Work, Poverty And Welfare 📊

Question 1

Oscar Lewis

Answer 1

functionalist

poverty is a consequence of poor socialisation, those in poverty lack motivation, ambition and trustworthiness

Question 2

PIP

Answer 2

personal independence payment, given to disabled people who go through means testing first

Question 3

Herbert Gans

Answer 3

poverty fulfils three main functions: creates jobs, creates motivation, ensures bad jobs are done

Question 4

Townsend

Answer 4

relative poverty = when you lack so much money that you are excluded from taking part in society

Question 5

Mack and Lansley

Answer 5

subjective poverty = if you don’t have 3 things from the changing necessary list then you are in poverty

Question 6

Coates and Silburn

Answer 6

Cycle of deprivation (material factors)

Question 7

Hirsch 2006

Answer 7

impact of child poverty:

-educational underachievement

-health and psychological development

-crime and deviance more likely in adults who were children in poverty

explanations:

-lone parenthood

-lack of employment

-disability

-inadequate welfare

Question 8

knowledge economy

Answer 8

moved away from manufacturing products and towards design, development, marketing and sales. These new forms of work are reliant on employees skills

Question 9

Housing Act (1980) (‘right to buy’)

Answer 9

privatised council housing which allowed either renters or others to buy the houses. However, owners could now increase rent prices which renters could no longer afford, leaving them without a house.

Question 10

Booth and Rowntree

Answer 10

Absolute poverty = having to sacrifice things for others

Question 11

social democratic ideas of poverty

Answer 11

underclass means people who are left behind by society, they don’t choose to self segregate

Question 12

Palmer 2006

Answer 12

showed that poverty rates for disabled people is around double. 33% of disabled people love in poverty. 2/5 are single adults.

Question 13

pauperisation and alienation

Answer 13

pauperisation = profits roll in, bourguisee gets greedy and takes shared away from workers

alienation = workers are forced to only think of themselves and not the community, becoming isolated.

Question 14

flexible production

Answer 14

products are no longer mass produced, more customisable, use of global market.
Bonaeich and Appelbaum “race to the bottom”

Question 15

functionalism and poverty

Answer 15

poverty has important functions for society because it helps to ensure that undesirable and undignified work gets done

poverty creates jobs in a number of professions

provides incentives and motivation - reinforces meritocracy in society. If enough people don’t fulfil their roles, society will fall into anomie

Question 16

feminism

Answer 16

liberal = blames patriarchal on societal attitudes

radical = blames biology

marxist = blames capitalism

Question 17

Charles Booth

Answer 17

absolute poverty = when your income is below the poverty line

Question 18

post Fordism

Answer 18

work now focuses on consumer choice and greater freedom for workers

Question 19

flexible accumulation

Answer 19

accumulation of income with greater flexibility

Question 20

social policies to help working parents

Answer 20

-taxfree childcare

-15 hour free childcare

-30 hour free childcare

-universal credit

-tax credit

Question 21

primary labour market

Answer 21

core workers, full time trained and highly skilled employees

Question 22

Kenway and Palmer (2007)

Answer 22

poverty in ethnic minority groups is around double than that of the white British population. over half of Bangladeshis live in poverty. 1/4 of Indians live in poverty

Question 23

Primitive Communism

Answer 23

a concept originating from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who argued that hunter-gatherer societies were traditionally based on egalitarian social relations and common ownership.

Question 24

Bertrand and Mullainathan

Answer 24

• Method of the study was sending identical resumes to employers that only differed in name, specifically sending stereotypically African American names versus stereotypically white names (Dashawn Jefferson vs Katelyn Decker)
• Results were that resumes with African American names had lower callback rates, highlighting the impact of discrimination, perhaps both institutional and individual, in the workplace/hiring process
• Describes “taste-based” vs “statistical” discrimination, where race may or may not signal for some unobservable variable, such as having/lacking “soft skills” such as social skills

Question 25

feminism and labour markets

Answer 25

women are more likely to be periphery workers because walby argued they are more likely to be in less skilled/ flexible work

Question 26

evaluations to flexible accumulation

Answer 26

Marxist David Harvey says this doesn’t actually create freedom, it creates uncertainty and causes less chance of success

Question 27

Al Gini

Answer 27

“what we do is what we will become”this is because we spend so much time doing work that it will become part of our identity

Question 28

evaluations of new rights view on poverty

Answer 28

weakness -

blames victims and not structural factors

weakness -

social democrats would argue welfare state is under generous

weakness -

correlation between illegitimacy and welfare could be caused by societal factors such as views on marriage

Question 29

evaluations of primitive communism

Answer 29

• there isn’t rooted evidence, archaeological evidence was not available at the time
• David Graeber argued that modern archaeology shows that society doesn’t develop consistently like Marx argues

Question 30

Charles Murray

Answer 30

• new right
• ‘underclass’ who don’t work and rely on welfare
• cycle of dependancy

