Sociology and social policy

• Social policy


  Focuses on social problems and how social institutions respond to them
• Social policy


  • Involves research to inform government and other organizations, and influence their response to social issues
• Practical benefits of studying sociology (according to Giddens)

  • Understanding the world
  • Heightened awareness of the needs of individual groups
  • Increased personal knowledge of ourselves and others
• Marxists believe that sociology should be used to promote social change
• Social policy


  The area of government that tries to help people
• Social policies are government policies that deal with the well-being of citizens
• Social policy


  The academic subject that studies this area of government
• Sources of new ideas for social policy

  • Governments
  • Political parties
  • Pressure groups
• Social policy varies with the party in power in the UK, most likely either Labour or the Conservatives
• Organisations that conduct research into social policy issues

  • Government agencies (e.g. departments of social security and health)
  • Charities (e.g. Joseph Rowntree Foundation)
  • University departments
• Governments use quantitative statistical social research to discover basic social trends, and qualitative social research to understand the causes of social problems and help find policies to address them
• The link between sociology and social policy was particularly close in the case of the sociologist Frank Field, who was a researcher and policy-maker in the Labour government between 1997 and 2000
• Feminist views on the relationship between sociology and social policy

  • Some feminists believe sociology can have beneficial results for women
  • Others believe sociology can reinforce the status of women and be used to oppress them
• The creation of the Welfare State after the Second World War gave many the impression that poverty had been largely eradicated in the UK by the late 1960s
• Empirical evidence from Peter Townsend (1979) and Mack and Lansley (1985) showed that poverty was a hidden problem
• Sociologists then did more research to come up with theories of why certain groups were more vulnerable to poverty
• Social Democrats blamed the system, and Third Way thinkers emphasised citizenship as a two-way responsibility between the citizen and the state
• These debates, plus empirical data, provided social policy about welfare, poverty and inequality
• Weber's view on the role of sociology

  Sociology should not tell decision-makers how to fix society, but provide them with facts and information to work out the best way of doing so
• Some argue that policy should come after decent research, as there is a danger of policy being made based on flawed assumptions
• Postmodernist Zygmunt Bauman (1998) believes that sociology should inform social research, and that society may get worse if sociological theories about poverty and welfare aren't heeded
• However, some postmodernists argue that critical methods of sociological research could be used to conduct appropriate research, rather than reinforcing dominant narratives that lead to oppression