Sociological Social Work

Priscilla Dunk-West, Fiona Verity

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781409445074
• eBook ISBN: 9781317053040
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Sociological social work is a lifelong social work practice which is animated by a sociological perspective. Social workers 'shorthand' orientations such as 'strengths perspective', 'task centred' or 'humanistic' (to name but a few), as a way to identify their philosophical and theoretical approaches in professional life. Whilst some texts have examined sociology for social work, this text instead proposes that sociological social work is a legitimate and theoretically rich orientation, and this book demonstrates what sociological social work looks like in our rapidly changing world. This text will equip students and practitioners with a way to think sociologically, not just while they are studying, but as an ever present reference for making sense of social work purpose and how this is realised in a transforming world. This follows an established tradition in social work literature, but this book elevates and names the importance of this approach, which we argue is critically needed if social work is to achieve its agenda in transformative social, political economic and environmental contexts. The current landscape in which we live is one that is characterised by rapid changes which have implications for the life experiences of those with whom social workers work, social justice advocacy agendas, and for fulfilling the purpose of social work more generally. This book is essential reading for those looking to keep up with these changes.

Chapter 1 What is this Book About?

DOI: 10.4324/9781315609768-1

Introduction

Social work is deeply optimistic and in the concern for social justice and empowerment is an intellectual and emotional commitment to better worlds, human wellbeing and equitable material and social relations. In the context of rapid social change and digital technological developments we contend that thinking sociologically is helpful as an ever present reference for making sense of the social work purpose and how this is realised in spite of challenges emerging in a transforming world. It enables insight into the historical and institutional processes which have got us to where we are now, and how we take these insights into future practice. It does, however, require solid intellectual groundings to equip social workers well for the work they will do.

The focus of this book is the constitution of social work concepts, approaches and practices fit for new times: both the times that are new to us and for times that are new because of the order of social change. The way we approach this is through exploring and expounding upon sociological social work. Sociological social work is a kind of social work which is animated by a life-long sociological interpretative perspective. It is practiced by social workers able to engage their sociological sensibilities and requires knowledge about social work and sociological theories about the world and our day-to-day interactions, both with the people with whom we work and the agency/public policy context. This chapter is an elaboration of the aims of the book and the relevance to social work education and practice. It focuses on theoretical interpretations of contemporary social dynamics and change and empirical data about our shifting world. We will conclude this section by providing a brief description of each chapter, legitimising why the chapters are integral to social work theory for work in a changing world.

Social Work and Times of Change

Each and every day social workers in their practice encounter a diversity of subjective experiences that are kaleidoscopic fragments of bigger, dynamic and changing stories of agency and social structures in a transforming world. Social workers support individuals, families and communities by understanding impact and consequences of poverty, unemployment and injustices, abuse, conflict and violence, housing shortages and illness. Social workers will work directly with individuals/families and groups when they need assistance, undertake prevention and development work about individual and collective concerns, and engage in applied research and policy advocacy. In certain situations social workers engage with people on an involuntary basis because of state requirements, and in other contexts they work with non-government or voluntary agencies. Because of the varying institutional bases of practice there are countless ways social work will take place.

Despite this variation a constant aspect of the social work mission and this applies irrespective of the social work approach taken or the specific agency mandate, is that the issues that people and groups live with cannot be split from the wider context of historically shaped social, economic and political relations and practices (Ife 1997). The International Federation of Social Work definition of social work is as follows:

The social work profession promotes social change, problem solving in human relationships and the empowerment and liberation of people to enhance well-being. Utilising theories of human behaviour and social systems, social work intervenes at the points where people interact with their environments. Principles of human rights and social justice are fundamental to social work. (http://ifsw.org/policies/definition-of-social-work/)

‘Empowerment’, ‘liberation’, understanding the interactions of people within their environments; these aspirations make it an imperative that the social worker sees the bigger picture in their work. One aspect of the bigger picture is attention to the organisational context wherein social workers are employed; the policy agendas, program directives, criteria for service use and regulations of practice. It too means thinking about social work practice in the context of public policy making and the broader public policy frameworks that impact on social contracts and resources for social work practice. It means reflexively knowing that the experiences that face the people and groups with whom social workers work are shaped within the hegemonic or normative discourses, practices and expectations within the society. It also means knowing about the ‘environments’ in which people live their lives which is a ‘dynamic, changing system’ (Ife 1997, p. 26).

