Doing Critical Social Work

Transformative Practices for Social Justice

Bob Pease, Bob Pease, Sophie Goldingay, Norah Hosken, Sharlene Nipperess

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000256796
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicina
• Subtopic: Salud general

Critical social work encourages emancipatory personal and social change. This text focuses on the challenge of incorporating critical theory into the practice of social workers and provides case studies and insights from a range of fields to illustrate how to work with tensions and challenges.Beginning with an outline of the theoretical basis of critical social work and its different perspectives, the authors go on to introduce key features of working in this tradition including critical reflection. Part II explores critical practices in confronting privilege and promoting social justice in social work, examining such issues as human rights, gender, poverty and class. Part III considers the development of critical practices within the organisational context of social work including the fields of mental health, child and family services, within Centrelink and prison settings. Part IV is focused on doing anti- discriminatory and anti-oppressive practice in social work with particular populations including asylum seekers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, domestic violence survivors, older people and lesbian, gay and transgender groups. Finally, Part V outlines collectivist and transformative practices in social work and beyond, looking at environmental issues, social activism, the disability movement and globalisation.'A highly valuable addition to social work education and practice literature in Australia and beyond its shores.' Ruth Phillips, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney

PART I
Addressing the tensions in critical social work

1
Doing critical social work in the neoliberal context: working on the contradictions

Bob Pease and Sharlene Nipperess

Introduction

The premise of the book is that significant opportunities exist for critical social work practice within spaces provided by contradictions within the state organisation of social work as well as within the wider terrain of the state, which includes the non-profit sector. Critical social work only exists within specific sites, where the agency, the larger context and its impact, the client’s subjectivity and the background and structural position of the worker give it a distinct form. That is, critical social work can only be found where social work is actually practised. For example, in state-based social work such as child protection, mental health, Centrelink or correctional services, with particular client groups such as asylum seekers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people with disabilities, aged people or women escaping men’s violence or in community-based campaigns and social movements. All of these sites of practice and more are addressed in this book. Unlike many other books on radical and critical social work, this book provides specific guidance for forms and practices of critical social work and outlines the knowledge and skill base necessary for critical practice (see the definition below ‘Exploring the history of critical social work’).

While all of the contributors are committed to the critical tradition in social work, they do not all articulate the same model of critical social work practice. For example, contributors may position themselves differently in relation to post-structural and discursive frameworks and structural and materialist frameworks of practice. While particular contributors may adopt one of these positions exclusively, we, as editors, do not see these approaches as mutually exclusive.

Most of the contributors hold academic positions within universities. However, all are involved in critical practice both within and outside the university sector. Also, we have worked very closely with practitioners in the field, in some cases as authors and co-authors, to ensure the book reflects everyday social work practice.

Exploring the history of critical social work

‘Critical social work’ is an umbrella term that describes a group of approaches in social work that are diverse but share a common commitment to both personal and structural change (Allan, Briskman & Pease 2009; Dominelli 2009; Payne 2014). The term has been widely used in Australia since the late 1990s but other terms such as emancipatory social work, progressive social work and transformative social work are also used to describe critical approaches to social work practice.

The critical tradition has a long history in social work. Certainly a tension between so-called mainstream and emancipatory views of social work can be identified from its earliest history (Mendes 2009). This history is illustrated by the contrast between the Charity Organisation Society movement with the Settlement House movement. The Charity Organisation Society started in the US in 1877 and was primarily concerned with distributing charity to reduce poverty. It differentiated between ‘deserving’ and ‘non-deserving’ poor and explained poverty according to personal character deficits. Mary Richmond (1861–1928) was particularly signifi-cant in the Charity Organisation Society and shaped the development of social work through the casework method. In contrast, the Settlement House movement, which commenced in England in 1884, rather than viewing poverty as an individual deficit explained poverty as the consequence of an unjust social order. The ‘self-help’ method, which emphasised community development and social action, was developed as a key approach (Mullaly 2007). Jane Addams (1860–1935), who in 1931 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, was particularly significant in the US Settlement House movement.

The approach represented by Jane Addams and the Settlement House movement fits within the critical tradition and indicates the long history of such an approach in social work. However, notwithstanding this long history, critical approaches were peripheral in social work until the 1960s and 1970s. It was during this period that a radical critique of mainstream social work re-emerged, particularly in the Marxist critiques of Corrigan and Leonard (1978), Gough (1979) and others, primarily in the UK, but in the US and Australia as well. Also, in many non-Western countries, the work of Paulo Freire (1993), the Brazilian educator, became influential. Critical social work approaches have continued to develop since (Hick, Fook & Pozzuto 2005; Allan, Briskman & Pease 2009; Gray & Webb 2013a). These approaches include: radical casework (Fook 1993); critical practice (Ife 1997); critical postmodernism (Pease & Fook 1999; 2005; Fook 2012); feminist social work (Dominelli 2002); structural social work (Mullaly 2007); anti-racist social work (Dominelli 2008); radical social work (Ferguson 2008; Ferguson & Woodward 2009; Lavalette 2011a; Turbett 2014); anti-oppressive social work (Mullaly 2010; Baines 2011); human rights-based social work (Lundy 2011; Ife 2012); and anti-discriminatory social work (Thompson 2012).

Allan (2009:40–1) suggests five principles that are shared by contemporary critical approaches to social work:

• A commitment to work towards greater social justice and equality for those who are oppressed and marginalised within society.
• A commitment to work alongside the oppressed and marginalised populations.
• A commitment to question taken-for-granted and dominant assumptions and beliefs.
• An analysis of power relations which serve to marginalise and oppress particular populations in society.
• An orientation towards emancipatory personal and social change.

