Sociology and Social Policy Flashcards
What is Giddens’ view?
AO1
Sociology has an important role in creating social policy as sociologists can:
- Inform policy makers on cultural differences that may affect the impact of a policy on different groups e.g. ethnicities, disabilities
- Conduct research that motivates policy e.g. research on knife crime leading to policies like knife amnesty to tackle it
- Generate patterns in which certain groups follow in order to better understand them e.g. why criminals commit crime
- Cause people to question the government by holding the government accountable to their policies e.g investigating why COVID disproportionately targetted certain ethnicities and classes
What is an example of Giddens’ point?
AO2
Middleton et al 2005 looked at poliicies to increase participation in post-16 education and reduce the amount of NEETs
- Found that payment increased participation and attainment of WC pupils
- Found that being paid directly was much more likely to lead to higher WC participation
Led to the introduction of EMA which increased post-16 education by 6%
What is the Marxist view of social policy?
AO1
Maintains false class consciousness by creating the illusion that the bourgeoisie are looking out for us e.g. minimum wage has increased but slower than inflation
What is the Feminist view of social policy?
AO1
- Liberal: enables the March of Progress e.g. Equal Pay Act
- Radical: enforces patriarchy even if it looks like it helps women e.g. maternity leave being longer, the Marital Rape Act is useless as it is very difficult to enforce
- Difference: social policy needs to better account for differences in CAGE e.g. Valerie’s Law
What is the Functionalist view of social policy?
AO1
- Helps society function and roles be fulfilled e.g. child benefits, pay-to-buy schemes
- Objective, value free data enables policy that can help people e.g. FSM
What is the New Right view of social policy?
AO1
- We should reduce the size of government spending as much as possible to avoid creating a dependency culture e.g. welfare, capping child benefits
- Should encourage a shared national identity e.g. British Values
What is the Post Modernist view of social policy?
AO1
Any social policy is just a metanarrative e.g. the Equality Act created characterisitics to be protected
What was Townsend’s study?
AO2
- Hired by Labour in 1977 to research poverty
- Invented the term relative deprivation and found that 26% of people were in relative deprivation which was much higher than the gov finding just 7% of people in absolute poverty
- His social democratic perspective was ignored however as by the time his research was published in 1979, Thatcher’s Conservative Party had come into power
How can we evaluate positivism?
AO3
Frankfurt School: positivists disregard the realities of policymaking and ignore huge swathes of research. Positivist methods take the expertise out of sociology - sociologists are experts in their fields and so shouldn’t rely on just facts and figures - we can rely on them to interpret quantitative data. Society cannot just be rationally understood and reducing people to numbers reduces the impact of research - quantitative data shouldn’t inform social policy
What 6 factors affecting social policy did Simmel identify?
AO1
- Electoral popularity: govs will ignore sociologist suggestions if the policy would be unpopular with voters
- Gov ideological preference: if research reflects values contrary to gov ideology it’s unlikely to have influence e.g. Townsend v Thatcher
- Interest groups: pressure groups that influence gov policy for their own interests and oppose views in sociological research e.g. businesses persuading gov to not raise minimum wage
- Critical sociology: sociologists who criticise powerful groups are seen as too extreme to have influence
- Cost: even if the gov does support the findings, it can’t have influence if the policy is too expensive
- Funding: sociologists may tone down their findings and suggestions to fit the wishes of whoever is funding them OR policymakers may just recruit sociologists who already share their views
Giddens’ influence in policy?
AO1/2
Believed sociology could:
1. inform policy
2. assess the results of policy
3. generate greater understanding which can lead to the formation of pressure and protest groups
- His book ‘Third Way Politics’ was seen as the manifesto for New Labour
- His book ‘Over to You, Mr Brown’ outlined issues that needed to be addressed after Tony Blair
9 Ways sociology can improve our lives according to Giddens?
AO1
- Provide an awareness of cultural differences and of others leading to verstehen and empathetic understanding
- Provide self-awareness and understanding - gives us reflexivity which can create social movements leading to social change
- McNeill: Challenging assumptions - sociological thinking can have influence as its absorbed into mainstream society
- Provides a theoretical framework e.g. realist framework for crime, Townsend’s framework for poverty
- Provides practical, professional knowledge: can influence everyday thinking
- Identifies social problems - not just issues uncovered by social policy e.g. dark figure of crime
- Provides evidence which informs policy
- Identifies unintended consequences of policies
- Adresses results of policy - did it work?
What was Gregg et al’s study?
AO2
- Studied 6,000 children from Bristol in 1991-1992
- Considered categories of development e.g. school performance, self-esteem, IQ
- Analysed link between parental income and behaviours e.g. depression, food eaten, reading, physical environment
- By 7 WC children are worse in education, lower in self-esteem, and at greater risk of obesity
- Car ownership of MC households discouraged physical activity
- Long hours in childcare for 3-4 year olds caused greater behavioural issues in MC families
- Parental income can negatively impact children in different ways - a multi-faceted approach in policy is needed
