Sophie Miles
N NEEDS
‘Needs’ commonly refer to the kinds of problem that people ex- perience: for example, people who suffer from mental or physical impairments are deemed to have ‘needs’ on that basis. ‘In a general sense’, Feinberg writes, ‘to say that S needs X is to say simply that if he doesn’t have X he will be harmed’ (Feinberg : ).
Doyal and Gough interpret harm primarily in terms of an im- paired ability to participate in society, and argue that needs can be seen as objective interests. (: , –). People who are in need are not simply people who have a problem; they lack something which will remedy that problem. This implies that problems have to be interpreted, or operationalized, as requiring a particular kind of response; and, properly speaking, the definition of a ‘need’ is deter- mined by the relationship between functional problems and possible responses. Spicker argues that ‘if needs entail responses, there are no needs which are not in some sense claims’ (Spicker ).
Bradshaw () distinguishes four main categories of need: normative, comparative, felt and expressed:
• Normative need is need which is identified according to a norm (or set standard); such norms are generally set by experts. Benefit levels, for example, or standards of unfitness in houses, have to be determined according to some criterion.
• Comparative need concerns problems which emerge by comparison with others who are not in need. One of the most common uses of this approach has been the comparison of social problems in differ- ent areas in order to determine which areas are most deprived.
• Felt need is need which people feel – that is, need from the per- spective of the people who have it.
• Expressed need is the need they say they have. People can feel need which they do not express and can express needs they do not feel.
G LOS SARY
RE FE RE NCES
Bradshaw, J. () ‘A Taxonomy of Social Need’, New Society, March: –. Doyal, L., and Gough, I. () A Theory of Human Need, London: Macmillan. Feinberg, J. () Social Philosophy, Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall. Spicker, P. () ‘Needs as Claims’, Social Policy and Administration /: –.
NEO - PHIL ANTHROPY
Philanthropy nowadays takes new forms, referred by some authors as neo-philanthropy. It includes different forms of private and public social intervention with the poor that have a moral, symbolic and economic purpose. Neo-philanthropy includes contributions by: () non-governmental organizations or the third sector; () new forms of governmental social intervention; () expansion of a new entre- preneurial philanthropy; () international aid.
The role of neo-philanthropy has been conceived, first, to play a main role in the poverty-reduction initiatives in the face of the state withdrawing from social protection (World Bank ). The third sector, the NGOs, usually operates as a non-profit provider, based on volunteering, developing a particular type of non-political association that usually provides social services and resources, mostly to the poor, not based on rights (World Social Forum ).
Second, neo-philanthropy refers to new forms of governance an- chored in compassion, sympathy and moral duty displacing previous forms based on social rights (Fix and Arantes ). In this regard, emergent notions like charity and humanism, along with a view of the poor as victims, is changing the practice of social work into neo-philanthropy (Aquín ). Robert Castel () considers inser- tion and TARGETING policies as examples of neo-philanthropy since they reflect the ancient distinction between the deserving and the undeserving.
Third, advocates of neo-philanthropy entrepreneurship emphasize the pitfalls of government involvement in social problems related to poverty, health, infancy, education and environment, criticizing the scope and effectiveness of official expenditures. At the same time, some governments introduce fiscal incentives, through tax reductions, in order to promote philanthropic activities and donations among companies (Di Donato ). This suggests that philanthropy is not