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Culture and social policy: a developing field of study
Author(s) -
van Oorschot Wim
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
international journal of social welfare
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.664
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1468-2397
pISSN - 1369-6866
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2397.2006.00451.x
Subject(s) - field (mathematics) , perspective (graphical) , sociology , positive economics , social policy , welfare state , state (computer science) , relation (database) , social science , epistemology , political science , politics , economics , law , mathematics , philosophy , algorithm , database , artificial intelligence , computer science , pure mathematics
This article takes the increased interest in the relation between culture and social policy as a starting point, and discusses how this increasing attention can be understood as the result of contextual factors such as economic, social and academic trends. It discusses these matters and at the same time reviews briefly some of the main findings of studies that contain a cultural perspective in analysing social policy. A second issue concerns the specific character of cultural perspectives in such analyses. Thus far, most studies in the field have been guided by a notion of culture as consisting of the values, norms and beliefs of welfare state actors. Recently, this notion has been questioned by advocates of the so‐called ‘cultural turn’, who suggest that a radical change in the cultural analysis of social policy is required. The article concludes with a discussion of their claims.