the politics of identity and recognition. For my part, I would argue that such an engagement should flow directly from a proper understanding of the nature of human society as an association of inter-dependent beings. As a founding father of the subject, Richard Titmuss famously argued that the welfare state enabled us collectively to recognise and respond to all kinds of "states of dependency". Social Policy, in this sense, is all about how we organise the business of caring for and about each other. To study this with any degree of rigour, I would suggest, we need to be able to debate and define what constitutes 'a good life'. This has been the preoccupation of an entire spectrum of contemporary writers, from neo-Aristotelian 'capability' theorists, such as Sen and Nussbaum, to critical theorists of human need, such as Doyal & Gough and Nancy Fraser.
What makes this really challenging is that it must now be addressed in a global context and at a time of major geo-political and socio-historical transition. The age of social administration and the welfare state as we once knew it may be rapidly fading and the job of Social Policy as a subject is surely to continue to explore the constitutive elements of, and the fundamental premises for, human well-being. This, at least, is what I argue in a book, entitled simply "Social Policy", that I have just finished writing for the Polity Press Short Introductions series and which should, I hope, be published in the course of 2005.
Hartley Dean, Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK - Tel: +44 (0)20 7955 6184 - Fax: +44 (0)20 7955 7415 - Email: [log in to unmask]
|