Social work

A problem-oriented introduction

Lothar Böhnisch, Wolfgang Schröer

• Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9783110440119
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110431322
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

In many regions of the world the twenty-first century has started with a structure of endless challenges for social work. Social work seems to be in demand almost everywhere, from support schemes for children and young people into adulthood and on to support for elderly people, in community work in cities and rural regions, in disaster relief and in care for refugees. This book describes the field of social work – its themes, problems and methods – in the face of the concept of the second, reflexive modernisation. The question needs to be asked of how, and whether, social work's success story from the first modernity can continue. We discuss the second modernity as a time of blurring boundaries. Today, it frequently faces the problem that the organised terms of its approaches come up against a social reality where the frameworks of social life are becoming dynamic. Normalised structures are dissolving or becoming mixed with new ones; boundaries are blurring and new ones appearing.

1Normalization and Dissolution of Boundaries: Social Work at the Start of the Twenty-First Century

Current discussions within social work are characterized by a prevailing mood of ambivalence. Almost all analyses of current times and predictions of future social developments point to seemingly limitless social challenges. Social work seems to be in demand almost everywhere, from support schemes for children and young people into adulthood to support for elderly people, in community work in cities and rural regions, in disaster relief and in care for refugees. This list could go on forever. In other words, in many regions the twenty-first century has started with a structure of endless challenges for social work.

Looking at some specialist books on social work, by contrast, sometimes gives the impression that the century of social work is behind us. Here, the twentieth century is not infrequently described as the golden age of social work. Many historical analyses focus on the developments which social work underwent in many Western countries during the twentieth century, leading to its current form as defined by international organizations, among others. Thus, while some extensive challenges are on the horizon, confidence in the development of social work seems fairly low among the expert community.

This is mainly due to the fact that the set of social circumstances which led to the current extent and professional structure of social work in many European countries and in North America is linked to their specific welfare policies and welfare states. In the twentieth century, social work became a focal point of socio-political modernization in these countries. In discussions on social science, this period is often regarded as the first modernity (Beck, Giddens & Lash, 1994), with social work being a child of the first modernity. It became established as an agency of socialization and a community-based social policy aimed at constructing a so-called “normal life course” starting out with people’s everyday lives.

The focus of the concepts of the twentieth century was on constructing a “normal life course” with typical lines of development and trajectories. Gainful employment and the path leading up to it are one such line. Another line was the stratification of ages, each assigned different functions. As a rule, the concepts thus revolve around the construct of a linearly developing life course: childhood, youth, adulthood and old age are viewed as structuring stages in life and related to institutionalized expectations on education and work (gainful employment). The dual (though internally unequal) structure of production and reproduction, career and family life (hierarchical gender-based division of labour) acted as a line around which gender-typical biographical attributions are grouped. In this context, the dominant constructs were successful socialization processes, typical biographies and contrasting “nonstandard” trajectories, resulting at times in “deviant careers”. Thus, in the first modernity, a socializing dualism of normality and deviance can be said to have developed. This dualism of normality and deviance is part of social work’s success story in the first modernity. It includes the structure which called for social services to be developed in welfare states and is reflected within social work as an institutionalized instance of secondary normalization.

The Social Pedagogical Dilemma of the First Modernity

In the 1920s, the social pedagogue Carl Mennicke coined the term “social pedagogical dilemma” (“sozialpädagogische Verlegenheit”). As he explained, modern people were on the one hand expected to be independent and take their own responsibility for their lives; on the other, they were placed in a society which did not give them any “clear forms of social life” but instead left some people to live in poverty (Mennicke, 1926, p. 332). Moreover, he posited, modern households were being downgraded “to pure consumer communities” and the “pace of economic life” was leaving “less and less space for really fostering” life as a society. The modern family could not, he said, in any case be seen as a reliable community to bring up children, and industrial capitalism had deprived modern working conditions of any “pedagogical quality” (Mennicke, 1926, pp. 323–324). Finally, he believed that as a whole, modern people in a city found little opportunity to “experience the inner demands of life within society”. There was no doubt, Mennicke concluded, “that this is causing many individual lives to lose any direction or certainty” (Mennicke, 1928, p. 293): “In the end, the complicated nature of modern social life means we all experience this feeling of uncertainty. All the more, of course, in times of crisis, when young people, more than anyone else, are placed under pressure by their uncertain future” (Mennicke, 1999, p. 73). The “social pedagogical dilemma” thus lay, on the one hand, in people being set free as individuals, but on the other hand in there being no adequate social conditions in which they could develop and experience social agency. Life in modern societies, wrote Mennicke, was “far too strongly concentrated on jointly coping with the burdens of life” (Mennicke, 1928, p. 283). In a nutshell, Mennicke had thus described the structure on which social work was based as regards socialization theory.

1.1From Normalization to the Dissolution of Boundaries

Discussions within social work during the twentieth century centred on arguments about characterizations of normality, extending as far as the institutionalized normalization of social work itself. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, developments within social work are best described by the term “dissolution of boundaries”. This term marks the relationship between the first modernity and the second, or reflexive, modernity. The dissolution of boundaries does not mean that boundaries are disappearing altogether but rather that the frameworks of social life are becoming dynamic. Normalized structures are dissolving or becoming mixed with new ones; boundaries are blurring and new ones appearing. What were once linear reconstructions in people’s life courses are fracturing and being questioned.

