论社会福利:概念和视角

On Social Welfare:Concept and Perspective

关于社会福利概念的界定有描述性和解释性两大视角,描述性视角的定义又分为从人类的生存状态出发对社会福利的界定和将社会福利作为一项社会制度进行描述的定义等。解释性的社会福利定义是在描述性定义基础上的进一步追问。从社会工作学角度的解释性社会福利定义,认为社会福利的核心问题是如何满足社会需要的问题;从社会学及其他社会科学角度对社会福利的解释性定义则强调了社会福利的政治整合功能和政府通过社会福利对冲突的管理等问题。

There are mainly two perspectives to define social welfare, that is, descriptive and explanatory respectively. Further, the former one can be divided into two branches, i. e. , to define social welfare in terms of the well-being of individuals, and in the other way, to take social welfare as a social institution. In the case of the latter one, the explanatory perspective can be taken as a further exploration of the descriptive one, and the core issue of literatures of social welfare is thus defined as questioning how social welfare meets social demands, as the case in social work; moreover, in sociology and other social sciences, the explanatory perspective stresses the social functions of social welfare, like the social integration it brings about, and how governments instrumentally use social welfare to cope with social conflicts.