Understanding Human Need 2e. Dean, Hartley

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СКАЧАТЬ objective … subjective basic … higher material … non-material positive … negative non-instrumental … instrumental non-derivative … derivative physical/somatic … mental/spiritual physiological … cultural viscerogenic … sociogenic intrinsic … procedural natural … artificial true … false constitutional … circumstantial inherent … interpreted thin … thick

      In this book we shall attempt to weave the disputed threads into a categorisation of needs concepts and to develop a theoretical proposition concerning the relationship between human interdependency, needs and rights. The aim is to pick out and develop an encompassing conceptual overview of human need. It will be argued that need represents a pivotally important idea and, arguably, the single most important organising principle not only for social policy but in human history and for our understanding of humanity. It is pivotal in the sense that it connects an understanding of our interdependency as human beings with arguments about the claims that we can assert against each other. While it remains conceptually elusive, human need is the idea from which other eminently practical and strategic approaches can flow. Or, to put it more precisely, it is through contests over human need that social policy is made. The concluding argument will be essentially normative: the book will map out how we might prefer to think about human need. But along the way we shall be addressing a great many essential empirical questions: questions about what is going on in the world around us and how others accordingly frame their understandings of human need. It has long been acknowledged that ‘the concept of a need involves both “is” and “ought”’ (Thomson, 1987: 109).

Why is need important?

      It has been suggested already that the way we think about human need is relevant to the ways in which social policies are organised. Functionalist accounts suggest that the analysis of human need ‘provides a clear basis for the analysis of society. And though we should expect the forms of these social institutions to vary among different types of society, some institutions centring about these human need there must always be’ (Fletcher, 1965: 21). It may be supposed that a distinction could be drawn between individual need and social need. The classic riposte to this suggestion was provided by Richard Titmuss:

      All collectively provided services are deliberately designed to meet certain socially recognised ‘needs’; they are manifestations, first, of society’s will to survive as an organic whole and, secondly of the expressed wish of all the people to assist the survival of some people. ‘Needs’ may therefore be thought of as ‘social’ and ‘individual’ … [but] … no complete division between the two is conceptually possible; the shading of one into the other changes with time over the life of all societies; it changes with time over the cycle of needs of the individual and the family; it depends on prevailing notions of what constitutes a ‘need’ and in what circumstances; and to what extent, if at all, such needs, when recognised, should be met in the interests of the individual and/or of society. (1955: 62)

      It has been said that need is only one of several perspectives from which we might define what we mean by human welfare (Fitzpatrick, 2001: 5). However, the goals of social policy, if they are not directly informed as Titmuss asserts by concerns about human need, will indirectly reflect assumptions about human need. Governmental social policy and academic social policy are each preoccupied – more or less explicitly – with processes of resource distribution on the one hand and the development of human services on the other. Social policy interventions may entail the distribution or redistribution of resources through the administration of taxes and the provision of cash transfers; the provision of education and training and the regulation of employment; the regulation of land use and the environment and the control or provision of housing; the organisation of health and social care and social protection for people who are vulnerable.

      The significance of needs

      This kind of provision must be informed at some level by assumptions or principles relating to what human beings (as citizens, customers, subjects or clients) might need. However, there are other candidates for the job of prime organising principle, such as wants or preferences; desert and merits; security and social protection. The contention of this book is that, at root, these all amount to different interpretations of, or approaches to, need. Though philosophers may seek it (for example, Thomson, 1987) there cannot be one true meaning of a word like ‘need’. It is a word with a myriad of vernacular meanings.

      Consider some of the things that you might say you will need in the course of your own life, or the needs that you consider yourself fortunate to have already met. The important things that might immediately spring to mind are the need for a job; for a place to live; for time to relax; for somebody to love. Our needs as human beings relate to such fundamentals as work, space, time and relationships. Everyday meanings of need might be thought of as falling – more or less – into four broad categories:

      Economistic meanings. These are essentially market-oriented. Needs are associated with economic opportunities and consumer preferences. Our needs are reflected in the priorities we should be enabled freely to express in terms of the jobs, the homes, the leisure pursuits and personal relationships we might choose.

      Moralistic meanings. These are essentially self-centred, yet authoritarian in nature. Needs are associated not so much with what we might want to have, but dictated by the things we have to do; with a necessitous struggle for jobs and homes and such allowable pleasures and relationships that fate and fortune permit.

      Paternalistic meanings. These are essentially socially protectionist in orientation. Needs are associated with common vulnerabilities and what is required so as to preserve a shared social order. We need safe and suitable jobs, homes, recreation and supportive relations in order to take our proper place within society.

      Socially reformist meanings. These may be socially liberal or social-democratic in orientation. Needs are associated with the requirements of a ‘progressive’ liberal society.¹ We need decent jobs СКАЧАТЬ