“Either . . . or” structures are turning into “Both . . . and” structures (see Beck, 2000). Thus, as the boundaries of gainful employment dissolve, the link between people’s identity and their work, which was previously central to their life history, is eroding, and as the boundaries of learning blur, education is extending, lasting beyond youth and throughout people’s lives. While, during the first modernity, the socialization regime was determined by the collectively felt conflict between normality and deviance, the socialization regime of the second modernity is characterized by blurring boundaries and individualized opportunities, accompanied by enforced self-organization. Nonetheless, the expectations of normality and the regulatory forms of the first modernity have not vanished.

Trans- as a Phenomenon of the Second, or Reflexive, Modernity

In academic discussion on the observed dissolution of boundaries, the terms used to address social topics are increasingly being prefaced with the prefix “trans-”. The talk is of transnationalism, transmigration, translocality, transsexuality, transgender, transculturalism, etc. What these different forms of trans-research have in common is that they reflexively question “naturalizations” of social phenomena of the first modernity which are seen as institutionalized, adopting a critical stance and problematizing them in terms of their history and system, as well as the consequences of each subject’s scope for action. The research on transnationalism, for example, points towards “methodological nationalism” (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002): “Methodological nationalism is the naturalization of nation-states by the social sciences. Scholars have shared that national borders are the natural unit of study, equate society with nature state, and conflate national interest with the purpose of social sciences” (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002, p. 302). Accordingly, the concept of “methodological nationalism” is used to point out the naturalization of nationalism in social science research and problematize the equation of society with the nation state (Köngeter, 2012). The perspective of socialization theory, finally, clearly calls for reflection on the “methodological institutionalization” of life course policies (Schröer, 2013). This means that the institutionalized expectations or regulations of the first modernity have, in some cases, continued to be naturalized. With regard to blurring boundaries and transitions, on the one hand, these seem to have been socially generated. On the other hand, this is linked to a call to reflect again in each case on how, and to what extent, the subject’s scope for action can be increased in each interaction between organizational arrangements, institutionalized expectations and regulations, and the actors’ situations in life.

Currently, the question needs to be asked of how, and whether, social work’s success story from the first modernity can continue: “What initially still looks like an expansion”, during which social work “is seen as a success story, already shows that its institutions and structures are disintegrating: its boundaries are dissolving” (Winkler, 1999, p. 96). In view of tendencies for boundaries to blur and social patterns to disintegrate, social work no longer has an overview of the contexts in which its interventions and policies are needed and should be applied. Challenges, Winkler believes, are appearing everywhere: in integration, skills training, management, nursing, supervision and care. It would be almost impossible to subsume these tasks under a coherent description of social work as a profession or a discipline (see Winkler, 1999).

A blueprint for social work seems to be developing which possesses flexibly applicable knowledge and points towards how to improve that knowledge by means of corresponding interventional modules. These types of knowledge, from running a business to project management to psychosocial diagnostics, can hardly be described as specific to social work any longer. Social work is also subject to constant pressure to be innovative and efficient. In some regions there is even talk of an “efficiency revolution” (Blanke & Bandemer, 1999), as social work today is said to be in competition for “economic superiority”.

Thus, the assumption which prevailed in many countries that the need for social work will continue to be met by social workers trained in this sector can no longer be taken for granted. A new market of service provision is on its way, in which decisions are made as to who will deal with social problems; methods on how they should be addressed are increasingly based mostly on economic criteria, indicators which are often as yet obscure. In many places today, there is no answer to questions such as which agents and which settings are to be used to ease social tensions in specific neighbourhoods, to organize employment support programmes or to advise young people. In welfare states, the system at least intended social work to be the means of choice for secondary normalization. Currently, solutions and services are not expected specifically from social work. In other words, tenders are, for example, invited for projects involving regional intervention and design, and social work and other social actors are told to apply with innovative approaches. Then, it is decided which innovative approach best fits.

Social workers can apply anywhere, but their professional skills are not exclusively required, e.g. in the context of welfare policy measures. Other operators and initiatives can also submit offers, and it can no longer be assumed that, for example, out-of-home care, refugee relief or social training in rehabilitation is necessarily the domain of social work. Quality assurance schemes and concepts to prove the effectiveness of social work are an expression of the sector’s wish to assert its usual position in this new field of competitors.

1.2Rediscovery of Welfare Policy and the Welfare State

In the twentieth century, social work, though born from social policy and the welfare state, was also one of their fiercest critics. Today, social work yearns for their organized structure and the buffering “hidden hand” (Leibfried & Pierson, 1998). Welfare policy and the welfare state were a means of preventing the social services from being split up and of keeping them transparently joined together in the hand of the state. Of course, in some countries the institution of the national welfare state continues to guarantee social rights and services. Altogether, however, the concept of the national welfare state is also caught in the pull of blurring boundaries. Looking back on the welfare policies and the welfare state of the twentieth century, it can be said that their “methodological nationalism” is becoming obvious. It was more or less nationalized and naturalized in social work, ignoring the fact that it was a specific socio-political structure which had produced the welfare policies and welfare states in the century of national industrial societies.

