The Welfare State : A Sociological Interpretation

It is the business of sociologists to classify social phenomena and arrange them in categories. They base their operations on concepts which have been rigorously denned and purified to the point at which they resemble prime numbers. The practice has not unnaturally spread into that intermediate area of literature which can be called either popular sociology or intellectual journalism according to taste. But there it is used for tying labels round the necks of highly complex social systems—like “Welfare State”, “Affluent Society” and “Meritocracy”. This is likely to make the purist shrink and shudder. All generalizations are dangerous, and those cunningly expressed in tabloid form are the most dangerous of all. They pass into the language of common speech as familiar truths, instead of being quoted as propositions offered for discussion. One can hardly avoid using a term like the “Welfare State”, and one cannot, when using it, introduce a qualifying parenthesis, since there is no room for parentheses in a catchword. One must either accept it or discard it.