Relative Poverty, British Social Policy Writing and Public Experience

an article by Andrew Dunn University of Lincoln, UK) published in Social Policy and Society Volume 16 Issue 3 (July 2017)

Abstract

Relative poverty, a concept developed by left-wing social scientists, categorises as ‘poor’ those who fall seriously behind normal nationwide material standards. This article argues that the widespread view that the word ‘poverty’ means ‘relative poverty’, which in left-dominated social policy academia often extends to implying that those who do not define poverty this way are necessarily misguided, has led to an incomplete portrayal of poorer British people's lived experience.

The article examines published empirical work, before presenting findings from British Social Attitudes surveys and interviews with forty unemployed Jobseeker's Allowance claimants and thirty employed people.

Both the existing and new findings exposed aspects of public attitudes and experience which resonate with unanswered academic criticisms of defining poverty as relative poverty.

These public contributions have tended to be glossed over or treated dismissively by social policy authors, despite them attaching importance to Left-friendly aspects of poorer people's experience and attitudes.

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Sen and the art of educational maintenance: evidencing a capability, as opposed to an effectiveness, approach to schooling

an article by Anthony Kelly (University of Southampton, UK) published in Cambridge Journal of Education Volume 42 Issue 3 (September 2012)

Abstract

There are few more widely applied terms in common parlance than ‘capability’.

It is used (inaccurately) to represent everything from the aspiration to provide opportunity to notions of innate academic ability, with everything in between claiming apostolic succession to Amartya Sen, who (with apologies to Aristotle) first developed the concept.

This paper attempts to warrant an adaptation of Sen’s capability theory to schooling and schooling policy, and to proof his concepts in the new setting using research involving 100 pupils from five English secondary schools and a schedule of questions derived from the capability literature.

The findings suggest that a capability approach can provide an alternative to the dominant Benthamite school effectiveness paradigm, and can offer a sound theoretical framework for understanding better the assumed relationship between schooling and well-being.

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