These principles take into account the diversity of approaches in critical social work and emphasise the commitment to social justice and social change as well as personal emancipatory change. They will be drawn upon in a number of chapters throughout this volume.

Critical theory and critical social work practice

While there are many definitions of critical social work, as noted earlier, we use it as an umbrella term for designating approaches to social work practice that are informed by an eclectic range of critical social theories. We argue that critical theory is fundamentally important in shedding light on the issues facing social workers. We also believe that it enables social workers to understand the relationship between their localised practice settings, and the wider social and political forces that are shaping social work practice.

There is a wide range of theoretical influences on critical social work. We are excited by issues arising from the dialogue between Fraser and Honneth (2003) in relation to the politics of redistribution and recognition (for example, Garrett 2010; Houston 2013; Pallotta-Chiarolli & Pease 2014). One of the key points of disagreement between Fraser and Honneth relates to whether or not the injustices associated with misrecognition and prejudice that subject people to discriminatory practices (based on their gender, sexuality, race or ability)are primarily psychological or not. Fraser prefers to talk about the wounds of this misrecognition as a form of status inequality (Fraser & Honneth 2003). This dialogue has made a significant contribution to social workers’ understanding of subjectivity and agency in the context of power relations (Pallotta-Chiarolli & Pease 2014).

Discourse analysis provides an insight into the broad-ranging dimensions of critical social work (Garrity 2010). In particular, it focuses on language and how language practices construct our understandings of ‘reality’ and subsequently how we act on this reality (Healy 2005). Marston (2013), for example, argues that discourse analysis assists practitioners to become more aware of their own discourse and how it shapes their practice. He draws attention to how social workers can reframe dominant discourses in their practice with service users and power holders.

The work of Foucault helps investigate risk discourses, governmentality and surveillance in encouraging self-disciplining of populations (Kemshall 2010; Powell 2012). While Foucault’s work is sometimes seen as deterministic, because it emphasises how people become complicit in the process of internalising dominant ideologies, we believe that people can develop awareness of these processes and have the capacity of individual and collective agency to resist them (Pallotta-Chiarolli & Pease 2014).

Garrett (2007; 2013) has argued that Bourdieu’s theory has continued relevance for social work. Bourdieu (1999) draws attention to the psychic injuries caused by injustice. He uses the language of social suffering to convey the ways in which people’s experience of oppression is reflected not only in access to material resources but also in their feelings of resentment, anger and despair (Pallotta-Chiarolli & Pease 2014).

Feminist theories, like many of the critical theories we discuss, do not represent one unified theory. Instead, they are informed by diverse standpoints including postmodern, liberal, welfare, Marxist and socialist feminisms. Common to these feminist theoretical orientations, though, is a commitment to the emancipation of women from unequal cultural, material and social relations (Weeks 2003). Feminist critiques challenged the early radical and Marxist approaches for not taking gender (and other dimensions of identity) into account in their analysis of injustice and inequality. These diverse range of theories continue to contribute to critical social work approaches, including feminist social work (Dominelli 2002).

Green theories that focus on the relationship between people and the physi cal environment and how environmental crises impact on people’s lives have had limited impact on social work generally and critical social work in particular until very recently. However, in the last ten years the literature has expanded significantly (Besthorn 2011; Alston 2012; Alston & Besthorn 2012; Gray, Coates & Hetherington 2012a; Dominelli 2012; McKinnon 2012). Gray, Coates and Hetherington (2012b) identify themes in the environment social work literature that are relevant to critical social work, including the critique of modernity and capitalism, the association between critical theory and environmentalism, and the centrality of spirituality and Indigenous perspectives. Dominelli argues for a ‘green social work’ that addresses ‘poverty, structural inequalities, socio-economic disparities, industrialisation processes, consumption patterns, diverse contexts, global interdependencies and limited natural resources’ (Dominelli 2012: 3).

Institutional ethnography addresses practices in critical social work. It was first developed as a Marxist, feminist sociology for women by Dorothy Smith (2007) as a method of empirical inquiry that enables people to map the social relations that coordinate and influence the way people perform their work within institutions. This method has been applied in a range of social work contexts (for example, de Montigny 1995; Brown 2006; de Montigny 2011; Hosken 2013) to ‘reveal the ideological and social processes that produce experiences of subordination’ (DeVault & McCoy 2006: 19). The analysis can be used to understand more about the sites and causes of disconnection between the stated aims of policy, social work approaches and their effects.

While Marxism with its focus on class-based oppression has been marginalised in critical social work since the 1970s, there have been recent attempts to reinvigorate Marxism for radical and critical social work (Lavalette 2011a; Ferguson, I. 2013; Turbett 2014). While those leaning more towards post-structural frameworks will be concerned about its universalising tendencies, we argue that Marxism still provides useful insight into forms of resistance against neoliberalism with its emphasis on free market economics, the privatisation of social services, free trade and user-pay services (Wallace & Pease 2011; Garrett 2013).

We do not accept the argument by some (Ferguson 2008; Turbett 2014) that critical social work is more likely to be postmodernist, while radical social work is more likely to be structuralist and Marxist (see Pease 2013 for the history of critical and radical social work). Nor do we believe, as some postmodernists argue (Fook 2003), that Marxism should be rejected as a foundation for critical social work. Neo-Marxist analysis is still useful in understanding the structural dimensions of social inequality, whereas, post-structural and post-Marxist theories help us understand the cultural dimensions and diverse experiences of inequality.

Ferguson and Lavalette (2007) express concerns about the potential for post-modern approaches as a basis of critical social work practice. Some forms of postmodernism do depoliticise oppression and consequently reproduce patriarchal and capitalist power relations (Morley & Macfarlane 2012). While Gray and Webb (201...