7.4 Conclusion Despite their very considerable differences, and the very different kinds of evidence they draw upon, it is clear from these brief exchanges between theoretical frameworks that ‘the personal’ and social policies meet and remake one another in multiple and complex ways. Making welfare directly conditional upon work represents an unusually focused response to particular perceptions of personal lives, and the material circumstances and social conducts associated with them. And as policies be
6 A short biography of Mandy: comparing theories about work and welfare Mandy's biography has some
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
6 Further resources Gilleard and Higgs (2000) more fully develop some of the ideas explored by Giddens (1994) in their useful and comprehensive introduction to post-structural readings of older age. Elder's (1977) life history account offers compelling insights into the intersections of class and gender through a socialist lens, and represents an early and interesting example of the life history and biographical method. Chamberlayne et al. (2000) provide comprehensive and thoughtful insights into biographical me
5 Conclusion As we have seen, pensions are both inherently personal and political. Pensions and other social policies are heavily implicated in shaping the way older people experience their personal lives, and the way in which these personal lives have become constructed as ‘other’. Providing a means by which older lives could be ‘divided up’ and divided out of the domain of paid employment, and reconstituted through the arena of public and private welfare, this process is also informed by differe
4.1 Introduction The 1970s marked a period in which the cessation of the ‘normal’ period of full-time employment at 60 or 65 years had become the accepted orthodoxy. The personal lives of older people had thus become constituted outside the domain of paid employment and within the arena of public and private welfare. As we illustrated in the preceding section, pensions, organised around fixed ages of retirement based on chronological measurements of age, played a crucial role in this process. Further, as
2.1 Introduction In this section, we explore how experiences of being an older person in the nineteenth century were constituted through the operation of the 1834 New Poor Law Act and the processes of industrial change that ran parallel to it. We examine the way this constructed the lives of older people as ‘other’ to the emergent ‘normal’ (adult, relatively youthful, male paid worker) and trace its legacy to reveal points of continuity and change.
References 3.5 Birth control The fertility decline in Britain was not the direct result of social policy aimed at reducing the birth rate. The deliberate use of birth control was widely condemned as unnatural and immoral by the medical profession, the church and a wide range of conventional opinion, even though doctors and vicars were the first to limit their own families. There was widespread ignorance about the mechanics of human reproduction and how to control it, but for those in the know there were many methods of c 4.3.2 Network externalities and increasing returns to scale The reader should ask herself the following question: Would I subscribe to a telephone service knowing that nobody else subscribes to a telephone service? The answer should be: Of course not! What use will anyone have from having a telephone when there is no one to talk to? (Shy, 2001, p. 3) The uncertainty surrounding production in the introductory phase, which places such importance on 4.3.1 Knowledge and learning in the industry life cycle In Section 3 we described technology as ‘given’ to firms. Now let us reflect on that idea. We can think of technology as consisting of bodies of knowledge necessary to produce artefacts. An appreciation of the importance of knowledge to economic activity is not new, for it was recognised by the eminent economist Alfred 4.2.1 Figure 9a: A selection of 35 mm SLR film cameras 2.1 Industry and markets: what do we mean? Sales of digital cameras have overtaken traditional 35 mm cameras for the first time. According to monthly figures collated by national electric and photo retailer Dixons, digital camera sales out Learning outcomes After studying this unit you should be able to: appreciate the importance of technological change, costs of production and consumer preferences to the changing organisation of production; understand the relation between the quantity demanded of a good and its price as represented by the demand curve; understand economic models of the relation between firms’ costs and output; analyse the role of technology and costs in influencing in 4.3 Live fast, die young Both the automobile and PC industries were characterised by a great deal of turbulence in the first 20 to 30 years of their existence. In both cases, many new firms entered the industry, introduced new varieties of the product, and soon left the industry, leaving only a few dozen firms to compete during the growth phase. By 1926 only 33 per cent of the firms that had started producing automobiles during the previous 22 years had survived. In the case of PCs, by 1999 only 20 per cent of the fi Learning outcomes On completion of this unit, you should be able to: identify criteria to evaluate whether prison works. Learning outcomes After studying this unit you should be able: define social construction and social constructionism. 1.1 Note taking in this context Although the audio file included in this unit was designed to compliment the D218 Social Policy: Welfare, Power and Diversity Open University course its contents are still relevant to anyone wishing to improve their understanding of note taking. The audio file, however, uses specific examples associated with the Social Sciences. The audio file was recorded in 1998. John Clarke discusses the value and best ways of note taking with OU colleagues Esther Saraga and Gerry Mooney. Acknowledgements The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions). This content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence Courtesy of banlon1964: http://www.flickr.com/photos/banlon1964/19562661/ Gr 1.5.7 Referencing We mentioned above that we need to reference sources to ensure we abide by copyright legislation. But there is another reason we need to give accurate references to items we use – so we can share it. Consider this scenario. A friend says they’ve just read an interesting article where Joshua Schachter, founder of Delicious has spoken about why it isn’t a faceted search system, and you should read it. How would you go about finding it? Would you start looking in a news database, a s
Case study: Digital outsells film
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