Social Policy

• Plans, actions and laws put it place by the government, which are created to try and improve society or tackle social issues.
• Functionalism

  ❏Sociological research should help the government create policies that help society to function❏They tackle on issue at a time with ‘piecemeal sociological engineering’, such as creating a policy on improving equal opportunity in education
• Functionalism

  ❏Too optimistic

  ❏Marxists criticise this piecemeal approach, they argue that issues in wider society need to be tackled before specific issues can be addressed
• Marxism

  ❏Social policy legitimises the ideological - the welfare state masks capitalism by giving it a ‘caring face’.❏The NHS maintains the labour force for further exploitation - e.g. the NHS keeps workers fit enough to work.❏It’s a means of preventing revolution - when class conflict threatens capitalism. E.g. the creation of the welfare state after the war was a way of making sure the WC did not rise up & oppose capitalism.❏Therefore sociology should focus on removing capitalism
• Liberal Feminists


  ❏Liberal feminists are too optimistic and more extreme change is needed.❏This could be supported by the failure of policies such as the equal pay act
• ❏Radical and marxist feminists believe the state perpetuates women’s subordination through social policy.
• ❏Ignore the positive changes that have and can be made through social policy.❏They criticise social policy because it is reformist rather than revolutionary.
• New Right

  Social policy is bad for society because it encourages dependency (Eg. welfare benefits encourage lone-parenthood)

  The government should have minimal involvement in people’s lives.

  Social policy should only exist to reduce the need for them in future
• New Right

  ❏Their research is often biased and/or lacks evidence.Sometimes there is a need for large government involvement
• Postmodernism


  Sociological research doesn’t provide ‘the truth’ because there’s no such thing as ‘the truth’. It just provides a possible truth.❏Therefore creating social policies would be pointless because it aims to fix something which may not exist.