The History of Gendered Social Science: a personal narrative and some reflections on method

The history of the relationships between social work, social reform, social policy and social science contains an important story about the contributions of men and women, and about the ways in which masculinist social science and policy came to dominate the activities of women reformers and social scientists. This article focuses on a moment in this history, a conflict at the London School of Economics (LSE) in the 1950s about the future of social work education. A key figure in this was the author's father, Richard Titmuss. The article draws on biography, autobiography and intellectual/institutional history, raising some methodological issues about this approach to uncovering hidden stories; it also argues that the conflict at LSE, a painfully remembered episode in the history of social work, cannot be understood except in the context of the gendered story of ‘the socials’.     

V.A.T., Taxation and Prostitution: Feminist Perspectives on Polok

Debates concerning the taxation of prostitution have occurred in taxation law and in feminist literature. This article will integrate the case of Polok v. C.E.C. [2002] E.W.H.C, 156; [2002] S.T.C. 361, within the feminist legal canon. The case is discussed in the context of the argument of the European doctrine of fiscal neutrality, which dictates that, regardless of legality as amongst member states, if an activity is levied to V.A.T. in one member state, V.A.T. should be levied on it in all member states. The doctrine of sovereignty accepts the possibility that the integrity of the V.A.T. system may be compromised by the levying of tax on illegal activities, in terms of the cooperation between tax and other aspects of the U.K.’s legal system. European law, feminist law, commodification and the marketplace are all considered within the context of these principles. The article also considers the place of Polok within standard feminist texts on prostitution. Different paradigms of prostitution define different aspects of prostitution as ‘problems’, and the article considers the implications within a feminist reconstruction of Polok of this. The article suggests that the challenge for a feminist analysis of Polok is to remain within the realm of European tax and competition law, and to render the perspective of the employees of the Polok taxpayers part of the substance of the deliberations of the case.     

The Breadwinner, his Wife and their Welfare: Identity, Expertise and Economic Security in Australian Post-War Reconstruction

The architects of Australian post-war reconstruction had learned from the experience of the Depression that subordinating the social order to economic objectives could have disastrous results. In Australia as elsewhere, interwar political and civic institutions were not sufficiently robust to protect society from the instability of a system based on the economically rational choices of individual entrepreneurs. High unemployment, which had characterised the interwar years and reached catastrophic levels in the Depression, convinced the architects of post-war reconstruction that new political institutions were necessary. The civil and political institutions they attempted to create were expressed in a particular anthropology constituted around their own identity as experts and the identities of the entrepreneur, the breadwinner and his wife.