Question 31

marxism and wealth

Answer 31

• bourguisee and proletariats
• born into a class you cannot escape
• capitalism only benefits those at the top

bourguisee exploits the working class

• society needs to move to communism

Question 32

neo-Marxism and work

Answer 32

work is a central part of our identity, defining us as proletariat or bourgeoisie. However some traditional Marxists argue that some of these predictions haven’t came true like industrial workers aren’t the biggest social class

Question 33

Doherty- decline of work

Answer 33

work has become increasingly degraded as it’s no longer interesting or satisfying, holds less value in our lives

Question 34

Davis and Moore

Answer 34

functionalism, wealth creates motivation for people to work harder to get the more challenging jobs, named role allocation

Question 35

secondary labour market

Answer 35

periphery workers lower skilled and less permanent

Question 36

Slavoj Zizek

Answer 36

The worlds super wealthy use their wealth to hide how harmful wealth inequality is for society.

Question 37

Overt and Covert Discrimination

Answer 37

overt = disabled people aren’t hired due to their disability

covert = not hired because of fear of extra costs

Question 38

David Marsland

Answer 38

• new right
• welfare state is too generous that the poor become dependant on the government
• universal welfare should be withdrawn and replaced with means testing

Question 39

who are the unemployed

Answer 39

ethnic minorities, aged 25 and under, men, from north east, West Midlands, Yorkshire and humberside

Question 40

Harvey

Answer 40

relaxation of work frees up time but actually just creates insecurity by not know how much and when money is coming In

Question 41

unemployment and identity

Answer 41

Durkheim suggested that unemployed people experience anomie as they don’t have a place in society

Question 42

evaluations the de-skilling thesis

Answer 42

-Gallie argued that there is a process of ‘up-skilling’ where there is an increasing need for specialist roles

-technology has increased need for certain specialist roles like computer scientists etc…

Question 43

Gorz

Answer 43

-non class of non workers = unemployed people who don’t have this identity
-dual society = scientific management makes work as efficient as possible creating more time to spend on leisure
- new tech is taking over jobs

Question 44

evaluating Blauner’s theory

Answer 44

-trad marxists say alienation is caused by ownership of industries, not tech

-others argued its due to lack of autonomy and self-control

-work has changed largely since this theory was created, computer tech wasn’t around at the time and may have radically changed the way that we work

Question 45

support for Bravermans theory

Answer 45

-Frey and Osborne predicted that half of all workers would be replaced by computers in the next 20 years

-Brynjolfsson and McAfee argued that AI would ‘ do for mental poor what the steam engines did for physical power’

-Paul Mason calculated the likelihood of people being replaced by machines, teachers and sex workers being the least likely but front of house jobs most likely

Question 46

evaluations of Gorz

Answer 46

• Robert Putnam has argued that in modern America, participation in a non work based society is declining
• Instead there is more consumerism and time to expand rather than free time for leisure

Question 47

Braverman 1977

Answer 47

work is becoming less skilled as a way of controlling workers, by taking away workers abilities and making them do repetitive and talentless tasks, the owners power increases

Question 48

Parker

Answer 48

type of work you do will shape your life and leisure pursuits

Question 49

unemployment and health

Answer 49

unemployment people experience worse health and have a lower quality life. Danny Dorling did a meta analysis of doctors records and the employed recovered quicker. Gulliford found higher mental health in unemployed men

Question 50

what causes unemployment

Answer 50

• globalisation, offshoring
• technology
• economic shift, decline of trad industries
• economic problems causing job losses

Question 51

Taylor

Answer 51

working class jobs are being offshored to poorer countries, cause unemployment here

Question 52

Bauman

Answer 52

people are more likely to choose our identity basies on leisure pursuits rather than work

Question 53

Robert Blauner

Answer 53

alienation happens in 4 key ways; powerlessness, meaninglessness, isolation and self-estrangement

Question 54

evaluations of post-modernist views

Answer 54

-Anna Pollart argues that fordism was never that prominent as it was used by a few companies
-Marxists argue that work inequalities are still based on the ownership of big businesses.
-wood argued that post fordism really is just fordism continuing as most products are made on production lines.

Question 55

evaluations of flexible production

Answer 55

Graham conducted research should how this makes work more stressful as it relies on peer pressure and production decreases because of this .
Ian Taylor argues that this race to the bottom is just capitalism exploiting the working class

Question 56

evaluation of Parker and Al Gini

Answer 56

• postmodernist Ulrich Beck says we can construct our own biographies
  -feminist Mclontosh says women’s identity is more likely to be influenced by family than work

Question 57

Mason

Answer 57

people in manual and unskilled jobs are at risk from automation

Question 58

evaluations to marxism in wealth

Answer 58

• Max Weber viewed the idea that class is decided purely through wealth to be very simplistic, status and party are also important.
• Marx’ view of class is based on just economics, economic determinism
• Marx’ ideas haven’t came true, working class conditions got better.