Thinking about these bigger picture questions requires what C. Wright Mills (1959) called a sociological imagination, as dually a ‘craft’ and a ‘promise’. This imagination is a quality of mind to see, in a historical context, the links between the micro and the macro, or the ways in which private pains (like ill-health, or unemployment) speak to public troubles (Mills 1959) (caused by pollution or structural weakness in an economy which means workers lose their employment). One of the attributes of this imagination is the capacity to situate human experiences in the times and relate the now to human history, both in respect to the past and the future.

Whilst each generation and each era is a change and continuation from the one before, there is a body of literature that distinguishes our current time, the period around the new millennium, as an especially transformative period of social change (Beck 2000; Lemert 2007). Castells goes so far as to call this a ‘new world’:

…at the end of the twentieth century we are living through one of those rare intervals in history. An interval characterised by the transformation of our “material culture” by the works of a new technological paradigm organised around information technologies. (Castells 1996 p. 29)

This does not deny that new worlds have happened before, as of course they have. For example, the European plague in the mid-1300s is estimated to have killed almost 25 million people: this is a tragedy easily distinguishable as heralding a new order. What are now called developed nations radically changed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a result of the advances in science and technology associated with industrialisation, bringing with those changes a radical shift in previously defined roles around work and family, leisure and mobility and with consequences for power relations and experiences of oppression and freedom (Giddens 1991). Industrialisation processes now underway in China, India, Indonesia and other developing countries are changing social and economic relations within these countries, and at a pace.

A feature of our new global world, that is, our contemporary world, is attributable to the unprecedented rise in new digital technological communications and both the hybrid and homogenous forms of globalisation including global capitalism, with the institutional embedding of neo-liberal values. These developments have radically changed the ways in which we live our lives (Giddens 1991; Urry 2000; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2001; 2005). New technologies for example have enabled everyday activities to speed up, or in the words of Lemert ‘…we are beginning to see that the world is becoming what it is becoming because of speed’ (Lemert 2007, p. 165–6).

The world which preceded email communication, for example, communicated differently: things took more time. Prior to emails, there were office memorandums, hand written or typed, faxed or duplicated by hand. In contrast, there is now instantaneous communication so long as each party has access to the right technology. The moment an email is sent, it is received by the sender regardless of geographical bounds. Alongside these new conditions, new expectations for instant replies bring with them new occupational stressors, expectations and roles. Another example is the photograph. Whereas the digital camera produces its snapshot instantaneously, in previous years photographs required development: removing the film from the camera and taking it to a shop for processing took time. Processing film was the dominant way that images were captured as little as one generation ago. If you yourself do not recall previous ways of doing things, the chances are your parent will recall a life pre-mobile telephones, pre-internet and pre-email. The ways in which we interact have changed markedly due to these technologies. For some, this makes the world a smaller place, whereas for others continued inequalities take new shape in digital divides and exclusion (Castells 1996).

However new digital technologies also open up possibilities and spaces to do different things and do things differently. Never have so many people moved around the world as they do now, even without leaving their homes. The number of hits on Youtube and political blogs outside of political parties illustrates levels of participation on matters that concern people and the global reach and impact of this communication. Some sociologists theorise that this contemporary order of social change is distinctive. Not only are the developments in technology enabling new forms of relating to others through new identities, the ways in which we live our lives are being shaped by developments relating to the pursuit of work and leisure. There is clear evidence that in ‘making’ through the use of technologies we are, in fact, being creative and ‘connecting’ with others (Gauntlett 2007; 2011). It is just that it looks different to the ways in which we have connected with one another in the past.

