Thursday, September 4, 2008
A policy isn't enough to sustain
I am posting this brief thought before I lose it. In my critical race theory class today (wonderful how my courses are connecting) we discussed the split between legal and social. How law is not enough to make change. Law only deals with procedures and redistribution of property and rights. Social movements are what is needed to remedy the social, cultural, and historical complexities within a problem. Laws and policies because they are procedural, rational, and objective are hard to change, but the social component is malleable due to our constant social interactions and reflections. For example Brown v. Board was a legal procedure, but the law was not enough to sustain the spirit of desegregation and create true change. Instead of just accepting for face value that the law of Brown v. Board would create change, the social and cultural complexities within the problem should have been examined. Thin emphasizes in the first chapter the importance of examining the "social" and that there are "people" involved. With Brown v. Board it was accepted that redistribution of property (literally moving students from one school to another) would be enough, but we failed to examine the other social components within the institution that created inequality in the first place.
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2 comments:
I do concur with your thoughts that policy is not enough. In fact, I’m a TA for the Health, Mental Health, and Chemical Health Policy here in the School of Social Work, and just yesterday we discussed a definition of policy that I feel is worth mentioning. It states, “Policies are principles and courses of action adopted and pursued by established governments as well as by various units within societies. They regulate or are intended to regulate specific aspects of a society’s structure and functioning” (Gil, 1974). He continues that “Social policies constitute a society’s interrelated yet not logically consistent principles and courses of action that define relationships and which regulate resources, goods, services, roles, statutes, rights, and constraints (Gil, 1974).This blew me away because I never consider the fact that although policies reflect a segment of society’s values, however, policies may not be logical. So, yes policies are not enough. Even though policies reflect the values and principles of certain sectors of society, it is vital to consider who created the policy and the context in which it was created. Therefore, we as a society could reexamine policies and as you suggest, consider the “social” and implement policy change from the grassroots as opposed to the top-down and ensure they are more logical.
There is a close connect between the 'law' and policy. If you do not know Patricia Williams (law prof @ Harvard U.), you might want to read some of her work. I suggest, The Alchemy of Race and Rights. She states on p.7 that, "Legal writing presumes a methodology that is highly stylized, precedential, and based on deductive reasong. Most scholarship in law is rather like 'old math': static, stable, formal- rationalism walled against chaos. My writing is an intentional departure from that. I use a model of inductive empiricism, borrowed from--and parodying--systems analysis, in order to enlive thought about complex social problems."
AJ, given your interest in networks, you might want to visit the Social Network Analysis website.
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