4.2 Moving towards greater equality in older age? Old Labour, pension reform and the continuity of a The mid 1970s heralded a period in which the Labour Government introduced a series of reforms in the pension arena that potentially promised a more secure retirement for older, working-class people. Stripping away some of the patriarchal assumptions that had informed the Beveridgean settlement, the 1975 Social Security Pensions Act promised particular benefits for women and other low-paid workers. For example, the dual aspects of many women's lives – involving both unpaid and paid work –
3.1 Introduction In this section we look at the way in which the personal lives of older people have been socially constructed through pensions policies over the last century. As we saw above, welfare policies and changes in employment in the latter part of the nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth century constructed the personal lives of older people as ‘other’ to the emergent normal of relatively younger, ‘independent’ paid workers. Here, we explore the way pensions policies during the
2.2 Activity 1: Bob Ballantyne electrician – Piper survivor – community education worker Acknowledgements The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) and is used under licence. This extract is taken from D218: Social policy: welfare, power and diversity, produced by the BBC on behalf of the Open University. © 2007 The Open University. References 7.3 Summary The idea of discourse alerts us to a number of issues about the social construction of social problems. It suggests that we need to look beyond competing theories or perspectives to look at how knowledge is organised around central themes that allow the different theories to compete. Discourses define what the problem is, and it is because theories share the definition of the problem that they can compete and argue. Perspectives that start somewhere else – or do not share the definition of 5.2 From social construction to social constructionism The notion of social construction, we have argued, is fundamental to a social science approach to the analysis of social problems. However, some authors have developed the notion further into a more focused perspective, which may be called social constructionism. This perspective starts by emphasising one essential feature of human societies – the role of language. In human societies, action is preceded by understanding and intention. We intend our actions to have meaningful outcomes 2.2 Summary Social scientists need to stand back, to view common sense or ‘what everybody knows’ from the perspective of a stranger. Common sense about social problems such as poverty involves a process of social construction, drawing on a repository or storeroom of underlying theories and assumptions. Common sense has been built up over time, carrying with it traces of earlier understandings which are also brought into discussions of new issues and debates. Common sense is itself divided, reflecting 1.2 From private trouble to public issue: the emergence of negative equity In the housing market, owner-occupiers have occasionally sold their property at a price below that which they paid for it. In the early 1990s, large numbers of property owners in the UK (and particularly in south-east England) found that the market value of their houses and flats had fallen below the original purchase price. A private trouble emerged as a public issue. It was named, and became the problem of ‘negative equity’. This was identified as a widespread problem rather than a matt Introduction Anti-social behaviour, homelessness, drugs, metal illness: all problems in today’s society. But what makes a problem social? This unit will help you to discover how these issues are identified, defined, given meaning and acted upon. You will also look at the conflicts within social science in this area. This material is from our archive and is an adapted extract from Social Policy: Welfare, Power and Diversity (D218) which is no longer taught by The Open University. If you want An introduction to e-commerce and distributed applications Protocols in multi-service networks 2.1 Numbers The supermarket example discussed in Section 1 involves various forms of data that a computer may need to handle. Some of these, such as numbers and characters, are simple but fundamental. Other forms of data, such as sequences, involve more complicated structure. In this section, we will introduce sets, which are a variety of data collection that is different from sequences. But first we will look more carefully at numbers and characters. When developing software we need to dist 7.2 Adding 2's complement integers The leftmost bit at the start of a 2's complement integer (which represents the presence or absence of the weighting −128) is treated in just the same way as all the other bits in the integers. So the rules given at the start of Section 7.1 for adding unsigned integers can be used. 4.3.1 Confidentiality, integrity and availability To preserve the value of an information asset, an organisation needs to sustain simultaneously its scarcity and its shareability within their respective regions. This is the critical high-level information security goal for any information asset; it is the entire rationale of an information security management system. To maintain the security of an information asset, an organisation must: either make the information asset unavailable in i 2.7 How to reference sources You have seen how easy it is to find what what you want on the Web. When you quote any information or use any images that you have not written or created yourself it is important to ensure that you reference the source of the quote or image. This is to show that you are not trying to pass off someone else's work as your own, and to enable your reader, should they wish, to access the source of that quote. 2.5 Bookmarking websites Most browsers allow you to keep a record of links to websites that you have found useful. These are called ‘Bookmarks’ in Firefox and ‘Favorites’ in Internet Explorer, and may have other names, such as a ‘Hot List’, in other browsers. For convenience I've chosen to call them bookmarks. Browsers usually offer the facility for organising the bookmarks into folders and sub-folders so that you can keep track of them as your collection grows. You may well have a collection of boo 2.1 Introduction In this section we will cover the following topics: browsing for information on the Web; searching for information on the Web; using search engines; bookmarking websites; finding images on the Web; how to reference sources. Some of the material in this section has been drawn from Safari, an interactive website provided by the Open University Library. 7.2 An overview of RFID The technology behind RFID is relatively straightforward and has been in use in some form for many years. You may have even used it yourself or seen it in use – for example in a ‘proximity card’ entry system in buildings, and in pet identification where a microchip is inserted just below an animal's skin. But you are likely to hear a lot more about it in the future and increasingly to see it deployed. This is because, at the time of writing (early 2005), the technology is receiving a st 2.3 ICTs and you Sometimes it's useful to stop and think a bit about your own experiences and focus on your own views. This can help you understand issues in more depth. For example, when studying the impact of ICTs on everyday life, your own experiences are a useful resource.
What is ‘e-commerce’? This unit will look at typical application areas including the internet, supply chain management and online auctions. It will also help you to understand the underlying technologies used to implement e-commerce applications before looking at some of the problems that can be encountered when developing distributed e-commerce systems.Author(s):
The internet, like the telephone system which preceded it, depends for its existence on communications networks. This unit examines these networks as the means of interconnecting devices so that two-way communication is possible. Examining protocols like HTTP, TCP/IP and ATM as well as the OSI reference model, it provides and overview of the topic for learners who have significant prior knowledge of the subject.Author(s):
Example 7
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Activity 4
