Global Frontiers of Social Development in Theory and Practice

Climate, Economy, and Justice

B. Mohan

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781349689859, 9781137460707
• eBook ISBN: 9781137460714
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Globalisation
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume examines developmentality and the archeology of its social practices, unfolding systemic failures that muffle progress. Economic, climate, and social justice are the areas of focus for this analysis of human-social development in the fog of ideological-institutional meltdowns.

PART 1

SOCIAL PRACTICE: FRONTIERS OF HUMAN AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

The archeology of knowledge partakes of the history of ideas that shape people’s responses to address issues and problems concerning human-social development. Part 1, inclusive of six chapters, offers new insights in search of a better world.

CHAPTER 1

ON SOCIAL PRACTICE: ARCHEOLOGY OF SCIENCE AND HOPE

Brij Mohan

This chapter posits social practice as an anti-essentialist professional disciplinarity—within the social-scientific realm—to replace antiquated vocabularies of social welfare, social work, and social policy. Foucauldian “archeology” is used as a guiding framework to delineate and define the contours of transformative science that are embedded in knowledge, values, and social practices. “The science of man,” David Hume wrote, “is the only solid foundation for the other sciences” ([1739] 1961: xiii). The search for method has yielded interventions and practices to relate to the mysteries of human nature and its vicissitudes. The Enlightenment “laid the basis for nothing less than a fully ‘secular’ theodicy: a program for analyzing and remedying the evils that befall man in society” (Becker, 1968: 31).

Humanity continues to be plagued by societal evils. Our social practices and their corresponding scientific disciplines have evolved over time as different modes of interventions in response to various issues that call for attention. Evaluative standards—hallmarks of Western political philosophy—are, in Foucault’s interpretation, first principles that we apply to validate social conditions. I intend to examine how some of these standards help us validate the authenticity of social work within social welfare.

If the Kantian critique flourished in the Enlightenment, the latter “is the age of critique” (Rabinow, 1984: 38). Kant saw two uses of reason: private and public. Humans are cogs in the machine when reason is used for private use. Soldiers, servants, CEOs, and scientists and engineers who follow a top-down order populate techno-industrial society. Their hubris and its societal impact are incalculable. When reason is put to public use, it becomes a servant of humanity and a champion of freedom. In other words, public and private uses of reason correspond to freedom and oppression (Mohan, 1985; 1986). “There is Enlightenment when the universal, the free, and the public uses of reason are superimposed on one another” (Rabinow, 1984: 37).

I have invested more than a quarter of a century—my entire postdean life—abstractly, and in reality, using reason for professional freedom. It saddens me deeply to see how my calling, professionally, has become a victim of its own success. Only a madman would write five trilogies of books to express this existential angst. The charade of “professional” reviews under the command of a coterie of people on boards, councils, commissions, and other decision-making bodies for desired exclusions and inclusions marks the lowest ebb of ethical conduct—standards nonetheless—which I really find “offensive” and obscene. The use of “personal” reason or bias for individual-institutional aggrandizement is the most unfortunate form of narcissism. Its destructive impact on society is incalculable.

Degrees of inequalities and the viability of the American Dream are incompatible. Suzanne Mettler (2014) implicates higher education as a saboteur. Her “important book documents the destructive forces in higher education, forces fostered and nurtured by a Congress that has abdicated responsibility to ensure the strengths of this country’s most important engine of social mobility” (Edsall, 2014¹). Now that higher education is in a mess, disciplines outside the mission ring will either be cannibalized or eliminated. Social work programs found a safe haven on campuses due to their market value and low-cost investment. Now that technical, digital, business, and growth-oriented pursuits are attracting endowments and grants, soft disciplines will pay the price for their “softness.” The information revolution has changed the way of life. Social work never could establish what its own contribution—and value—was to society. Others would do even better without a feckless license. This devolution did not happen because of societal rejection; it’s social work that failed society as a whole.

