Unit 3: (Week 05 & Week 06) Social Problems and Policy Responses

Social policies are sometimes represented as responses to social problems. Social issues become ‘problems’ because they need to be solved: some kind of response is called for. Understanding problems is important for social policy for a fairly obvious reason: it helps to understand what the problem is in order to respond to it. Part of the difficulty here is that people understand the issues differently.  It is not always the case that people agree about what constitutes a problem, thus responses to these problems requires some caution. This unit aims to explore this contested domain of 'Social Problems and Policy Responses'. Following sub topics are covered in this unit:

Week 5: Lecture 5

  • Sociology of social problem
  • Development of social problem
  • The social context of social problems 

Week 6: Lecture 6

  • Social movements
  • Responding to social problem
  • Individual and collective approaches

Required Readings:

Spicker, P. (2014), Social Policy: Theory and Practice. Policy Press: UK 

 Alcock et al. (2012). The Students’ Companion to Social Policy. West Sussex, Wiley‐Blackwell. 

 

Download Files

problem-response.pdf (0.18 MB )

social-policy-theory-and-practice.pdf (5.12 MB )