Postgraduate Course: Governing the Social: International Perspectives (PGSP11365)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Welfare states are central sites for organising, reproducing and changing social relations in modern societies. In the context of global and internal pressures welfare states are undergoing fundamental changes. What do current welfare reforms tell us about the shifting boundaries between the state and the market, between the public and the private sphere, and about changing understandings of the appropriateness of state intervention, freedom and control of individuals, families and social groups in society?
This course aims to broaden students' understanding of the changing governance of social issues and social relations in the age of globalization by introducing them to theoretical perspectives and academic debate from a variety of disciplinary fields. The course has three objectives: to introduce students to a series of critical approaches to social policy and politics such as poststructuralist, feminist, anti-racist, or advocacy-oriented perspectives. These approaches tend to originate in other disciplinary fields than Social Policy, such as critical political economy, sociology or cultural studies and therefore often remain outside the scope of Social Policy courses. A second objective is to develop students' capacity to provide a holistic analysis of the contemporary governance of social issues, highlighting potential contradictions: how state provision and intervention can empower as well as coerce citizens, create social opportunities as well as situations of exploitation, foster social cohesion as well as create or deepen social cleavages; and in turn how citizens, organisations and social movements shape, subvert or resist social policies. Thirdly, the course aims at developing students¿ ability for critical and independent thinking about contemporary policy issues. The first two objectives are met by introducing students to academic debate around a series of pertinent themes on social state intervention and citizens¿ responses and mobilization in the context of global socio-economic changes. The third objective is addressed through a series of individual and group exercises, both in oral and written form, and guided group discussion. |
| Course description |
INTRODUCTION
1. Introduction: Contemporary governance of social issue and social relations
2. State welfare, freedom and coercion: the enabling state, the panoptic state and supranational governance
THE STATE, THE MARKET AND THE INDIVIDUAL
3. Shifting boundaries between state and market in the age of globalization: turning citizens into consumers?
In focus: the marketisation of social services
4. Globalization and welfare markets: opportunity or exploitation?
In focus: Care industries, care migration and care chains
5. Debating session with group presentations:
a) Voice and choice in school education: is there a trade off?
b) Who should pay for unhealthy living: the NHS or the individual?
THE STATE, THE FAMILY AND THE INDIVIDUAL
6. State interventions, families and children
In focus: from social engineering to social investment
7. Subversive citizens, subversive families: adapting to new social policy landscapes, subversion and opting out.
8. Debating session with group presentations:
a. Do parents need educating?
b. Children: public good or life-style choice?
THE STATE, THE SOCIAL AND CIVIL SOCIETY
9. State welfare, power and empowerment:
In focus: Political mobilization and social claims-making (examples: feminist movements, global social justice movements)
10. Advocacy and user engagement (example: disability movements)
11. Debating session with group presentations: Social agendas for the future, international organisations and alternative global players
Examples: World Bank, OECD, EU, Attac, Occupy, Degrowth
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Students will develop an understanding of critical theoretical approaches to the study of social policy and governance in modern societies in an international perspective.
- Students will develop the ability to apply theoretical perspectives to a variety of policy issues.
- Students will acquire an enhanced ability to critically assess current policy issues with respect to political processes and social outcomes.
- Students will develop a range of cross-cutting and transferable skills, including critically analysing evidence and using this to develop and support a line of argument, presenting information visually and orally, engaging in group discussion, cooperating in team work, commenting on public debates, communicating with different audiences, searching for academic literature and writing an extended essay.
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Reading List
Annetts, Jason et al. (2009) 'Protest and Principle in State Welfare', in Annetts et al. Understanding Social Welfare Movements, Bristol: The Policy Press, Chp. 1.
Ball, Stephen J (2012) Global Education Inc. New Policy Networks and the Neo-Liberal Imaginary, Routledge: London.
Barnes, Marian and Prior, David (eds.) (2009): Subversive Citizens. Power, Agency and Resistance in Public Services, Bristol: The Policy Press.
