Robert Pinker on rethinking approaches to welfare

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Offer
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Welfare Pluralism ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The 1960S

This book examines Robert Pinker's selected works on social policy and welfare pluralism, past and present. Pinker began writing on social policy in the 1960s, undertaking research work on issues such as the development of health care within the poor law. He published books devoted to social policy, including Social Theory and Social Policy (1971) and The Idea of Welfare (1979), along with various articles on complementary topics. Pinker's main concern was to rethink the study of social policy, arguing that ‘theory’ should not be confused with ideology or rhetoric. His ideas were primarily built around such themes as stigma, conditional altruism, access to land and property, giving and receiving, and migration and civil war. In Social Theory and Social Policy, Pinker highlighted the distinction in social life between ‘givers’ and ‘receivers’. He also made explicit the areas of study under the heading of ‘sociology of morals’.

Social Policy and Welfare Pluralism

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
Welfare Pluralism ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
First Time ◽  
Selection Of

This book presents a thematic selection of writings by eminent sociologist Robert Pinker on social policy and welfare pluralism, bringing together for the first time many articles that have either never before been published or are difficult to access today. Pinker began writing on social policy in the 1960s, undertaking research work on issues such as the development of health care within the poor law. He published books devoted to social policy, along with various articles on complementary topics. Pinker's main concern was to rethink the study of social policy. His ideas were primarily built around such themes as stigma, conditional altruism, access to land and property, giving and receiving, and migration and civil war. Organized by theme, the articles and chapters in this book cover such key topics as how families and communities act in defining and providing their own welfare, how attitudes to social services differ among users and nonusers, how social and political theories relate to actual policies, stigma and social welfare, the welfare state, and much more. In doing so, the volume brings to the fore the importance and continuing relevance of Pinker's work.

Robert Pinker, the Idea of Welfare and the Study of Social Policy: On Unitarism and Pluralism

2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 615-634
Author(s):  
JOHN OFFER
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Policy Studies ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Welfare Pluralism ◽  
Richard Titmuss

AbstractThis article reappraises the distinction upon which Robert Pinker has insisted since the 1970s between the heuristic and the normative dimensions of concepts and theories associated with ‘welfare’ in social policy studies, a distinction prompted by, for instance, the writings of Richard Titmuss. It discusses Pinker's differentiation of forms of study which seek to account for the likenesses and unlikenesses within and between the welfare systems of different countries from forms of study aiming to establish moral criteria by which one system of welfare can be deemed superior to another. In particular, it highlights his emphasis on the need for social policy as a subject to attend to: (a) the reality of everyday ideas of social welfare and ‘faring well’ in general; (b) how everyday ideas of ‘faring well’ are exhibited in what he has called ‘conditional altruism’, whether exercised within families, towards strangers or across nations; (c) the practices undertaken by individuals and families to attain freedom and security as well as to meet those of their needs commonly taken within social policy studies to be the components of ‘welfare’; (d) the difficulties, moral, political, social and economic, associated with Titmussian welfare unitarism, in contrast to welfare pluralism. The article thus provides a review of aspects of Pinker's many published papers as well as his influential Social Theory and Social Policy and The Idea of Welfare.

The Kennedy-Johnson Years, Social Theory, and Federal Policy in the Control of Juvenile Delinquency

1991 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 242-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnold Binder ◽  
Susan L. Polan
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Juvenile Delinquency ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Prevention And Control ◽  
Federal Policy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
And Control

The programs implemented under the social policy of the Kennedy-Johnson administrations included, as substantial components, those aimed at the prevention and control of juvenile delinquency. Influential in determining operational directions for the delinquency programs were theories particularly prominent during the 1960s-opportunity and labeling. From the perspectives of long-lasting results and continuity of policy, the approaches were not successful. There would seem, however, as much reason to question the modes of execution of theorems as the adequacy of theories to account for the failures.

‘Virtue’, ‘Citizen Character’ and ‘Social Environment’: Social Theory and Agency in Social Policy since 1830

2006 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN OFFER
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Policy Theory ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
Over Time

This article takes a fresh look at the intellectual context of the poor law in Britain and Ireland from the 1830s to the 1930s, and is focused on the different conceptions over time of the ‘service user’ as agent (drawing on Le Grand) in relation to a fundamental contrast between social theory which is ‘non-idealist’ and ‘idealist’ (drawing on Harris). It first examines the ideas of liberal tories, rather than Benthamites, in remodelling the poor law in England and introducing it to Ireland in the 1830s. Second, it explicitly draws a contrast between idealist and non-idealist social thought, relating it to the idealist nature of both the majority and minority reports on the poor law of 1909 and to the non-idealist thought of Spencer and the earlier discussion. The subsequent dominance of idealist thought in social policy theory and practice is then reviewed, considering Titmuss on agency, the ‘rediscovery’ of informal care in the 1970s as evidence of a shift to the non-idealist perspective that people can act as rational agents for their own well-being, and the resurgent influence of idealist thought on ‘New Labour’. The article concludes that links identified between ideas of agency and types of social theory since the 1830s enhance our understanding of debates today.

