Personal Lives and Social Policy
- Submitted by: janegray
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- Date Submitted: 06/13/2013 06:41 AM
- Pages: 6
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This essay will focus on the shaping of my personal life by social policy. I have written a small transcription on an episode of my working life which I feel made the biggest change to my personal life. The event was brought about by ill-health, but it was the way in which my working life was affected by my employers and the welfare system through social policy which changed the future of my personal life.
On reflection I can see how I felt alienated by my employers. The Marxist theory analyses the employee belonging to the employer due to a wage, and whilst I never considered myself belonging to my employer, I did consider that my job belonged to me because I wanted to keep my employment. This is contrary to the Marxist theory, which only conceives that work is something to be avoided when it's finished. I felt judged by my employers as not being fit to continue with my job and felt that I was no longer needed simply because I had been diagnosed with a debilitating condition. However, this would have been discriminatory and my contract of employment explained the ideologies of the employer. Althusser (C C, P 58) explained one concept of ideology . "as a group of rules laid down by institutions which would legitimise their rules and produce social relations without force.". It was this ideology which my employers were using as a means to my removal from my job, it was not a reflection on my "personal" but simply a rule of my contract. However, my "personal" was humiliated by the feeling of no longer being useful to my employer. What I should have realised was that it was nothing personal, it was simply a large corporation having the ability through a contract with their employee to remove them from their job if they were deemed unsuitable to continue in the same capacity in which they were employed.
This effect of their policy protected the employer giving them governance over the employee. I had taken it as a personal reflection on my ability to do my job,...
On reflection I can see how I felt alienated by my employers. The Marxist theory analyses the employee belonging to the employer due to a wage, and whilst I never considered myself belonging to my employer, I did consider that my job belonged to me because I wanted to keep my employment. This is contrary to the Marxist theory, which only conceives that work is something to be avoided when it's finished. I felt judged by my employers as not being fit to continue with my job and felt that I was no longer needed simply because I had been diagnosed with a debilitating condition. However, this would have been discriminatory and my contract of employment explained the ideologies of the employer. Althusser (C C, P 58) explained one concept of ideology . "as a group of rules laid down by institutions which would legitimise their rules and produce social relations without force.". It was this ideology which my employers were using as a means to my removal from my job, it was not a reflection on my "personal" but simply a rule of my contract. However, my "personal" was humiliated by the feeling of no longer being useful to my employer. What I should have realised was that it was nothing personal, it was simply a large corporation having the ability through a contract with their employee to remove them from their job if they were deemed unsuitable to continue in the same capacity in which they were employed.
This effect of their policy protected the employer giving them governance over the employee. I had taken it as a personal reflection on my ability to do my job,...