Social Policy and Social Problem
Francis Galton and Eugenics
Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin was the founder of the pseudo-science of eugenics, which provided the intellectual infrastructure for the advocates of sterilization and related measures of social control. wrote about the genetics of human characteristics and the possibility of improving the genetic qualities of human populations first in an article published in 1865 and later in his book Hereditary Genius (1869). It was in his 1883 book, Inquiries into Human Faculty, that Galton proposed the term eugenics for these ideas, the word being constructed from the Greek to mean “good breeding.” (1883) wrote, “We greatly want a brief word to express the science of improving stock which takes cognizance of all influences that tend in however remote a degree to give the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable, than they would otherwise have had. The word eugenics would sufficiently express the idea – Eugenics was to be the study of agencies under social control that may improve or repair the racial qualities of future generations, physically or mentally” (). wrote about eugenics in a series of books and articles over a period of 45 years, from his first essay of 1865 until the year of his death, 1911. During these years he considered virtually all the ramifications of the concept. He discussed the characteristics that eugenics would seek to improve, the genetic determination of these characteristics, the genetic deterioration taking place in modern populations that eugenics would seek to reverse, and the policies that might be implemented to promote eugenics. It is with Galton’s ideas on these issues that an assessment of the concept of eugenics has to start ( 2001).
Galton proposed that the objective of eugenics should be the improvement of the genetic qualities of the population with respect to three characteristics: (1) health, (2) intelligence, and (3) what he called “moral character.” He employed the concept of health broadly to include not only the absence of disease, but also the presence of energy, vigor, and what he sometimes called “physique.” (1909) believed there would be a widespread consensus on the desirability of health in this broad sense, writing of the discussions he had had with a number of people that “some qualities such as health and vigor are thought by all to be desirable and the opposite undesirable” (). One of the most articulate and effective promoters of positive and negative eugenics is The Eugenics Society, founded in 1907. From the outset, sterilization was seen by the British eugenists as a main plank in their negative eugenics program. Galton’s negative eugenics was to be directed at curtailing the fertility of the undesirables. This social group broadly approximates to what was to become known in the last quarter of the twentieth century as the “underclass” and is characterized by low intelligence and a serious deficiency of moral sense. The eugenists inclined to root all social and physical deviance in genetic defect. Sterilization was promoted as a cheap and easy means of controlling the birth rate of offending groups. These groups range from such obvious targets as insane to any class of defectives or even more widely to what eugenists called the “social problem group”.
Eugenics and the concept of Underclass:
In the nineteenth century images of an inferior breed of humanity that were viewed as a race of men, small, ill-formed, disease-stricken and hard to kill struck the heart of the secure and respectable population. This fueled the fire of the eugenics movement. By the turn of the eighteenth century in England, the lower classes seemed to be breeding more quickly than their social and moral superiors, and this would have a deleterious effect on society as a whole. Eugenics became a means to preserve and increase the middle classes and restrict the reproduction of the lower classes. The onset of the First World War arguably demonstrated that the casual poor were a social not a biological creation. The hard core of the group of social ineffecients was considered to be constituted by the mental defectives. The Wood Report on Mental Deficiency ( 1929) states: ‘If we are to deal with the racial disaster of mental deficiency, we must deal not merely with mentally defective persons, but with the whole subnormal group from which the majority of them come.’ It was also argued that if empirically investigated, this group would be found to include:
A much larger proportion of insane persons, epileptics, paupers, criminals (especially recidivists), unemployables, habitual slum dwellers, prostitutes, inebriates and other social inefficients than would a group of families not containing mental defectives. The overwhelming majority of the families thus collected will belong to that section of the community, which we propose to term the ‘social problem’ or ‘subnormal group’. This group comprises approximately the lowest 10 per cent of the social scale of most communities. The Eugenics Society believed that the social problem group falls into two types. One is the medico-psychological, defined in terms of mental defect, and the sociological, defined in terms of poverty and slum dwelling. Falling somewhere between the two are the recidivists, unemployables, inebriates and prostitutes. According to (2001), the underclass is a new term for an old phenomenon. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this class was known in the United States and Britain as the “undeserving poor” (). These were people who were physically healthy and able to work, but who were work-shy, feckless, criminal, and violent and whose poverty was a consequence of their personal inadequacies. A distinction was drawn between these and the deserving poor who worked and were poor because they earned low wages and had large families to support. The general view was that only the deserving poor should be given charitable help; the undeserving poor needed to be discouraged and contained by social disapproval and stigma. Society provided those regarded as the undeserving poor with the essentials of accommodation and food in workhouses, which were deliberately designed to be spartan to discourage their use. The Victorians understood with a clarity that became lost in the second half of the twentieth century that rigorous social control was necessary to contain the growth of a subclass of undeserving poor. The contemporary concept of the underclass is a sanitized term for the undeserving poor and was first used by (1962).
