Task:
This paper will examine how postmodern perspective has enabled policy analysts provide a comprehensive policy analysis. These will address how postmodern perspective analysis has shaped the decision-making in the policy –making process, which deal with the discourse and identity of the welfare policies in trying to address the aspect of poverty. In its scope, postmodern perspective deals with the political insinuations of linguistic practices and applies the use of similes and imagery which has a significant contribution of constructing and studying public policy. Postmodern inquiries into discursive building of the factor of identity have the ability to make a clear and democratization contribution towards public policy analysis. Postmodernism gives one an opportunity to question the assumptions directed towards identity in the constructing of the public policy and analyzing these policies. This will enable the policy makers to reorganize and rebel against the distinctions that will favor some identities groups than others. The postmodernism will benefit from discourse on how it constructs identity. The definition of the postmodern analysis means the increasing intellectual and cultural receptivity that is being insinuated into academic and popular contemplation. Deconstruction is a term that will be used to mean the practice of identifying the power inclined binaries and redefining them to favor the disadvantaged members of the society. In addition, the terms discourse and identity are the terms often used in postmodern writings. Discourse means a way of acquiring something outside precise texts and narratives and to devise a systematic technique to construct a sense from things. On the other side, the term identity is used in most instances to propose distinctions, labels, or strata discourses thus providing distinctions basing on the observable personal features such as social class, race, ethnicity, race, religious background, skin color, sex orientation, and gender diversity. The phrase interrogating identity means to underscore how disparity in society is constructed.
Postmodern examines the discursive construction of identity that contributes immensely to the democratization to public policy analysis. This is through the interrogation of assumptions about the identity. Postmodern policy analysis takes identity in the context of narratives, texts, related media, and discourses we provide the basis for analyzing and constructing the public policies. Postmodern policies anchors its argument on how the policy discourses and policies are affected in the process of construction and sustenance of the identities in ways which will implicate the manner in which resources will be allocated. In addition, the questioning of identity construction will help to underscore the political illusion of how the public policies are constructed and analyzed. This will apply to both the domestic and international inclination that emphasis the social, economic, and military aspects primarily directed to nations, states, organizations, or groups of people. The politics of identity is all encompassing in the construction and analyzing the public policy.
As put by Jean Lytoard (1987), that postmodernism changes the contemporary stress on sagacity and objective facts by interrogating politics of the modern ways. This is to examine the methods of constructing knowledge in literature, art, law, philosophy, and science. The postmodern tries to establish structures that involve the construction of the truth rather than looking for the truth. Postmodernism in its quest to investigate truth, use the deconstruction methods, which involves pointing out the extent at which a given text can provoke the different implicit discursive practices to safeguard its sound nature (Blatter & Ingram ch. 4). Deconstruction enables investigators in the public policy to underscore the constitutive practices a text employs in order to make these moves visible and bring them to investigation.
Postmodernism includes the use post-structural inclination, which encourages the dematerialization, which entails question the pre-existing structures of interpretation. These structures serve the function of stabilizing the structures, which, in turn, redefine the daily activities that at the result in stabilized structures, which can be, economic, governmental, and social in nature. From this perspective, value set creates a situation where people will value identity of others at the expense of others. At this point, identities arise from the constructed differences. Postmodernism has the role of destabilizing the created structures on the manner they allocate and benefit some identities on the foundation of undesirable distinctions. Disabling these structures of distinctions will bring the element of democratization in the current era. This will enable the policy analysts critically examine and provide solutions to the imposed standards by the contemporary nations on matters of normality and conformism. In the last decades, postmodern efforts have permeated the policy analysis through the back door by way of the writings of the persons outside the field who raises their concerns that posed direct insinuations to the practice of the policy analysis.
The modernist perspectives in the social arena, for example, the policy analytical paradigm in specific, take the society in the way it is composed. The discursive performances where the state actors are anchored are not viewed as a significant factor in developing and reproducing that material reality. For instance, poverty is from the central perspective, which is relatively independent reality. This dormant perspective enables for the denunciation of the existing policy as it is seen as not articulating the structural basis of the problem being attacked whether homelessness, poverty or unemployment. In some instances, this perspective blocks the extent at which itself does not address the underlying problem, which involves the making and analyzing the public policy.