The President, Congress, and Federal Social Policy in the 1970s

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Amsterdam
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Gradual Transition ◽  
Jimmy Carter ◽  
The Poor ◽  
New Public ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Service Employment

Rather than a sharp break from the liberal policies of the 1960s, the 1970s constituted a period of gradual transition to the following conservative decades. Under President Jimmy Carter, the federal government continued to actively engage with the problem of poverty. Carter embraced the new Public Service Employment program, which provided 750,000 jobs for the poor. This chapter suggests an alternative view of the War on Poverty’s end.

scholarly journals International Organizations, Care and Migration: The Case of Migrant Health Care Workers

2021 ◽  
pp. 83-111
Author(s):  
Nicola Yeates ◽  
Jane Pillinger
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Migrant Health ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
Policy Field ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Care Worker

AbstractNicola Yeates and Jane Pillinger offer a much-needed summary of the historical development of health care worker migration as a global social policy field in which distinct fields of care and migration overlap. Focusing on international governmental and non-governmental organizations, the chapter draws attention to shifting constellations of ideas, actors and institutions in this field since the end of WWII to the present day. It emphasizes the necessity of a pluralistic and dynamic understanding of the field, and the role of contestation, cooperation and coordination in the unfolding of global policy, in order to better comprehend the origins of this field and its key characteristics. Emphasizing a multi-sectoral perspective and lateral connections in the construction of this global social policy field, Yeates and Pillinger explore the methodological and analytical implications of this for the study of IOs in global social policy more generally.

From gift relationships to quasi-markets: an odyssey along the policy paths of altruism and egoism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Pinker
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Blood Donors ◽  
Institutional Framework ◽  
Blood Products ◽  
Exchange Relationships ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Moral Qualities ◽  
Welfare Pluralism

In this chapter, Robert Pinker explores the conditionality and ‘mix’ of altruism and egoism and provides theoretical and rational rather than ideological or doctrinaire justifications for welfare pluralism. He begins by discussing The Price of Blood, a monograph that reviewed the arguments for and against paying blood donors and developing a role for competitive markets in the sale and purchase of blood products. Pinker challenges Richard Titmuss's analysis of the moral qualities that underpin exchange relationships in his 1970 book The Gift Relationship. He also reflects on his works Social Theory and Social Policy (1971) and The Idea of Welfare (1979) which, together with The Gift Relationship and Julian Le Grand's Motivation, Agency, and Public Policy (2003), illustrate the ways in which the normative debate about the ends and means of social policy and its entire institutional framework has changed.

scholarly journals Health Social Policy in Facing New Paradigm of Industrial Revolution 4.0

SOEPRA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 6
Author(s):  
Endro Tri Susdarwono
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Health Problems ◽  
Health Condition ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
National Productivity

Health is not a health ansich, since it is contextual, as society defines health differently, at least by four aspects : cultural pattern, cultural standard of health changes over time, technology affecting people’s health, social inequality affecting people’s health. Poor and wealthy countries have their own specific health’s issues. In poor countries, health problem are mostly famine, malaria, cholera/diaries, skin disease and infection. Health problems are mostly caused by bad environment, dirty water and bad sanitation. Health problems in rich countries, especially in the US, are mostly heart attack stroke, and obesity. There are two approaches of health social policy : the prevention and the cure. The prevention is sometimes called as the social well-being policy with objective to increase people’s health condition. Other understanding of prevention is social work, which has broader meaning that social life does not only refer to health. While the cure is commonly understood as “social health care system”, as noted by Johnson and Schwartz defined as system generally responsible  for sickness and disability. Why government shall develop health policy, create mechanism for health care, and manage health prevention ?”. The first answer is that healthy society is an assurance for national productivity, and therefore competitiveness. The second answer is that healthy society generates additional disposable income. There is no single best way to develop health policy. There are many rooms and spaces to develop creative health policy.

"Trust" and Professional Power: Towards a Social Theory of Self

Human Affairs ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Powell ◽  
Tony Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Professional Authority ◽  
Specialist Knowledge ◽  
Professional Power ◽  
The Relationship

"Trust" and Professional Power: Towards a Social Theory of SelfThis paper sets out to delve into the relationship trust and professional authority in the context of health care. Understood in its micro-political terms and conceived as impacting on individual organisational levels and the socio-political; this relationship stands at the interface of competing pressures working to produce the increasing complexity of social life. “Trust” is inextricably linked with uncertainty and complexity while professional authority rests on the specialist knowledge claimed by the range of experts and technologists that inhabit the spaces through which social life is governed and complexity managed.

Review of Health Care for the Poor and Elderly: Meeting the Challenge.

1986 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 309-309
Author(s):  
No authorship indicated
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
The Poor
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