Understanding Human Need 2e. Dean, Hartley

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СКАЧАТЬ Both kinds of meaning may in some way connect with ‘thicker’ conceptions of need and the eudaimonic elements of human well-being. What I have caricatured as socially reformist meanings have roots in an acknowledgement that though human beings may individually be economic actors, they are also necessarily social beings. The roots of such meanings may therefore lie in an either implicit or explicit form of reformist solidaristic humanism (see discussion in Chapter 2). Paternalistic meanings may have roots – once again, implicitly or explicitly – in a more conservative form of solidaristic humanism, and a compassionate (possibly religiously inspired) rather than an authoritarian moral concern for the needs of weaker or wayward members of society. We shall consider briefly some of the philosophical underpinnings that may attach to such meanings, but also some more recent thinking about what social well-being entails.

      Philosophical underpinnings: in search of the good life

      The Aristotelian conception of the ‘good life’ provides not necessarily a constitutive foundation, but the beginnings of a pathway or pathways leading to eudaimonic conceptions of human well-being. While the hedonic pathway led to utilitarianism, the eudaimonic approach has led in different directions. Elements of the approach translated themselves during the 18th century onwards into Kantian ‘deontological ethics’ (Kant, 1785); that is to say, into notions of universal moral duty and the contention that not only does everybody have a right to well-being, but nobody should be treated as a means of achieving happiness for another. Such thinking opened the door to the social liberalism that informed the creation of modern welfare states; to socially liberal conceptions of social justice, such as that espoused by Rawls; and, for example, to Sen’s capability approach (both of which we shall discuss in Chapter 4).

      The principal critique of the social liberal approach came from a variety of radical democrats or ‘left-communitarians’ (for example, MacIntyre, 2007; Sandel, 1982; Walzer, 1983) who can in various ways trace their thinking back to the Aristotelian tradition, and in particular to the idea that human knowledge and governance are fundamentally social or collective enterprises. Their objection was to the abstract nature of the individual ‘self’ that is posed in liberal deontology as opposed to a presumption that the mutual obligations human beings owe to each other are grounded in the realities of their social belonging. This particular brand of communitarianism has much in common with the republicanism of Rousseau and Montesquieu, and embodies tendencies, at least, to social conservatism. Post-Enlightenment republicanism favoured the Aristotelian rather than the Platonic tradition in that it envisaged a republic governed not by philosopher kings, but by the general will of the people. The republican approach was by implication more eudaimonic. It assumed that human relations amount to a collaboration between vulnerable but cooperative beings; that dealings between people entail various forms of interpersonal attachment or belonging.

      Social liberalism and social conservatism each potentially, therefore, embody a eudaimonic interpretation of the good life: the former premised more on abstract philosophical doctrine; the latter more on a concern for cultural norms. The former, as it evolved, became increasingly associated with the politics of social democracy, with its emphasis on promoting social justice. The latter, as it evolved, became increasingly associated with the politics of Christian democracy with its emphasis on preserving the traditional social order. Both, however, attached some value to solidarity and the idea that there is virtue in sharing risks and responsibilities. For example, social liberalism and social conservatism have each embraced social insurance and/or social protection principles (which will be further discussed in Chapter 7). Forms of social provision premised on social insurance or universalistic social protection entail solidaristic notions of risk-sharing: they are consistent with a ‘eudaimonic ethic’ (a concept to which we shall return in Chapter 9). They imply ostensibly a concern that human society should do more than abate or avoid the suffering of its members, but enable them, notwithstanding the vicissitudes of the life-course, to participate and to flourish.

      The development of various ‘modern’ forms of welfare state during the second half of the 20th century (Esping-Andersen, 1990) was made possible by uneasy compromises between different strands of social liberalism and social conservatism: compromises that laid the foundations of contemporary understandings of social policy and the basis for ‘thicker’ understandings of human need. However, the consensus around which such compromises were formed proved vulnerable to a resurgence of utilitarian thinking and economic individualism that crystallised at the global level as the ‘Washington Consensus’ (Williamson, 1990): an alternative consensus that has since the end of the 20th century informed a degree of welfare state retrenchment across the global North and an approach to developmental aid for the global South that largely favoured a hedonic calculus of free trade, mitigated by welfare safety nets (B. Deacon, 2007). Nevertheless, UN agencies such as the International Labour Organisation have continued to favour insurance-based or universal social security and the evolution of a ‘Social Protection Floor’ (ILO, 2006; 2012), while the World Health Organization – in contrast to the Rosser Index mentioned earlier – has sought to define and to monitor Quality of Life in broadly eudaimonic terms, as:

      an individual’s perceptions of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live, and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns. It is a broad ranging concept affected in a complex way by the person’s physical health, psychological state, level of independence, social relationships and their relationship to salient features of their environment. (World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL) Group, 1995: 495; and see discussion in Schmidt & Bullinger, 2008)

      Social quality, social value and relationality

      A ‘quality of life’ concept (Phillips, 2006) can clearly therefore include a social dimension, and this is explicitly espoused in the concept of ‘social quality’ contained in a declaration by a group of academics – The Amsterdam Declaration on the Social Quality of Europe – issued in 1997. The concept was intended to capture the intention expressed in Jacques Delors’ call for a social dimension to the European Union and to establish a dialogue or dialectique between economic and social policy concerns (W. Beck et al, 1997). Social quality was to be a multidimensional concept, through which to evaluate European citizens’ enjoyment of economic security (as a matter of social justice), social inclusion (through forms of participation), social cohesion (by way of social recognition) and personal empowerment (from the exercise of compassion and social responsiveness). The theoretical and empirical development of the concept was furthered by the European Foundation on Social Quality, which in 2013 became the International Association of Social Quality (www.socialquality.org) and now defines social quality as ‘the extent to which people are able to participate in social relationships under conditions which enhance their well-being, capacity and individual potential’. This ‘new vision’ is focused on the objective, subjective and normative conditions of life around the world. The theoretical elaboration of the social quality concept has become somewhat complex (Baers et al, 2005; van der Maesen & Walker, 2012). The components of social quality have been conceptualised in relation to ‘tensions’ between macro and micro level concerns on the one hand and between the organisational and the community level on the other. Each of these tensions have been conceptualised in part through Jürgen Habermas’ (СКАЧАТЬ