The postmodern policy in itself will enable the policy analysts to an address the issue of policy. According to Ann Schneider and Helen (1993) in their contribution to the welfare policy observed that the social structures become entrenched in policy as the messages that are taken in by the citizens. They argued that policies relay messages to the public on how the government operates on a daily basis. Some of the messages have detrimental effects on the citizens as they might produce citizens who are passive while other citizens can be encouraged by the messages and can combat those policies, which are detrimental. According to the critics of the welfare policy, they argue that the welfare is the sole reason of poverty. They further argue that the inadequacy of the welfare policy for the poor families with the kids makes the families unsuccessful. This argument by the critics is not convincing as the poverty experienced by these families was from the postindustrial welfare states, which tailored policies to favor themselves. According to Schor (1991), the postmodernism will enable the policy analysts to lead to study of post-industrial analysis. This will enable them to unravel the reality on how low wages –work and the families cornered beyond their survival means thus constituting poverty (Blatter & Ingram ch. 8).
Postmodernism through the welfare policy bases its argument on the two-parent family set-up. The policy analysts believe that postindustrial era on the welfare policy will oppose the help to the alternative families despite the changes in the economy and culture. Furthermore, the existing social policies are seen to profit the two-parent families over others by promoting the existing hierarchies and injustices. At this point, this allows the policy analysts to address how the welfare policy is a vital structure in unveiling how the female-headed families have been stigmatized and abused in the social institution. Dematerializing structures in the postmodern policy period will assist to highlight the politically constable practices on the manner in which the distinctions glorifies and signifies some families over others in the society. This will provide an appropriate opportunity for the policy analysts to devise ways of resisting these distinctions and combating them from only benefiting few families. In this perspective, children and women would not escape poverty because of the public policies and social structures, which never help them but demean. Gordon (1989) observes that, through the postmodernism, there need for the policy analyst need to structure the family wage structure which will change the notion that the family are to be of two parents and males are sole breadwinners of the family.
Postmodernism will enable the analysts to reverse and reinvent policies that treat women and children as inferior in the provision of welfare services. According to Baca (1989), the services, which include childcare and pay equity, will make women self-sufficient through the provision of sound policies. In this case, there is the need of introducing programs that will elevate poverty. The critics have, however, come out to demonize the programs, which are geared towards women and children. They argue that the programs does not elevate poverty but elevate it because the policy on these programs only majors on the few at the expense of the majority poor. They claim that, in the general population, there exist men who are extremely poor. This argument from the critics is not founded in strong ground since through postmodernism; the policy analysts are able to rewrite the social policy history that encodes the previous structures that promote distinctions between the ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy poor’. For instance, Senator Moynihan, is remembered as the pioneer of new policies, which aims at, minimizing the welfare dependency as postindustrial policy. These new policies according the policy analysts in the postmodernism were meant to promote the historic distinctions through its concentration to women and kids as opposed to the poor majority. This super active rewriting of history according postmodern perspective gives advantage to the welfare dependency to be viewed as the last resort in formulating or analyzing policies that benefit the public.
The postmodern perspective enables the policy analysts to look critically the structures within the cultural context. Through the welfare policy, it aims at building its own society that promote the sound policies in the family structure. To the postmodern perspective, these structures will promote and affirm rather than marginalizing and blaming the legitimacy of the family structures thus will necessitate the formulating of alternative policies. In this situation, the welfare policy discussions proceed to build poverty as the cause of problems in the family structure thus providing remedies in the two-parent family. The refusal of the economic and the social forces at work during the present post-industrial shift restricts policy space to the well-known discursive structure (Blatter & Ingram ch. 8).
Over the many decades, the critics for the rising problems in the society have blamed the family structure. In view of critics, the family structure is the sole reason for the poverty in the society. This has mandated the society to avoid the public assistance by the state. Through the postmodern policy, analyst’s aims at shifting from created a culture of poverty to the culture of the single motherhood. The welfare discourse postmodernism perspective eliminates the created biases in the welfare policy by attaining equal, pluralistic, and autonomous society where the policies will articulate the root causes of the problems. Most blamed structure in the family to cause poverty in the society is the families headed by women. The critics in the past have pointed a finger on the mother-family as having a relationship with the rising poverty. The historic welfare policies are to be blamed for the continued perspective that women as head of their families bring problems to the family. The postmodernism perspective has enabled the policy analysts to provide welfare discourse that will reduce poverty of the mother-only families by redefining policies in a manner that will enable the state to help them. In addition, women in possession with children have registered high rates of poverty, and they have not benefited from the economic growth, and related social policies. The postmodern perspective provides comprehensive policies and strategies which aims at creating resources that will enable these families to flee poverty.
Work Cited
Blatter, Joachim and Ingram, Helen. (Eds.). Reflections on Water: New Approaches to
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