Activation as a Collective Identity

The social scientist Stephan Lessenich showed how the relationship between the individual, the state and society is shifting in welfare policies and welfare states: “Where the state protected the individual against social risks [. . .] now individuals are expected to make their own provision for risks in the social interest” (Lessenich, 2008, p. 95). According to this line of thought, it is not only about political control but about a governmental organization of the social sphere which is compatible with the law of flexibility under the new capitalism. Social regulation is no longer achieved predominantly by means of the welfare state; instead, all citizens are activated, whether they are unemployed or have been forced out of work in old age.

For Lessenich, the labour policy programmes on labour mobility or on “lifelong learning” which are dominant in Europe are characteristic of a policy which blends “institutional strategies and forms of individual action together to create a new way of governing the social (in a broad sense)” (Lessenich, 2008, p. 116). The welfare state becomes a means of social engineering which keeps people busy, so that they are not a burden on the state and, ideally, produce a surplus which safeguards the common good. The welfare state is then limited to the function of regulating that surplus to benefit the community. The regulatory model of people’s entitlements and what can reasonably be expected of them has been replaced by one in which people take care of their own interests and produce a community surplus. This is in line with a concept of humanity in which subjects can be found who are “marketable and socially acceptable” at the same time (Lessenich, 2008, p. 85).

As both the market and society need to be constantly activated and kept mobile, the subjects who constitute this mobility need to be kept on the move, too. They are expected to experience society not as a collective commitment, as in the past, but as a shifting context of individual safety measures, in that they can feel “part” of the mainstream who are keeping in step with developments. Traditional forms of social security are often seen as causing stagnation. Lessenich (2008), however, also points towards the coping problems which people have in this new socio-political system when he speaks of the “permanent stress” from which subjects suffer due to the constant pressure to remain active.

All citizens can now be productive of their own accord; indeed, they have to be, if the “activating state” offers them such opportunities and the common good is now seen as resulting from the comprehensive application of principles of economic productivity. This turns subjects into “bearers of human capital” and follows the illusion that the world of work under new capitalism is no longer alienating (see also Böhnisch & Schröer, 2007). The mobile model of social activation via the principle of individualized human capital lacks the collective identity which the culture of welfare policy and the welfare state was intended to create, at least politically. Collectivity is now something which individuals constantly have to be reminded of in moral terms. It is symbolized accordingly, while in reality social fractures are deepening and the zones of social vulnerability are growing (Castel 2000).

1.3Disembedding and Reformulation

Fundamentally, in what form social work is required and can play a part and develop within a society depends on the extent to which that society wants to achieve social equality, on how intensive and explicit the prevailing ethical standards of justice and responsibility are and on the balance between people and the economy. Turbulence occurs when this commitment is no longer binding, when paradoxes dominate the social scene and when social norms become obscure. Pierre Bourdieu made a prediction along these lines: “More than ever [. . .] we have to practice a para-doxal mode of thought” (Bourdieu, 1997, p. 123). Such social paradoxes affect social work directly since the apparent “if . . . then” linearity of the first modernity has been displaced by the “both . . . and” logic of the second modernity.

Moreover, in view of a globalized economy, transnational interconnections are creating a normative problem, not only for national welfare policies and welfare states, but also for social work in these states. In socio-scientific discourses, this phenomenon is described as “disembedding”: within the global competition among companies, regions and municipalities, decisions on economic location are being made with social consequences, without taking into consideration local developments and social situations. This is keeping the social world under pressure, as it does not seem able to escape the hegemonic pull of the new rules of economic movement.

Today, there are discussions all over the world on how a link can be maintained to this disembedded world in order to wield any kind of influence over it. Local welfare policies intended to safeguard and shape social cohesion and the social integration of a society find themselves entangled in transnational dynamics of disintegration in which there is hardly any further scope for social action. The local economic balance (however precarious it used to be) which for decades seemed to make a deliberate social policy possible, and which was designed to develop into something like a collective identity of being protected by the welfare state, hardly appears as a reference point any longer. Today, people are required to adapt to the logic of capital, which can now take on an existence independent of labour. The “flexib...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1 Normalization and Dissolution of Boundaries: Social Work at the Start of the Twenty-First Century
• 2 Critical Living Circumstances: Distress, Vulnerability and Neediness
• 3 Coping with Life as a Social Pedagogical Concept
• 4 The Four Dimensions of the Situation of Coping as Means of Access for Social Work
• 5 The Socio-Political, Socio-Ethical Perspective: Social and Generational Justice
• 6 Recommendations for Action
• 7 Enablement in Light of the Blurring Life Stage Borders
• 8 Social Problems and Social Integration
• 9 Professional Agency
• 10 Social Work and Welfare Policy
• 11 Transnational Approaches: Commons, Citizenship, Care
• Bibliography