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Social Policy: Unilateral Transfer or Reciprocal Exchange†
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2009
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There is absolutely no way to attack poverty through the transfer of economic resources without also profoundly affecting, for better or ill, the social bond. Definitions of social welfare generally recognize ‘…the mutually supportive obligations of people to each other’. Yet many serious and competent social thinkers apparently deny the significance of reciprocity in those social exchanges that are arranged as a matter of social policy. The predominant view is that social policies are ‘…characterized not so much by exchange by which a quid is gotten for a quo as by unilateral transfers that are justified by some kind of appeal to a status or legitimacy, identity or community’. Titmuss refers to the grant or gift as a unilateral transfer which ‘…is the distinguishing mark of the social (in policy and administration) just as exchange or bilateral transfer is the mark of the economic’. It will be argued here that this view, useful in some ways, also seriously distorts perceptions and has a deleterious effect on the design and implementation of programmes that make up the official helping enterprise in general, and programmes of income maintenance in particular. Most often social policy transactions are erroneously conceived in ideal or pure terms, bearing little or no resemblance to economic or market exchange. In reality, however, the vast majority of all transactions, economic and social, occur on a continuum between these theoretical poles.
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References
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31 The French have particularly resented their forced dependence on the United States that resulted from World War II, and have since then aggressively sought to re-establish a relationship of equals. When their actions earned the official displeasure of the United States (e.g., their participation with Britain and Israel in attacking Egypt following the latter's seizure of the Suez Canal, or their decision to achieve an independent nuclear capability), the French argued that their assertions of independence really were gifts to the United States, even if such benefit had to be forced on their benefactors. The Christian Science Monitor staff correspondent in Paris, for example, reported:
‘French officials hold that the development of France's nuclear power should be welcomed by the United States. They say it shows that France means to be “independent”. They add that this “will of independence” by the French people is a guarantee that they will make the greatest possible effort to give themselves adequate armaments and to fight well if the time comes to do so.’
Welfare clients taking ‘independent actions’ (e.g., pressing suits against official decisions believed to be illegal, questioning budgets, etc.), are also likely to irritate donors by their ‘ungrateful’ behaviour. Even much more moderate actions may be expected to be upsetting if it is true that, as stated by Elizabeth Wood of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and reported in the San Francisco Chronicle as late as 26 April 1970, six years after the statutory proclamation of ‘maximum feasible participation’, ‘The concept that a tenant had a right to express an opinion and that it was useful to listen to him is absolutely new.’
32 Cited in Nisbet, op. cit., p. 66.
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