Critical Social Work, 2(1). Maxine made extraordinary efforts to help Ms. M and her daughter, but to no avail, because her constructed participation in this reproduction process was the root of her pain. John J. Rodger: John J. Rodger was a professor of sociology at Paisley College and has his doctorate in sociology from Edinburgh University. Elements of postmodern theory provided a way into the achievement of this necessary distance. A postmodern perspective, in Jan Fooks view (Fook, 1999), pays attention to the ways in which social relations and structures are constructed, particularly to the ways in which language, narrative, and discourses shape power relations and our understanding of them. Also, she was well-informed about the ways that prevention and risk education inherently set up a trajectory of sex as normatively heterosexual, age appropriate sexual experience. Such an analysis might allow us to ask the kind of questions that are the heart of social work ethics: How, for example, could we think differently about child welfare practices with black families if our work were guided first and foremost by a desire to find forms of practice that take into account centuries of trauma from racial injustice? After all, says Stephen Brookfield, Experience can teach us habits of bigotry, stereotyping and disregard for significant but inconvenient information. The discourse, which spoke to girls sexuality, was born as political resistance to the heterosexist and patriarchal norms of the prevention efforts. "Experience". (French social theorist Michel Foucaultwrote prolifically about institutions, power, and discourse. Were asked to help but not make people dependent. Revolutions in how mental health problems are conceptualised have had a substantial impact on the work of mental health nurses. When they enter the world of practice, they are thrown into sites constructed by contradictions and ambivalences where their subjectivities as practitioners embody these contradictions, yet they still expect to enact their ideals. This is how discourse analysis can displace the individualism of the heroic activist in favour of a more nuanced, complex and sophisticated analysis. . We decry racism and declare our allegiance to anti-oppressive practice while working in primarily white agencies. The case studies were stories of clients whom they remembered with a sense of failure or apology or shame. Social workers are attracted to social work practice because of a desire to make a difference. Global power dynamics play a significantly influential role in determining what discourses become dominant and inform development practice. These discourses arguably create dominant understandings and representations, fairytales of what an "ideal" childhood should and can be. We know all too well the struggles of the child protection workers, welfare workers, and hospital workers who find it difficult to face the fate of their ideals within the construction of their practice. knowledge is not simply a resource to deploy in practice. Dominant discourse is a way of speaking or behaving on any given topic it is the language and actions that appear most prevalently within a given society. In this sense, sociologists frame discourse as a productive force because it shapes our thoughts, ideas, beliefs, values, identities, interactions with others, and our behavior. Discourses delineate what can be said within a given set of ideas so that critical practice is exercised when we try to look at what is excluded by a particular discourse in order to alternative viewpoints. which can be measured and known through research . Practising reflectivity in health and welfare: Making knowledge . I will outline how critical reflection based on discourse analysis may generate useful perspectives for practitioners who struggle to make sense of the gap between critical aspirations and practice realities, and who often mediate that gap as a sense of personal failure. He wrote and lectured on the interactions between discourse analysis and social relationships in social work. As one of us, she is expected to deploy white, Western knowledge with her Caribbean clients - clients she is given because of her special knowledge. In other words, she embodies the contradiction between professional expectations to deploy Eurocentric knowledge while also being positioned to deliver service to those who are an exception to that knowledge. We can raise questions about practices that may be outside such reproduction. Taylor, C., & White, S. (2000). Brookfield, S. (1996). Taking the case of racially charged events in Ferguson, MO, and Baltimore, MD that played out from 2014 through 2015, we can also see Foucaults articulation of the discursive concept at play. 445-463). In contrast, when a concept like uprising is used in the contexts of Ferguson or Baltimore, or "survival" in the context of New Orleans,we deduce very different things about those involved and are more likely to see them as human subjects, rather than dangerous objects. Particular discourses sustain particular worldviews. Ronnis analysis moved beyond opposition through a new discourse of health-oriented openness to girls sexuality in which protection is configured as part of healthy sexuality. Foucault was interested in power and social change. In this case, the dominant discourse on immigration that comes out of institutions like law enforcement and the legal system is given legitimacy and superiority by their roots in the state. Abstract. Assessing the impact and implications for social workers of an innovative children's services programme aimed to support workforce reform and integrated working. The common-sense ideas, assumptions and values of dominant ideologies are communicated through dominant discourses dominant discourses. Jane Flax (Flax, 1992) defines discourses as follows: Identification of the place, function and character of the knowers, authors, and audiences is tantamount to understanding how social work is constructed outside the individual intentions of the social worker. Major theorists such as Michel Foucault and Stuart Hall . New York: Routledge. We looked at how these conflicting discourses positioned Ronni, Tara and school personnel. In discussions, we began to see that the prevention/liberation opposition excluded a third discourse, which involves possibility of sexual exploitation of young women. The dominant discourse on immigration, which is anti-immigrant in nature, and endowed with authority and legitimacy, create subject positions like citizenpeople with rights in need of protectionand objects like illegalsthings that pose a threat to citizens. Foucault adopted the term 'discourse' to denote a historically contingent social system that produces knowledge and meaning. Some discourses come to dominate the mainstream (dominant discourses), and are considered truthful, normal, and right, while others are marginalized and stigmatized, and considered wrong, extreme, and even dangerous. Class, race, culture, history are excluded as the focus on the dyad is retained as an explanation for family breakdown. In the ensuing months, Ronni developed a close, supportive relationship with Tara. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. At no time did Ronni focus on getting her to stop.. 16, Issue. (1999). Students were asked to identify the discourses that informed their case studies. Marston, G. (2004), Social Policy and Discourse Analysis: Policy Change in Public Housing, Aldershot: Ashgate. We began to think about the ways slavery is replicated in different incarnations following the end of slavery. What Is Political Socialization? Dominant discourse is a way of speaking or behaving on any given topic it is the language and actions that appear most prevalently within a given society. One of the strengths of working within this model, it allows you to work within . Thus, Maxine is positioned to assess and discipline Ms. M. She cannot find room for the very insider knowledge she is supposed to have. I argue that understanding this process of production is a way of doing ethics which reduces, or at least acknowledges the unintended, often subliminal consequences of practice that flow from social ambivalence which constructs social workers and service recipients in the conduct of practice. Discourse analysis can provide new vantage points from which to reconstruct practice theory in ways that are more consciously oriented to our social justice commitments. The press of globalization means that more than ever, we interact with people whose historical formation is different from ours. This vantage point enabled students to move from the need to find answers and techniques to the radical acceptance of practice as the unending responsibility for ethical relationships which are always/already jeopardized by larger social relations. Actions that follow a Dominant Traditional model of Masculinity include risk behaviors (drinking and driving, fighting, breaking rules), not seeking help and not having desired egalitarian relationships, among others. Understanding these Discourses allows you to develop the power and status you need to be successful, as well as making the bond stronger between you and that secondary Discourse. Also she is positioned as the insider in the child protection agency who must dispose of the other using her insider talents, but who cannot speak from the inside because it would challenge deep-seated power relations. Social work is a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that promotes social change and development, social cohesion, and the empowerment and liberation of people. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575-599. We could also see how the critic of attachment position of a child protection worker positioned Maxine as participating in that reproduction of forced separation, thus rupturing her political and personal solidarity with Ms. M. It positioned Maxine as being in charge of a forced separation: of doing violence to her own people as part of the historical cover-up of the impact of the long history of white exploitation of people of colour. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 70(2), 150-161. Indeed, more how tos could only add to their apology stance. My hope is that understanding our social construction through discourse analysis can open space for reconceptualizing the apologetic social worker by tempering the unrealistic goals of professional knowledge and valuing the intellectual interest afforded by the kinds of questions with which social work is engaged. These elements helped students writing cases from memories saturated with unease about their own performance to shift from what I did to how the case was constructed, and how their feelings arose from the complicated constructions of their practice within particular locations and time. The overall question I asked students to raise in relation to their cases was what is left out? Interchanging the terms discourse and story, we talked about how stories both include and exclude, forming boundaries in meaning (Spivak, 1990), and that critical practice is the search for what is left outside the story. Because discourse has so much meaning and deeply powerful implications in society, it is often the site of conflict and struggle. We then asked what was left out when discourses were set in opposition. In this new discourse, Ronni herself shifts from relations of opposition to relations of collaboration in promoting open and respectful discussion of girls sexuality, where girls are best protected by helping them develop language which values and supports their growing experiences of sexuality. A discourse of criminality, when usedto discuss protestors, or those struggling to survive theaftermath of a disaster, like Hurricane Katrina in 2004, structures beliefs about right and wrong, and in doing so, sanctions certain kinds of behavior. Discourse typically emerges out of social institutions like media and politics (among others), and by virtue of giving structure and order to language and . It is the place where larger cultural and social conflicts and contradictions regarding independence and dependence, deserving and undeserving, institutional and residual, difference and sameness, individualism and collectivism, authority and freedom meet unresolved but expressed through the contradictions that inhere in practice. While not eschewing the need to take positions in other words, without advocating relativism students could look at ways of thinking, at alternative perspectives that were outside the terms of the oppositions. In doing so, we increase our choices or at least, our awareness regarding how we participate in the creation of culture. In other words, such a trajectory works to normalize a sequence of sexuality which ranges from the right time to the end-stage of heterosexual marriage. Social workers are the bodies in the middle of this site and must act within the force field of contradictions. Ronni believed that such discourses silenced and disciplined not only young women such as Tara, but all young womens diverse and fluid experiences of sexuality. Lets take a closer look at the relationships between institutions and discourse. 131-155). Is that individual oppressed based on race or part of the dominant group due to her positioning as a 1 In J. Butler & J. Scott (Eds. New Discourses Commentary. It focuses specifically on participant . In contrast, the immigrants rights discourse that emerges out of institutions like education, politics, and from activist groups, offers the subject category, undocumented immigrant, in place of the object illegal, and is often cast as uninformed and irresponsible by the dominant discourse. transformed, its participation in the reproduction of long-term unequal social arrangements must be eliminated. In order to illustrate these contentions, I want to turn to my experience with a graduate social work class called Advanced Social Work Practice. A discourse analyst is then less interested in assessing the truth or falsity of the social reality as shaped by a particular discourse, than in the ways that people use language to construct their accounts of their social world. The second case study (Gorman, 2004) takes place during a practicum in a school setting. Her agency had neither an analysis of the sensitivity of her position in relation to immigrant clients, nor the racist assumptions that grounded these case allocations. Discourse theorists disagree on which parts of our world are real. Critical discourse analysis (or discourse analysis) is a research method for studying written or spoken language in relation to its social context. In J. Butler & J. Scott (Eds. A dominant discourse of race often positions whiteness as . 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