The focus of this chapter is threefold: (1) the archeology of altruism (that is, help), (2) science and/or social science, and (3) “social hope.”

The Archeology of Help

Who is required to have a social work credential issued by the Board? Any individual with a degree in social work either at the undergraduate or graduate level that is practicing social work in Louisiana. Social work practice is the professional application of social work values, theories, and interventions to one or more of the following: enhancing the development, problem-solving, and coping capacities of people; promoting the effective and humane operations of systems that provide resources and services to people; linking people with systems that provide them with resources, services, and opportunities; developing and improving social policy; and engaging in research related to the professional activities.

The practice of social work includes but is not limited to clinical social work, planning and community organization, policy and administration, research, and social work education.²

The notion of “help” is based on the mythologies of altruistic latter-day folklores. Ira Colby, a prominent social work educator and demonstrator, writes on “challenging social work education’s urban legends” in the current issue of the Journal of Social Work Education (2014: 2016–219). Myths and critical reasoning are hostile to each other. Our notion of “help”—the hallmark of social work—is based on the mythologies of altruistic latter-day folklores. With reference to Ira Colby’s take on “urban legends” (2014: 2016–219), scientificity, ideological conundrums, and legitimacy issues of social work as a profession call for a few critical observations:

1 It’s a fallacious contention that philosophical-ideological orientations are scientifically unsound. Social work itself is founded on the tenets of Judeo-Christian belief systems.

2 Critical thinking is a quintessential element of postmodern philosophical tradition largely owed to Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud. Colby’s attempt to dichotomize philosophy and science is misguided.

3 Social work’s irrelevancy is self-deserved. We all became second-class citizens due to our own “institutional-individual narcissism.” Our raw careerism and unprincipled, unsubstantiated rhetoric of diversity and social justice simply fast-tracked this process.

4 “Evidence-based driven” methodology as postulated amounts to a delusion in a field that remains parasitic at best. Evaluative processes—including program reviews, reaffirmation of accreditation, scholarly peer reviews, and promotion-tenure standards—are fraught with questionable policies, practices, and procedures. Self-renewal is in fact self-preservation.

The truth is self-evident. Having worked tirelessly over half a century in the field, I feel social work has become its own nemesis. Urban legend?³

Gary Becker was a “real-world economist.” Lawrence Summers writes: “If . . . economics is an imperial social science, Gary Becker was its emperor” (Time, May 19, 2014: 21). There has never been a Gary Becker in social welfare and/or social work. Social work’s alleged imperialism is a subconscious self-glorification that some international scholars have disingenuously invoked to cash off.

There have been feckless debates about whether social work needs a theory or not. In a way social work is a hand-on amalgamation of theories that need validation or refutation. As William Epstein would say: “It’s all a romance.” As examined in the pages that follow, “political and social development” got embedded in the social system as a functional expedience. Norman Birnbaum sums this up rather brilliantly:

Above all, the world’s difficulties were attributed to the unequal rate of a process termed “modernization,” which, when completed, would complete its pacification. Behind much of this lay, of course, two convictions. One was that the American model of political and social development was canonical, especially the model provided by the New Deal and Keynesian welfare state. The second was that domination, relationships of power, could be domesticated—no—nullified. This was a projection onto the globe of what was current in academia, a systematic denial of the structure of power in the United States. (Birnbaum, 1988: 333)

Parsonsian social system and action go beyond nullification; it amounts to justification so that a possible state of imbalances is never reached. His theory of social action, as examined later, is a cornerstone of a welfare state that simplifies inequality as a systemic karma. “In a way, every social theory is a discreet obituary or celebration for some social system,” wrote Alvin Gouldner (1970: 47). The demise of social theory is understandably attributable to systemic meltdowns despite elaborate theoretical “infrastructure.” As a self-taught social theorist, I confront this reality amid institutional meltdowns without a rea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Prologue
• Part 1 Social Practice: Frontiers of Human and Social Development
• Part 2 Toward Comparative Social Development
• Epilogue: Mendacity of Development
• Index