'Discuss the contention that ‘social policy constructs personal lives.'
In order to assess whether social policy constructs personal lives this essay will focus on
exploring the 'mutual constitution' of personal lives and social policy through the topic of
'work' and through the social divisions of gender, age and class. With a concentration on
how women’s personal lives have been constructed in social policy and how this has been
experienced through personal narratives. We will use a range of theoretical positions to
inform our discussion. Feminism, Gramcian-marxist and post-structuralism will provide the
main lenses through which we will explore this relationship between the 'personal' and
social policy.
In this essay we will use the term 'personal' to describe both the ontological experience
(Gunaratnam 2004, p.114) of individuals but also in the context of wider social relations
where the personal aspects of ones life have a shared commonality amongst others of
similar social standing that are tied to social structures in a collective way. Lewis and Fink
(2004) describe how social policy systems ‘define the boundaries of the personal; construct
and value its contents; identify the areas of legitimate intervention’. (Course Companion,
p.33). Therefore what is considered personal is to some extent a construction of the norms
and restrictions of the political ideologies of its time as will be later demonstrated. We will
also problematise the boundaries of the personal usually associated with the 'private'
realm of life and illustrate how that which is thought of as 'private' and 'public' are not
clearly demarcated and intersect through social policy. Our definition of social policy will
include social policy and welfare practice and will be explored at the level of the state
(through social policy documentation, at the level of welfare practice/discourse and
(through service provision) and at the individual/collective level as a response to...