Alongside the uptake of new technologies and forms of relating, there is some evidence that the demarcations between work and private life have become less compartmentalised (du Gay 1993; Dunk-West 2011). This order of change evokes parallels to earlier times of change when both social work and sociology were born. Kickbusch situates change in alignment with key historical developments:

The shift from the industrial societies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the knowledge societies of the twenty-first century is as groundbreaking as was the shift from the agrarian to the industrial world, and the diseases that come with this change are of a larger societal, not an individual nature…New forms of working and communicating are shaping our working life and lead, for example to new issues of worklife balance. (2008, p. 9)

Kickbusch further argues that we ‘need new policy mechanisms’ and a ‘shift to a new mindset for health and society’ (Kickbusch 2008). She suggests the uptake of ‘prevention labs’ as incubators for new understandings and practices. Specifically this means the creation of spaces where people can think and deliberate about the world as it was, as it is and as it is changing. Martinelli (2003) poses the question about the usefulness of the concepts we use in social analysis, and whether they are up to the task of making sense of this world. In the spirit of such engagement, the question that runs through all of this book is how best to engage in sociological social work that is fit for the emerging issues and challenges of the twenty-first century. In other words: how do we engage as sociologically thinking social workers in the context of change? How do we read our society, the multiple environments that shape clients’ lives and the ways in which it and they are changing?

The premise of this book is that these changes have implications for how social workers think and respond to the issues they face in practice from a place of discernment, and in ways that do not bifurcate ‘micro and macro’, and reduce highly complicated social relations and interpersonal dynamics to only matters of what individuals know, think and do. Furthermore how do social workers reconcile what they learn in university courses about social justice values and practices and what they may be required to do in practice, in organisations steeped in neo-liberal values? How can social workers influence the systems in which they operate? What is their responsibility in bringing about change for the better in relation to such systems? What might guide such work? The contemporary social work practice environment with all of the inherent contradictions heightens the challenge for social workers to maintain critical interpretation, avoid enculturation and stay clear about social work purpose.

We argue in this book that there is no better time for social workers to have sociological thinking abilities to see and understand the changing world, and act with social work purpose, than the present. Sociological social work, we argue, ought to be used as a way to name and justify a kind of practice in which sociological theory comes together with social work aims. Sociological social work is also a sensibility: it marks a particular orientation which helps in addressing some of the key challenges which emerge in our changing world. There is potential arising in the new world for the realisation of social work’s purpose: how do we interpret these and take positive action? Indeed how do social workers notice and name the changing conditions which are so easily eclipsed in the busyness of practice? This is a quasi-new project, for the relevance of the times to practice is a basic question in social work; experiences, meanings and the actions and impacts in practice are inseparable to a broader social, economic and political context. Not only is the world and social change speeding up, but theoretical debates are moving in leaps and bounds; new work emerges on agency and identity, mobility and mobile lives, cultural forms, risk and trust, family and social change.

Our perspective builds on an established critical tradition in social work. This tradition can be traced back to social work’s roots and has been the preoccupying focus of practice for many social workers in practice. There have been some key thinkers for whom a sociological lens has been primary and their work has been influential; for instance the works of Dominelli (1997), Ife (1997), Mullaly (1997), Schwartz (1974) and Leonard (1966).

This book elevates and names the importance of such an approach which we argue is critically needed if social work is to achieve its agenda in transformative social, political, economic and environmental contexts. Social theories are consistently applied to practice settings (Ferguson 2009; 2011; Garrett 2012; 2013) yet these are often framed as existing ‘alongside’ or ‘with’ or ‘for’ social work. We argue throughou...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Notes on the Authors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 What is this Book About?
• Part 1: Subjective Identity, Self and Agency
• Part 2: Collective Identity, Self and Agency
• Part 3: Social Work Identity, Self and Agency
• References
• Index