Boltanski, L. & Chiapello, E. (2005) The New Spirit of Capitalism, London: Verso.
Clarke, John et al (2007) Creating Citizen-Consumers. Changing Public and Changing Public Services, London: Sage.
Crouch, Colin (2003) Commercialisation or Citizenship. Education Policy and the Future of Public Services, London.
Hay, C & Wincott, D (2012) The Political Economy of European Welfare Capitalism, Plagrave Macmillan.
Della Porta, D (2007) The Global Justice Movement: cross-national and transnational perspectives.
Donzelot, Jacques (1980) The Policing of Families, London: Hutchison University Press.
Ferge, Zsuzsa (1997) 'The changed welfare paradigm: the individualization of the social', Social Policy & Administration, 31(1): 20-44.
Fraser, Nancy (1995) 'From Redistribution to recognition? Dilemmas of justice in a post-socialist age', New Left Review.
Foucault, M. (1980) 'The eye of power', in: Gordon, C. (ed.) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, New York: Pantheon.
Foucault, M. (1979) Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Gould, Arthur (1988) Conflict and Control in Welfare Policy: The Swedish Experience, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Hay, Colin & Rosamond, Ben (2002) 'Globalization, European integration and the discursive cosntruction of economic imperatives', Journal of European Public Policy 9(2), 147-167.
Jenson, Jane (2010) 'Diffusing ideas for after neo-liberalism: the social investment perspective in Europe and Latin America', Global Social Policy, 10(1): 59-84.
Jihye Chun, Jennifer (2008) 'The limits of labor exclusion: redefining the politics of split labor markets under globalization', Critical Sociology¸34(4): 433-452.
Kooiman, Jan (1999) 'Social-political governance. Overview, reflections and design', Public Management: international journal of research and theory, 1(1): 67-92.
Lister, Ruth (2006) 'Investing in the citizen-workers of the future: Transformations in citizenship and the state under New Labour', Social Policy & Administration, 37(5): 427-443.
Miller, Peter and Rose, Nikolas (228) Governing the Present, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Mount, Ferdinand The Subversive Family. An Alternative History of Love and Marriage, The Free Press: Toronto.
Myrdal, Alva (1945/1968) Nation and Family: the Swedish Experiment in Democratic Family and Population Policy, Cambridge: MIT Press., chps 1 and 8
Peters, B Guy (2004) 'Governance and public bureaucracy: New forms of democracy or new forms of control?', The Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration, 26(1): 3-15.
Polanyi, Karl (1957) The Great Transformation. The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Beacon Press, chp. 21: 'Freedom in a Complex Society'
Pollock, A. & Price, D (2011) 'The final frontier: The UK¿s new coalition government turns the English NHS over to the global health care market', Health Sociology Review, 20: 294-305.
Pringle, Rosemary and Watson, Sophie (1992) 'Women's interests and the post-structuralist state', in Michele Barrett and Anne Phillips (eds.): Destablizing Theory. Contemporary Feminist Debates, Stanford: Polity Press, 53-73.
Prout, Alan (2000) 'Chidren's participation: Control and self-realisation in British late modernity', Children & Society, 14: 304-315.
Rose, Nikolas (1996) 'The death of the social? Refiguring the territory of government', Economy and Society, 25(3): 327-356.
Rose, Nikolas (2000) 'Government and control', British Journal of Criminology, 40: 321-339.
Sandel, M (2012) What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, London: Penguin Books.
Stehr, N. (2008) Moral Markets: How Knowledge and Affluence Change Consumers and Products, Boulder: Paradigm.
Storey, Andy (2008) 'The ambiguity of resistance: opposition to neoliberalism in Europe', Capital & Class, 32:55-85.
Taylor-Gooby, Peter (2008) 'The New Welfare Settlement in Europe', European Societies, 10(1): 3-24. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Ingela Naumann
Tel: (0131 6)51 3869
Email: |
Course secretary | Miss Jade Birkin
Tel: (0131 6)51 1659
Email: |
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