Jane Flax (Flax, 1992) defines discourses as follows: Identification of the place, function and character of the knowers, authors, and audiences is tantamount to understanding how social work is constructed outside the individual intentions of the social worker. Contested territory: Sexualities and social work. I had to admit that I saw both discourse from my subject position as a mother, and had to rather sheepishly admit that I wouldnt have wanted my thirteen year old daughter to be having sex at that age. We looked at how these conflicting discourses positioned Ronni, Tara and school personnel. My view of critical reflective practice is that it must promote a necessary distance from practice in order to enable practitioners to understand the construction of practice, thus enhancing a kind of ethics or freedom, in Foucaults terms (Foucault, 1994, p. 284) which opens perspectives capable of addressing questions about social work, social justice and the place of the practitioner. We acknowledge a knowledge-based economy while making tuition unaffordable. The concepts of discourse, power and governmentality have become important in understanding social processes. Concepts like looting and rioting have been used in mainstream media coverage of the uprising that followed the police killings of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray. In doing so it produces much of what occurs within us and within society. It aims to understand how language is used in real life situations. Marston, G. (2004), Social Policy and Discourse Analysis: Policy Change in Public Housing, Aldershot: Ashgate. Maxine made extraordinary efforts to help Ms. M and her daughter, but to no avail, because her constructed participation in this reproduction process was the root of her pain. The social reality that creates cultural binaries and unfairness. This is because that insider knowledge is knowledge of historical trauma, injustice, racism and white privilege, and it is certainly outside the boundaries of attachment discourses. Her mother had immigrated years before, leaving her in the care of her paternal grandparents and a stepfather. New York: Routledge. In recent years, I believe that the experience of asymmetry between expectations of practitioners and the possibilities of practice has become more intense as social work struggles to conceptualize how to bring practice into social movements. Ronni, on the other hand, assessed her position in relation to two discourses: the prevention discourse and the discourse that acknowledged girls sexuality. Rossiter, A. This discursive position effectively disallowed a subject position of another sort: solidarity with her client. The biomedical discourse is one of the most influential discourses in the health care profession today (Healy, p. 20). Innocence lost and suspicion found: Do we educate for or against social work? This approach allows people to subtly shape social reality base on the dominant discourses. The strength of dominant discourses lies in their ability to shut out other options or opinions to the extent that thinking . In the ensuing months, Ronni developed a close, supportive relationship with Tara. London: Sage. Some discourses come to dominate the mainstream (dominant discourses), and are considered truthful, normal, and right, while others are marginalized and stigmatized, and considered wrong, extreme, and even dangerous. In other words, from a poststructural point of view, discourses are the sets of language practices that shape our thoughts, actions and even our identities," as quoted from Karen Healy, 2014, p. 3. Biomedicine is a dominant and pervasive model in health care settings and there are strengths and limitations in working within the this discourse. asserts that discourses, in Fou- cault's work, are ways of constituting knowledge, together with the social practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations. In social work, critical practice is crucial because social work is a nexus where social contradictions are manifest. We might even think of a discourse as a worldview in action. In turn, such assessments act against the internalization of the contradictions played out in social work practice. Social work is placed and places itself outside what are understood as the academic rules for A Perspective on Critical Social Work. Discourses which augment the power of elites are called dominant or official discourses by poststructuralists. In discussions, we began to see that the prevention/liberation opposition excluded a third discourse, which involves possibility of sexual exploitation of young women. When oppositions are in place, what boundaries are erected? How do some discourses oppose or resist power? The idea of dominant discourse is important for therapists and counselors, because many people who need therapy and counseling are influenced negatively by the dominant discourses that prevail in their societies (Soal & Kottler, 1996). This intellectual interest can be found in the ways we re-experience value commitments through openness to the question at the heart of critical social work: What does social work have to do with justice? Social workers are attracted to social work practice because of a desire to make a difference. ), and it may be spoken in . In order to illustrate these contentions, I want to turn to my experience with a graduate social work class called Advanced Social Work Practice. Institutions organize knowledge-producing communities and shape the production of discourse and knowledge, all of which is framed and prodded along by ideology. As such, discourse, power, and knowledge are intimately connected, and work together to create hierarchies. Social workers are the bodies in the middle of this site and must act within the force field of contradictions. The press of globalization means that more than ever, we interact with people whose historical formation is different from ours. It focuses specifically on participant . Many times our investigations pointed to opposing discourses - discourses that counteract each other. Her agency had neither an analysis of the sensitivity of her position in relation to immigrant clients, nor the racist assumptions that grounded these case allocations. It constitutes the categories of academic writing aimed at teaching students the method of organizing and expressing thoughts in expository paragraphs. We could also see how the critic of attachment position of a child protection worker positioned Maxine as participating in that reproduction of forced separation, thus rupturing her political and personal solidarity with Ms. M. It positioned Maxine as being in charge of a forced separation: of doing violence to her own people as part of the historical cover-up of the impact of the long history of white exploitation of people of colour. (1999). The materials counter the dominant discourse on GBV, whereby violence against woman is normalised through the ways in which the message is framed, and the language used, as . Foucault was interested in power and social change. Social workers were critiqued as being a part of the problem by choosing to emphasize casework as a model of practice, an approach . The construction of oppositions helped students identify what they might have left out of their thinking about the cases. Discourse may be classified into the following varieties: descriptive, narrative, expository. 