References 4.1.4 Summary Identity is based on being the same as some people and different from others. Identities are constructed in relation to place. Difference is unequally weighted and can create categories of outsiders. Individuals and groups have to negotiate both the uncertainties of social change and the constraints of inequality. Introduction This course looks at identity, focusing upon the individual's perception of self in relation to others; the relationships between multi-ethnicity, cultural diversity and identity; and the effects of inequality and social class upon identity. It also looks at inequality and social class as they relate to perceived identity. This OpenLearn course provides a sample of Level 1 study in Author(s): Keep on learning   There are more than 800 courses on OpenLearn for you to Family meal photographs: 1930s and 1990s As a final exercise, look at the photographs given in Author(s): 4.2 Nation and identity Yet even if photographs are an ‘evidential trace’ of the reality they depict, they are far from perfect in this respect. Because a photograph could always have been made differently it cannot be ‘the whole truth’ about something (Becker, 1985, p. 101). If we think about photographs designed to inform (i.e. rather than art photographs in which questions of truth or reality are really not at issue) it will be obvious that the photographer's choices have determined what sort of ‘eviden 2.2 Theories, documents and knowledge Documentary evidence is often messy and inconsistent, and even where it seems to be ‘factual’ (for example in the form of official records) its precise meaning in terms of wider social processes is far from clear. There is uncertainty about what it means, as well as the representation of uncertainty and diversity in the images. In every case, the meaning of the evidence is dependent on interpretation, that is, the part of the theory we employ to understand what is going on. Acknowledgements This free course is an adapted extract from the course DD305 Personal lives and social policy, which is currently out of presentation. The material acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) This content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCom Keep on learning   There are more than 800 courses on OpenLearn for you to 8 Further resources There is a wide range of material available on welfare to work. Peck (2001) is undoubtedly the definitive study in terms of policy development in the UK and the USA. Major sources of data on all UK New Deal programmes are on the Department for Work and Pensions, DWPwebsite. (Accessed 25 March 2008) Another source is the more analytical Working Brief series which 7.2 The importance of the market and the state: neo-liberalism and neo-Marxism To begin with neo-liberalism, it is a key premise that the market is the primary means of coordinating economic activity, including the allocation of people to jobs. This assumes that rational actors make judgements about their earnings prospects to decide their best options – training to improve employability, as in Mandy's case, or accepting subsistence-level earnings, as Tamarla Owens did. To neo-liberals, both Mandy and Tamarla Owens would have used information they gleaned in their eve 6 A short biography of Mandy: comparing theories about work and welfare 5 Personal Advisers, personal lives What is clear from a wide range of New Deal evaluations (Dawson et al., 2000; O'Connor et al., 2001; Lewis et al., 2000) is that PAs provide a critical interface between the programme and its clients. The prominence of ‘personal’ in their title carries several meanings. Clients are allocated to PAs on a one-to-one basis, with the implication of a relationship, and of continuity. It also implies personal advice, which crosses the boundary of the informational into the distinctive needs of 4.2 Neo-liberal interpretations of welfare to work Neo-liberalism begins from an emphasis on the free market, individual freedom and responsibility. Neo-liberal approaches use the ‘less eligibility’ principle. Welfare is thought to distort ‘free’ markets, because it either removes incentives to work, or drives up entry-level pay to rates that are not economical for employers. Neo-liberals tend to advocate what Peck (2001) terms the ‘hard’ Labour Force Attachment model of working for welfare, which places claimants directly 3 Personal agency, participation and refusal: gathering evidence While it is difficult to exaggerate the impact of this construction of ‘welfare dependency’, particularly in the USA, this construction does not go unchallenged. A very wide range of groups of people who are poor or who are subject to discrimination succeed in shaping welfare arrangements by evading, refusing or resisting policies. Historically, there are numerous examples of collective agency in resisting and reshaping welfare policies. In the USA, Fox Piven and Cloward (1977) trace the 2.2 Rationales for conditional entitlement to welfare The contingent relation between work and welfare has moved – unevenly over time and place – between extremes of conditionality and separation, with long periods of more complex relations that varied for different social groups and between localities. Early in the twenty-first century, in the UK and the USA, there is a powerful trend towards a return to the conditional nature of welfare with which state involvement began. What underlies this pattern of the rise and fall of unconditional en Learning outcomes After studying this course, you should be able to: outline the ways in which the relations between work and welfare are made and remade in different places and at different times explain how these changing relations contribute to constituting welfare subjects describe how welfare provision that is connected to work affects the lives of different welfare subjects in different and unequal ways assess the relative influences and effects Acknowledgements This free course is an adapted extract from the course DD305 Personal lives and social policy, which is currently out of presentation. The following material is contained in Work: Personal Lives and Social Policy (ed. Gerry Mooney) 2004, published in association with The Policy Press © The Open University, 2004. This publication forms part of the Open University course DD305, Personal Lives and Social Policy. Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (se References
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