social policy Flashcards
Functionalist perspective of social policy
believe that the role of sociology is to find problems in society and produce solutions thorugh providing the state with objective + scientific information needed to base social policies on.
e.g. Durkheim’s research leading to him proposing an education system based on merit to lead to a more cohesive society (value consensus)
Functionalists usually favour a ‘piecemeal’ approach in which they want to tackle one problem at a time
evaluation of the functionalist view of social policy
marxists would criticise the piecemeal approach as they believe that you can’t tackle the specific issues until you tackle the bigger problem of inequality in society as a whole for example and bring change in the basic structure of society.
Marxists would also argue that it is the state that reproduces inequality in terms of capitalism and therefore sociologists should be going against this and rejecting the policies