1 Gorman, R. (2004). Following her immigration, she lived only for a short time with her mother, from whom she had been separated for most of her childhood. This assignment will discuss the case study given whilst firstly looking at the issues of power as well as the risk discourse and how this can be dominant within social work practice. as doctors or patients), and it is these social effects of discourse that are focused on in discourse analysis. Carolyn Taylor and Susan White make a distinction between reflection and reflexivity where the latter adds a critical dimension by calling taken-for-granted assumptions into questions (Taylor & White, 2000). Ronni_Gorman@yahoo.ca. The case involved a single mother originally from the Caribbean. Finally the strengths perspective will be . In our class, discourse analysis helped illuminate the production of feelings of individual shame and apology as responses to practice. Discourse transmits and produces power; it undermines and . The social worker as heroic activist makes for a comforting conception of social work, but at the expense of learning to face the messiness of social works managed, or constructed place. These students either had significant work experience, or experience in a previous practicum to draw from. We needed instead, a process of understanding the construction of pain, apology and failure in social work practice - a process that allowed them to be the heroes they were by virtue of their willingness to think, self-reflect, and ultimately, be brave enough to uphold the primacy of question over answer while rejecting paralysis. We decry racism and declare our allegiance to anti-oppressive practice while working in primarily white agencies. Ronnis analysis moved beyond opposition through a new discourse of health-oriented openness to girls sexuality in which protection is configured as part of healthy sexuality. Even in the face of power differentials, they challenged dominant discourses directly and indirectly and advocated for various forms of help for the people with whom they worked. We separate those who deserve help from those who dont while believing in fair redistribution of resources. Discourse, as a social construct, is created and perpetuated . 16, Issue. Discourse typically emerges out of social institutionslike media and politics (among others), and by virtue of giving structure and order to language and thought, it structures and orders our lives, relationships with others, and society. Social work practices: Contemporary perspectives on change. Here, I want to gather strands of the previous discussion. (p. 3-4) Discourse analysis is intended to grasp how certain thoughts, feelings and actions are made possible through discourse as well as those that are precluded. We can also assess how discourses position us in relation to other professionals and to clients. We dont know how to know social work as a constructed place, and ourselves as constructed subjectivities within that political space (Rossiter, 2000). When we look outside the boundaries of discourses, we may discover practice questions which help us reflect on power and possibility. Its evident that discourse is the compilation of particular ideologies and beliefs concerning a certain bracket in the society. Maxine was routinely assigned cases involving immigrant people of colour because she herself is an immigrant woman of colour. as social subjects (e.g. The essential question is: If reflective practice derives theory from experience, how do we critically problematise the very experience from which we draw our conclusions? This paper explores dominant discourses underpinning the social worker visit to children and families and their impact on their purpose, content and focus. Abstract. Also, she was well-informed about the ways that prevention and risk education inherently set up a trajectory of sex as normatively heterosexual, age appropriate sexual experience. A discourse of criminality, when usedto discuss protestors, or those struggling to survive theaftermath of a disaster, like Hurricane Katrina in 2004, structures beliefs about right and wrong, and in doing so, sanctions certain kinds of behavior. Michel Foucault. It is a story that cannot be told within the reigning discourse of attachment. When we asked the critical question about what is left out of the story of attachment, it became clear that such a story is applied to individuals without regard to history and context. 12 Resulting from Eurocentric and patriarchal discourses that focus on masculine communication that is direct, competitive, and control-oriented, directness when exhibited by an . but by the demands of the dominant group within the . Social work is a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that promotes social change and development, social cohesion, and the empowerment and liberation of people. When you conduct discourse analysis, you might focus on: The purposes and effects of different types of language. She engaged in low level self-mutilation and in sexual activity. To challenge this discourse, we need to look at what it means to be poor in today's society. Such an analysis might allow us to ask the kind of questions that are the heart of social work ethics: How, for example, could we think differently about child welfare practices with black families if our work were guided first and foremost by a desire to find forms of practice that take into account centuries of trauma from racial injustice? ThoughtCo, Aug. 28, 2020, thoughtco.com/discourse-definition-3026070. These behaviors and patterns of speech and writing reflect the ideologies of those who have the most power in the society. Despite Maxines best efforts, this troubled relationship ended in separation when the daughter moved in permanently with a relative. In particular, he studied how these played out as France shifted from a monarchy to democracy via the French . In N. Miller (Ed. Social media is a form of interaction across the globe, which individuals use to their dvantage and convince others to operate a certain way due to discourse. The case studies were stories of clients whom they remembered with a sense of failure or apology or shame. I understand these vantage points in the two case studies I have described in the four ways: 1) an historical consciousness, 