Fiona Williams - Social Policy

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FIONA WILLIAMS

polity

Copyright © Fiona Williams 2021

The right of Fiona Williams to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2021 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

101 Station Landing

Suite 300

Medford, MA 02155, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4040-2

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Williams, Fiona, Professor, author.

Title: Social policy : a critical and intersectional analysis / Fiona Williams.

Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “A leading figure in the field offers her view on key questions for social policy and its future”-- Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020053296 (print) | LCCN 2020053297 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509540389 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509540396 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509540402 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Social policy--21st century. | Social problems--History--21st century.

Classification: LCC HN18.3 .W538 2021 (print) | LCC HN18.3 (ebook) | DDC 306.09/05--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020053296LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020053297

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com

I am extremely indebted to John Clarke, Wendy Hollway and Janet Newman for their invaluable encouragement, discussions and comments on drafts of the book. My thanks go to Ruth Lister for talks and walks over the Yorkshire Dales and, for their interest, ideas and conversations, to Rianne Mahon, Greg Marston, Ann Orloff, Coretta Phillips, Jane Pillinger, Sasha Roseneil, Tom Shakespeare, Paul Stubbs and the late Bob Deacon. I am very grateful to Mike Farren for taming the bibliography. For care, love and support I thank Rowena Beaty, Jean Carabine, Emilyn Claid, Rowan Deacon, Joe Deacon, Brian and Maureen Lawrence, Gillean Paterson, and the Wharfedale Poets. Special thanks go to Yvette Huddleston and Mandy Sutter for Friday night drinks throughout the pandemic in gardens and parkland, come rain or shine, in person or in spirit.

A source of intellectual stimulation was my association as advisor with Ito Peng’s international project Gender, Migration and the World of Care and Jenny Phillimore’s cross-national Welfare Bricolage project. I thank the Compass zoom discussion groups for rich debate on political strategies and activism.

An earlier version of chapter 3was published in The Struggle for Social Sustainability , edited by Chris Deeming (Policy Press, 2021).

Finally my grateful thanks go to Jonathan Skerrett and Karina Jákupsdóttir at Polity Press for their patience and encouragement.

I dedicate this book to my grandchildren Zephyr, Bodhi, Nova, Delaney and Victor in the hope that the earth they inherit and change will be more flourishing, just and humane.

Terminology changes. This is especially the case where those social categories constituted through social relations of power and inequality are the focus of contestation. An important first principle is to respect the terms that members of social categories prefer to use to describe how they identify while recognizing that these terms will vary. For example, in the UK, disability studies uses the term ‘disabled people’ whereas many international organizations such as the United Nations refer to ‘persons with disabilities’. Another example is the acronym LGBTQI+, which refers to sexual orientation (lesbian, gay and bisexual) as well as gender identity (queer, transgender, and intersex), while ‘+’ allows for differences within, across and outside those categories. A second guideline is to avoid terms that deprive groups of their personhood, such as ‘ the poor’ or ‘ the elderly’. It is more humanizing to talk of ‘older people’ or ‘people living in (or with) poverty’. A third consideration is how to employ those general terms – race, disability, gender – which register the political significance of relations of power without homogenizing the experiences of racism, sexism, disability, and so on. This is particularly an issue for race, where, to begin with, it is important to be clear that the concept is a social construct and not based upon any biological or essentialist difference. For that reason it is often placed within quotation marks as ‘race’. Accepting its social construction enables analysis of how race is given meaning over time and place. This book is particularly concerned with processes of racialization in social politics – that is to say, how groups come to be defined as racial subjects and the unequal power relations and inequalities that contribute to and flow from these processes. The concept of racialization allows an understanding that racism operates in various ways, constructing difference through culture, religion, ethnicity, nationality, citizenship status or language, as well as intersecting with class, gender, sexuality, disability, etc.