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5 - Living with social evils: further views from people indisadvantaged groups
- Corporate Author Joseph Rowntree Foundation
- Foreword by Nicholas Timmins
- Edited by David Utting
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- Book:
- Contemporary Social Evils
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 26 January 2022
- Print publication:
- 11 June 2009, pp 65-82
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Summary
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation's online public consultation and the specially commissioned discussions with socially excluded and disadvantaged groups – described in the two previous chapters – yielded a diverse range of views about contemporary social evils. Although people's perspectives ranged widely, a number of themes emerged repeatedly that related to moral concepts, such as individualism, declining communal values and greed, as well as more tangible problems like poverty, family breakdown and drug and alcohol misuse. Most – although not all – of these were given renewed emphasis during a subsequent phase of the consultation project, which investigated people's direct experiences of living with the social evils that had been identified and sought people's views on potential solutions.
Experiences of social evils
In this second phase of the research conducted by NatCen (National Centre for Social Research), 60 people from socially disadvantaged groups took part in three workshops and two discussion groups held across England, Scotland and Wales. The sample profile of participants captured a broad spread of characteristics (see Mowlam and Creegan, 2008). The aim was to avoid further detail on what constitute ‘social evils’, in favour of finding out how people were coping with these issues from day to day, and obtaining their views on possible solutions for dealing with them.
Social evils were clearly interconnected in participant's day-to-day lives. For example, among the young people who were living in a hostel, violence was cited as one of the main causes for their own family breakdown and they described how it had often stemmed from their parents’ drug and alcohol misuse. Age also played an important role in shaping views and experiences. This was particularly evident in relation to young people and a decline in values. Older people tended to associate crime and violence with young people with a strong sense of fear and anxiety. Young people did not always make the same link, instead describing how they felt discriminated against and stereotyped by older people. Another striking finding was the extent to which participants spoke about the constraining forces of poverty – including a view that people resorted to crime as a means of ‘getting by’ and making their way in the world.
15 - Opportunity and aspiration: two sides of the same coin?
- Corporate Author Joseph Rowntree Foundation
- Foreword by Nicholas Timmins
- Edited by David Utting
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- Book:
- Contemporary Social Evils
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 26 January 2022
- Print publication:
- 11 June 2009, pp 181-192
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Summary
My starting point for this chapter is the notion of ‘truncated opportunities’: the idea that over the course of life, opportunities can be lost, limited or wasted through circumstances over which we have varying degrees of control. In order to address the inequalities created and exacerbated by truncation of opportunity, we need to reframe the relationship between opportunity and aspiration. And in doing so, we need not only to think about the opportunities and aspirations of individual citizens, but of society as a whole.
The idea of ‘truncated opportunities’ is not merely abstract. It comes from eliciting the voices of people we do not usually hear, even though we often hear about them. We design interventions for them. We talk to them in relation to services – as recipients, non-recipients and potential recipients. We even have labels for them. Some they partly use themselves, like ‘carers’; and others we have bestowed upon them, as in ‘NEETs’ (people not in education, employment or training). Sometimes we remember that they are people first (as in ‘people with learning difficulties’), but on other occasions we do not (as in ‘the unemployed’, ‘the homeless’ or ‘the elderly’).
But how often do we ask them about their lives? As social researchers or policy makers, or even practitioners, how often do we ask people to tell us about their hopes, fears and aspirations beyond whatever aspects of deficit bring them into contact with government or welfare organisations? From my experience as a social researcher, the answer is not very often. I have, of course, conducted some fascinating research with people whose voices might not otherwise have been heard, including vulnerable young people, unmarried parents and people facing discrimination at work. But the bounded nature of social research can be frustrating. At the end of an interview, the digital recorder goes back in the researcher's bag, the consent form is signed and the respondent is reminded of the confidentiality and anonymity of the process. For all that I might want to stay behind and continue talking, I do not, because that would corrupt the research process both ethically and methodologically. It is not normally my role.
4 - Truncated opportunities: eliciting unheard voices on social evils
- Corporate Author Joseph Rowntree Foundation
- Foreword by Nicholas Timmins
- Edited by David Utting
-
- Book:
- Contemporary Social Evils
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 26 January 2022
- Print publication:
- 11 June 2009, pp 51-64
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- Chapter
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Summary
The public online consultation described in the previous chapter was successful in eliciting a range of challenging opinions about contemporary ‘social evils’. Even so, it was acknowledged from the outset that individuals without ready access to the internet could be excluded from such a dialogue. These, by definition, were likely to include many people from low-income and disadvantaged groups whose voices are often neglected in debates about the condition and direction of society. To address this, the Qualitative Research Unit at the independent research organisation, NatCen (National Centre for Social Research), was commissioned to organise a series of discussion events so that a range of these potentially ‘unheard voices’ could be elicited.
The priority was to include those people least likely to have heard about the initiative and those least likely to take part without a specific attempt to reach them. With this in mind, the following groups were identified:
• people with learning disabilities;
• ex-offenders;
• carers;
• unemployed people;
• vulnerable young people;
• care leavers;
• people with experience of homelessness.
The choice was also informed by an analysis of the types of people who were participating in the online consultation. This revealed low numbers of young people and people from black and minority ethnic (BME) groups. Although the project did not start with the notions of ‘social exclusion’ or ‘vulnerability’, most of those who took part could have been placed in either or both categories. The participants were often, consequently, people with direct experience of many of the social evils that respondents to the online consultation had identified.
Altogether, eight discussion groups involving 60 people were held in locations across England and Scotland during the autumn of 2007, with participants recruited through a range of charitable organisations. (Further information about the sample and the way it was recruited is given in the Appendix.) After an open discussion about the main social evils in Britain today, people were invited to consider some of the online consultation responses and the continuing relevance of the social evils that Joseph Rowntree specified 100 years ago.
Views of ‘social evil’
The discussion of what was meant by ‘social evil’ was always lively although some participants considered that ‘social ill’ or ‘social problem’ would be a more appropriate and less emotive terms.