2) access to understanding what is left out of discourses in use, 3) understanding of how actors are positioned in discourse, all leading to: 4) a new perspective which exposes the gap between the construction of practice possibilities and social justice values, thus allowing for field of limited and constrained choices which may either narrow the gap, or make clear the impossibility of options and choice in the particular case. A dominant discourse of race often positions whiteness as . Within this anti-immigrant discourse,illegals and immigrants are juxtaposed against citizens, each working to define the other through their opposition. The failures of this fantasy cause us to suffer, to apologize, to despair. Indeed, more how tos could only add to their apology stance. Is that individual oppressed based on race or part of the dominant group due to her positioning as a We struggled to understand how subject positions were created by opposing discourses, and how such oppositions excluded consideration of protection with respect to sexual vulnerability. I am interested in a critical ethics of practice because social workers as people suffer when the results of practice seem so meager in comparison to the ideals inherent in social work education, in agency expectations, and in implicit norms which define professional. In conventional social work education, practitioners are asked to believe that they will learn a theory, and then learn how to implement it. Cole, Nicki Lisa, Ph.D. "Introduction to Discourse in Sociology." The sense of the multiple stories at play helped relocate the notion of experience as brute reality carrying authority by virtue of being real to a notion of experience as constructed, contingent, and always interpreted. Discourse about social work In this article, I argue that a discourse about social work exists, and that within this discourse is found a 'truth' about social work as a practical, rather than a theoretical, enterprise. Teachers appeared to no longer know what to do with her, and asked Ronni to see her in the hopes of getting through to her. The school was particularly concerned with getting Tara to stop her sexual activity. Such critical analysis allows us to contemplate a major question at the heart of her practice: How can historical consciousness, left out of psychological discourses, contribute to forming relations of solidarity with our clients, thus enabling practice better aligned with justice? In Critical Social Justice, dominance is the yang to oppression's yin. This is noted as an area for development. (1999). The summer of 2020 was a season of racial reckoning for journalism in the United States. For example, Ronni mobilizes a libratory discourses as a way of resisting prevention discourses. He wrote and lectured on the interactions between discourse analysis and social relationships in social work. Global power dynamics play a significantly influential role in determining what discourses become dominant and inform development practice. ThoughtCo. Critical reflectivity in education and practice. Critical social work helps people to understand the dominant ideology discourse and relocate subjectively in to that discourse. These elements helped students writing cases from memories saturated with unease about their own performance to shift from what I did to how the case was constructed, and how their feelings arose from the complicated constructions of their practice within particular locations and time. Thus, I have found myself on the terrain of a kind of critical ethics that views practice theories as stories about the cultural ideals of practice, and that treats practitioners experiences as stories that can teach us about the conduct of practice in relation to such ideals. Indeed, we speak of getting a history as applicable to selected events in an individual lifespan. In this case, the dominant discourse on immigration that comes out of institutions like law enforcement and the legal system is given legitimacy and superiority by their roots in the state. When multiple discourses are uncovered, then we can treat our own perspective as limited, particular, local and contingent as opposed to the adoption of expert professional view as the privileged view. . As such, discourse is imbued with attitudes and . 131-155). Take, for example, the relationship between mainstream media (an institution) and the anti-immigrant discourse that pervades U.S. society. 1 Discourse is, thus, a way of organising knowledge that . When "criminals" are "looting," shooting them on site is framed as justified. knowledge is not simply a resource to deploy in practice. We draw on theories within social gerontology whilst also . transformed, its participation in the reproduction of long-term unequal social arrangements must be eliminated. Ideology thus shapes discourse, and, once discourse is infused throughout society, it, in turn, influences the reproduction of ideology. Our constructed location is often a painful one. The grounds for conflicting positions are thus set up: from the agency point of view, she is both one of us and one of them. Here, the organization uses Maxines contradictory position to avoid change. The existing social work practice in the mental health field creates its boundaries within medical model and neglects a social work practice which explores critical perspective (Morley, 2003). Rossiter, A. Indeed, this figure has become the normative definition of the truly committed social worker. I will describe two examples of discourse-based case studies, and show how the conceptual space that is opened by such reflection can help social workers live with the complexity of their ambivalently constructed place. Ronnis anti-oppressive analysis focused on the disciplinary intent of social works history of excluding the existence of youth sexuality. Three types of ideology relating to social work are explored, and it is proposed that such case examples (among others) have, and continue to, maintain a significant influence within state social work. They described cases that had a significant impact on the development of their sense of selves as workers. These contradictions are at work inside our subjectivity every day it is not an exaggeration to say that our practice is at the mercy of contradictory forces. Weinberg, L. (2004). the dominant discourse. Pregnant with possibility: Reducing ethical trespasses in social work practice with young single mothers. Ronni understood those discourses as aimed at regulating teen sexuality of girls with an inherent message that no sexuality is healthy sexuality. We frequently found that dependencies within competing discourses were obscured by oppositions. Public Housing, Aldershot: Ashgate the daughter moved in permanently with a sense of selves as workers or in! 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