Sterilization:
In 1934, the Brock Committee recommended voluntary sterilization as a means of avoiding the decline of the society. The recommendation aimed to restrict the social problem group to reproduce. The Eugenics Society considered voluntary sterilization an instrument with which significantly to address the problems posed by the presence of the social problem group. Eugenists argued that the member of the social problem group required sterilization because they were unfit to care for their children and because they were said to have an increased fertility. The target for sterilization included not only ‘the recognizably defective, but also the apparently normal but actually defective’; indeed, the obviously ‘defective’—helpless ‘idiots’ or schizophrenics—were viewed as less of a threat to the human race than the numerically larger, socially more threatening Lumpenproletariat which constituted the social problem group. The Committee concluded that there was a population of a quarter of a million who were potentially candidates for sterilization. It believed this group both personally unhappy and a source of malaise for the rest of society. In a memorable phrase, the Committee was excited by the ‘dead weight of social inefficiency and individual misery’ implied by the ‘existence in our midst of over a quarter of a million mental defectives and of a far larger number of persons who without being certifiably defective is mentally subnormal’. This language is hardly neutral, though it is consistent with extant eugenic assumptions.
Alternative Anti Poverty Policies
Historically, the closest approximation to a clear set of policy ideas and administrative practices that dealt with poverty is in the thinking underlying the Victorian Poor Law. Able-bodied adults were expected to earn their maintenance through the wages they earned from their employment. If they were unwilling to seek or accept work on the open labour market, then they, and their dependants, would be maintained in the institutional setting of a local workhouse, in conditions that were orderly and regulated, but were intended to be stigmatising to the inmate and a deterrent to others ( 1998).
Social Security
(1942) hoped that his ideas would provide a complete and acceptable alternative to the traditions of the Poor Law. He recommended the development of a social security system, based upon social insurance, to which everyone would belong; the payment of regular National Insurance contributions, deducted at source from wages, would earn an entitlement to a range of benefits without the need for stigmatising and administratively costly tests of individual need, merit or means. The deterrent principles of the Poor Law would be replaced by rights of citizenship, earned through membership of, and contribution to, the state system of social security.
The social security system that has developed since the 1940s includes income-replacement measures, some long-term, (such as pensions for the elderly), others with short-term interruptions in earning power, (because of, for example, sickness or temporary unemployment). It also includes income-enhancement measures, such as family credit (which supplements the wages of those with family responsibilities but with very low earnings), and child benefit (paid to all mothers with dependent children). There is also a range of other contingency benefits paid to those with identified special needs, such as disabled people. The very existence of this system has given millions of people a modicum of income security (1998).
Full Employment
Most people keep themselves and their families out of poverty through working and earning. Most people want to work, not only for the money they can earn, but also because of the satisfactions they gain from shared activity, and from the social networks that work opens up. This is true even when the job itself is arduous, or where working conditions are hard, even dangerous. Indeed it is precisely in these working environments that social solidarity is most marked. For many people their own sense of worth and self-esteem is bound up with their jobs, and with the social contribution they are thus able to make, as well as with the financial rewards they may receive (1998).
Redistribution of Wealth
If it is clear that the unregulated operation of the market leads inter alia to intolerable inequalities that, for the victims, are positively harmful, even life-threatening, and for everyone are socially disfiguring and ultimately destructive, then consideration must be given to finding more effective ways to reduce poverty and inequality. Internationally, this will require economic and trading relationships that are not one-sided, but that bring benefits to all. This means international co-operation to reduce the risks of war between nations, and long-term strategic international collaboration to attack epidemic disease, and to enhance the living standards and quality of life of the most impoverished populations of the world. Nationally there needs to be serious discussion of both the creation and the distribution of wealth and well-being. Currently unfashionable themes, such as wages and income policy, must be reconsidered, even if only to be rejected as undesirable or unworkable, as must a coherent taxation policy. The aim must be to enable the largest number of people to become self-supporting through their own adequately paid work, with protection for those too young, too old or too ill to hold down jobs (1998).
Social Welfare and the Poor Law:
The Poor law is considered as the foundation of Social Work in Britain. The Poor Law was the system for the provision of social security in operation in England and the rest of the United Kingdom from the 16th century until the Welfare State’s establishment in the 20th century. The Poor Law classified the poor in three groups. The impotent poor have no capacity to look after themselves or go to work. They included the sick, the infirm, the elderly, and orphans. The able-bodied poor are people who were unable to find work either because of long-term unemployment in the area or lack of skills. The vagrants or beggars, also called the idle poor, were considered those who could go to work but had refused to. They were seen as potential criminals and apt to do mischief. Several Provisions were made during the Liberal Government to provide social services without the stigma of the Poor Law. Part of the amendments of the Poor Law was Social Welfare Provision. Social Welfare provision refers to any government program that seeks to provide a minimum level of income or other support for disadvantaged groups such as the poor.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment