Constructing Social Work Practices

Arja Jokinen, Kirsi Juhila

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429863783
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1999, Jokinen, Juhila and Poso comprises both theoretical/reflexive articles and articles based on empirical social constructionist studies. It provokes new ways of looking at social work practices as interpretative and interactive processes. In addition to this theoretical and methodological contribution, the volume provides empirically based material on the practical implications of an alliance between social work and social constructionism.

Part I:
Social Work and Social Constructionism

1 Introduction: Constructionist Perspectives on Social Work Practices

Arja Jokinen, Kirsi Juhila and Tarja Pösö

Social work is defined by many and in many different contexts. Parallel to clients and social workers, research and science are central constructors of social work. Descriptions of social work are, however, constructed in many other contexts as well. At times, it is a ‘popular’ topic in the media. Public policy defines tasks for it, formulates expectations of it and evaluates it as part of the local or national welfare agenda. In organisations providing social work education and in the development discussions and disputes related to education, social work and the qualifications of social workers are given varying contents. Employer and employee organisations are crucial definers as well, not to mention various client organisations and movements. We must also remember cultural differences. In different countries, in the contexts of different welfare states and welfare traditions, social work and its tasks are constructed in different ways. Moreover, the heterogeneity of culture inside individual countries brings local nuances into the spectrum of definitions.

Is social work, then, ‘disappearing’, becoming a jumble of fragmentary practices, as has been stated in certain discussions on the modern and the post-modern? According to some, there is no clear position or task for social work in the uncertainty of the post-modern world. Together with the modern welfare state, social work has entered a crisis. It can no longer justify its position by calling upon universal expert knowledge based on research. There exist many, even conflicting, knowledges and truths, all of which are exposed to criticism. Thus, social work is opened up for a multiplicity of interpretations. It may be defined in a great number of ways, both by people outside it and by people inside (Clarke, 1995; Howe, 1994; Parton, 1994 and 1995).

The present book, based on social constructionism, starts out from the claim that despite the multiple and fragmented definitions, social work can be observed, studied and analysed. The observation must be based on concrete practices of social work, which are defined as social work or which in some other way cause the existence of social work To increase the understanding of these multiple practices is the first goal of our book. In our study, we avoid a normative evaluation of social work practices, since we do not hold the key to defining ‘good’ social work. Instead, we have at our disposal research tools for studying what happens in the social work practices, as the various case studies in the book will show. Whenever we are dealing with societal activity such as social work, the requirement often placed to research is its utility. Can research based on social constructionism be applied in social work, can it bring about change? The second goal of the book is to present answers to this question. Before moving on to these themes, however, we will describe the conversations leading to the genesis of this book, and particularly of this introductory chapter.

The Chain of Conversations as a Context

No scholarly text can be born in vacuo, nor can it be the end-point of any chain of events. In constructionist terms, research can be structured as consequent, parallel or overlapping conversations. The texts comment on other texts and integrate elements from them. In addition to texts, face-to-face meetings of researchers also constitute activity where research is constructed. Moreover, research practices – especially in applied research such as social work – interact with other societal conversations and often also with social work carried out in the field.

Every scholarly text contains several elements – conversations or parts of conversations familiar from other contexts – since ‘new’ is always constructed in a communicative relationship to ‘existing’. In their new context, however, Old’ elements are no longer visible as clearly defined loci in the text, or as neat references. Rather, they may be understood as the resources for working the new text, only receiving their significance in the context of their presentation, and consequently the significance may differ considerably from that presented in other contexts. It is impossible to locate all conversational links in an individual text, yet in the following we will attempt to trace one series of conversations which was crucial for the genesis of the present text. We will study conversations as something which proceeds temporally and finds a spatial location.¹ The function of this study is, on the one hand, to construct a historical context for the text to facilitate the reader’s orientation, and on the other hand, to illustrate the analytical basis of our method of work. Even though we are constructing a narrative on the basis of our own activity, it is as well to bear in mind that local research (in this case, research carried out at Tampere) is always intertwined with a wider debate, without which it could not exist.

