SCPL2601 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination
17 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Week 2: WHAT IS SOCIAL POLICY?
• What is Social Policy?
o Social policy is concerned with the economic and social regulation of everyday life
o Refers to an Academic Discipline and to specific social policies
• Both are concerned with human well being and the systems that facilitate it
• Specific polices (output, products, performance)
• Concerned with the everyday world, the things we need (or others think we need)
to live a good life
• Why is Social Policy Important?
o Big Questions:
• Who we are
• The relationships we have with one another
• The role of economic system/economy in our lives
• The role of the state in society and our everyday lives
• The role of other social and political institutions
• Power
• A Critical Discipline:
o The Sociological Imagination
• From Private troubles to Public Issues (C WRIGHT MILLS)
▪ Biography, history, social structure
• Specific policies express the way a society understands the relationships between
its members
• Concerned with power and how it is exercised
• Dependency:
o Collective responsibilities and more differential provision has been made in respect of
them.
o States of dependency arise for most whenever they are not in a position to "earn life"
for themselves and families, they are then dependent people.
o There are many causes of dependency
• Natural: childhood, extreme old age and child bearing
• Cultural: physical and psychological Ill health and incapacity
• Social and Cultural: 'man made' dependencies
• Social policies help to shade dependency and, in some instances, compensate for dependency
and in some instances compensate for dependency
o Dependencies bound up with (unequal) power relations
o Ethical basis of social policy provision is contested
• Two Examples: Child Protection and labour Market Protections
• How do we study Social policy:
o Empirical Dimensions:
• Social policy as a discipline is interested in actual social policies, how they operate,
and their effects on human well being
▪ How does a particular policy operate?
▪ The research methods we use to understand the impact social policy on our
everyday lives
▪ What is happening?
▪ Who is making it happen?
▪ What are the reasons for making it happen?
o Normative Dimensions:
• Social Policy engages wit the theories and principles that underpin specific social
policies
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