In 1995 we edited a book in Finnish on the union of social work and constructionism. We justified the utility of a constructionist frame of reference emphasising the practices of social work as follows:

General definitions (of social work) often create difficulties for a researcher approaching social work from the direction of practices. They do not seem to pull together the endless multiplicity of social work practices, which appear to escape categorisations coming from the outside, whether they are interpretations produced inside the discipline or science, tasks defined by administration or legislation, societal function, professional ethics, or something even more general than these. When starting out from empirical work, you are likely to catch something else. In this case, it is difficult or even impossible to begin your research report by asking the question, “What is social work?”, but the question, “How should we study social work?”, becomes even more pressing. Thus, one possibility – not unheard-of, but little applied in Finnish research – of grasping social work is to emphasise the priority of empirical research (Jokinen, Juhila and Pösö, 1995, p. 11).

In our book, we built up a constructionist angle on social work by studying social work practices as social problems work. The concept originates from James A. Holstein and Gale Miller (1993; Miller and Holstein, 1991), who used it to describe the processes of defining and solving social problems occurring in the local practices of human service organisations. The concept linked the constructionist research tradition, attached to social problems (Spector and Kitsuse, 1987; Kitsuse and Spector, 1973), to organisational practices in a way which made it possible to study social work in a more data-oriented manner than the ‘conventional’ social work research. Especially in the context of Finnish social work debate, the study of social work practices as local social problems work opened up a new approach, which helped scholars who appreciate empirical qualitative research (i.e., us) in structuring both the methodological and substance issues related to social work research. The various chapters of the book (in addition to ourselves, the writers included Hannele Forsberg, Jaana Jaatinen and Irene Roivainen, all social work researchers and colleagues familiar to us) studied various linguistic everyday practices of social work, especially with a view to how categories of social problems and clienthood are produced in and through them. Our data included interviews with social workers, encounters between workers and clients and conversations between workers. The topics addressed included child abuse, homelessness and alcohol problems. We justified the relevance of our study by saying that constructionist analysis makes visible things and processes which are otherwise regarded as self-evident.

The book project was purely national in scope, even though, naturally, it received impulses from international literature on research methods and social work. Its reception was varied. In particular, a number of social work researchers criticised the constructionist approach for concentrating on work practices and face-to-face interaction, thus leaving aside a study of the societal conditions of the work. Moreover, they suspected that the researchers Over-interpret’ social work and transform random chains of events into an unrealistic ‘theory’ of social work. In addition to adverse criticism, our book also awakened curiosity and expectations which encouraged us to continue. In the aftermath of the book we conceived the idea of determining whether the union of constructionism and social work would find a wider interest. We knew of the existence of researchers interested in this topic in other countries, but as far as we knew, there was no extensive network for them. With the aim of building at least a partial network, we began to plan an international symposium², which was then implemented under the name ‘Constructing Social Work Practices’ in Tampere, Finland, on 13-15 August, 1997. The symposium announcement was as follows:

Social constructionism aims to study reality as socially and linguistically constructed in everyday practices of different kinds. Recently, institutional practices such as social work have been the focus of this approach. Therefore, a seminar on social constructionism and social work is well motivated and actual, and also provides a welcome forum for scholarly exchange and cooperation in this field. In this seminar, we want to look at the relationship between social constructionism and social work from the point of view of social work research and teaching, as well as of daily social work practices.

The main financier of the symposium was NorFa (Nordic Academy for Advanced Study). The partners also included the ‘Language, Interaction and Social Care in the Nordic Welfare Systems’ research network, the Department of Social Work and Social Policy at the University of Tampere and the Swedish School of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. About 70 actors from the field of social work, especially researchers, but also teachers, postgraduate students and social workers from ten countries met in Tampere. For three days, the symposium discussed social work and constructionism, which proved a broad topic with several dimensions. On the one hand, the consensus was that there already exists a considerable body of research on the topic, but on the other hand, new research challenges seemed constantly to present themselves.

This book contains a number of papers given in the ‘Constructing Social Work Practices’ symposium. The structure of the book grew from a dialogue with the texts submitted for publication, resulting in our naming the main chapters of the book as follows: Social Work and Social Constructionism, Practices of Encounter, Discursive Struggles, and Practical Relevance. All of the articles selected interpret and define social work and constructionism, and their mutual relationship, from one of the above angles. One consequence of this demarcation was that not every interesting paper could be accepted for publication.

In writing this introductory chapter we conducted yet one conversation with the texts included in the book. Our analytical tool was to interpret them from certain angles: we used the texts as our resources, we integrated elements from them into the entity of the introduction. The issues we are highlighting below – the encounters between clients and social workers or social change – are not the main topics of any of the texts, but in their way, each of them also addresses these issues. The method of conversation was strongly two-directional: the idea for highlighting these themes was born out of our reading the texts, but at the same time, we also made the themes visible in them. The other side of the coin is, of course, that our opening chapter does not introduce the other texts on their own terms: each of them presents one complete and independent interpretation of the relationship between social work and constructionism, and our text does not claim to do justice to these interpretations.

Researching Social Work Encounters

Social Work as Encounters between Social Workers and Clients

What do we mean by claiming that social work can be grasped in social work practices? We shall specify this starting-point and present that social work is constructed as social work particularly in the encounters between clients and social workers. This starting point contains a certain, if loose, definition and understanding of social work. According to this, the three crucial elements of social work are clients, social workers and the encounters between them. In strictly constructionist terms, even a loose pre-definition constitutes a problem. How do we know, in observing a practice, that we are dealing with a client-worker relationship? Don’t the words ‘client’ and ‘social worker’ in themselves constrain our manner of understanding what is happening in the situation; i.e., that there is one helping, supporting or controlling the other? Do these concepts contain a set interpretation of the nature of the client-worker relationship; for instance, as regards its hierarchical nature? Is the word ‘client’ too strong a label? All these questions are justified. However, we cannot speak of matters without naming them or without somehow limiting the area to be scrutinised. Thus, a loose definition of social work is necessary. However, what is essential from the constructionist angle is that the concepts of client and social worker, as well as the encounters between them, are linked to as few as possible advance definitions concerning their content or form, for concrete contents and forms are essentially only constructed in the practices of encounters.

Encounters between clients and social workers take place in many different arenas. The client and the worker may be present in the same space and speak to one another, i.e., the encounter is face-to-face. An encounter may also take place when one of the partners is physically not present; when social workers discuss clients among themselves or write case reports, when clients describe their experiences as clients in different contexts, etc. In an even broader sense, the partners may be thought to encounter one another also indirectly, for instance, in legal discourse which defines the persons in need of help or control by social workers, or in textbooks on social work which advises on the construction of a good client-social worker relationship.

‘Client’ and ‘social worker’ are not self-evident categories; rather, they receive their content in each individual encounter, as is pointed out by Malcolm Payne (1991). The use of language, whether oral or written, holds a crucial role in constructing these contents, even though the systematic observation of the linguistic aspects of social work is fairly recent (Baldock and Prior 1981; Rojek et al 1988). In the articles of this book the client and the social worker come into existence through speech and writing in many types of encounters. At times, the speakers and writers are the persons involved, at other times these categories are produced by other speakers and writers. The texts and speeches draft many different versions of clients and social workers and their mutual relationships. The versions are also linked to each other, and these links are also looked for in various chapters.

Arenas of Encounters

The face-to-face encounter between the social worker and the client is the most clear-cut arena of encounter in the sense that the partners are present to define their status as client and social worker for themselves and for the other. The defining process is strongly interactive. These encounters, which take place in many different organisations, are studied by many writers of this book from different angles. The encounter between the social worker and the client in the everyday work of the social welfare office is the topic of Elisabet Cedersund’s article. She is particularly interested in the narratives constructed by clients of the welfare office in speaking of their financial needs and the causes leading to them, as well as in the roles given to these narratives in the interaction between the worker and the client. In her analysis, Cedersund shows that it is the construction of narratives which lets clients participate in the creation of their ‘case’. Narratives are often presented in a form which requires the worker to present solutions to the client’s problems, i.e., to take the position of a helper. The...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Part I: Social Work and Social Constructionism
• Part II: Practices of Encounter
• Part III: Discursive Struggles
• Part IV: Practical Relevance
• Notes on Contributors