Discusión general

As discussed above, social work is rooted in the promotion of social justice and empowerment, which involves working alongside individuals in order to address and overcome the challenges they encounter. Part of this work requires social work practitioners to acknowledge their position as powerful, particularly when enacting their statutory duties, this issue is often presented as the dialectic; care versus control (Hardy 2015). Social workers must balance their ethical and value driven desire to support and empower those that they work alongside (care), whilst also performing controlling functions such as the removal of children or the detention of individuals for their own

safety (control). Critical social work theorists use this dialectic to refute that practitioners employed by the local authority, or performing statutory work (control), are able to simultaneously promote social justice or empower those that they work with (care), suggesting instead that social justice and empowerment can only come from working alongside the community to enact change (Healy 2000, Fook 2012).

Despite performing a research role, rather than a practice function, the participants in this study and the wider luncheon club group were aware of my previous employment as a social worker for the local authority in which they lived. This was recognised as a position that required specific knowledge, or cultural capital and despite several attempts to explain that I no longer had any association or up to date knowledge about the support offered by the authority, participants and their families still asked questions about this. Reissman (2002) describes a similar challenge in her research into infertility in India; despite her sociological background, the subject of infertility connected her to the medical profession, meaning that participants often hoped she could offer solutions to their fertility problems. Riessman does not describe how she countered these expectations; however, I developed a strategy in order to do so; during the time I spent attending the luncheon club, I learned about some of the common health and social care issues affecting the women and developed a list of contact details for relevant services. These included the initial contact team for the local authority social work department and the patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALs). If the members of the club asked me about specific services, I could direct them to this resource.

This method involved a level of discretion as lots of general conversation amongst the women related to health conditions or problems they were experiencing. To refuse to participate in these conversations would have been disrespectful and may have ruined my relationship with the club members, therefore, I engaged in these general discussions but made a concerted effort to separate my personal and professional selves. This meant consistently checking in with myself, to make sure I was aware of the power my advice may have, given the perception of my knowledge, and remembering HCPC standard three, which obligates professionals to ‘work within the limits of your knowledge and skills’ (2016:6). Recognising that I had not worked as a practitioner for some time and did not

have current knowledge of the available provisions, I would not be fully upholding this duty if I offered specific social work advice to the women.

5.13.1 Power and Representation

The interpersonal power relationship between myself and the participants can be described as part of a broader societal theory of power and representation, summarised here with reference to sociologist Stuart Hall.

Hall (2013) describes how humans have developed a system of understanding the world through grouping things into concepts and conceptual maps, to which corresponding symbols or language are attached. The author believes this shared understanding of reality enables us to relate to other people within our culture through representational systems. For example; there are many different types of chairs, but even a broken chair, or a chair with missing legs, or seat can still be identified as a chair, because we have developed a conceptual map which consolidates all attributes associated with chairs into one shared being; a chair. This explains why we understand a large armchair and a small wooden stool as falling under the same umbrella. This image is then transferred into symbolic form, by the use of a word, this word; ‘chair’, has shared meaning for all English speakers. According to Hall, it is these representational systems that construct meaning and, as with all constructs, this is ‘produced within history and culture’ possessing ‘no single, unchanging, universal ‘true meaning’’ (2013:3).

Hall presents various theories to explain how the conceptual maps and corresponding representations are developed, however that of Bakhtin relates most directly to the method of analysis used in this thesis. Bakhtin describes meaning being developed through dialogue with the ‘other’, claiming that ‘everything we say, and mean is modified by the interaction and interplay with another person’ (cited in Hall 2013:224). This theory influenced Riessman’s development of dialogic performance analysis and is evident in the recognition that narratives are co-constructed by participant and researcher. Additionally, Bakhtin’s work is reflected in Jenkins’ theory of social identity, whereby identity is developed in interaction with others.

Shared systems of representation are useful and enable us to communicate effectively with other people by grouping ideas together into ‘types’. Dyer (1977:28) defines types as ‘any simple, vivid, memorable, easily grasped and widely recognised categorisation in which a few traits are foregrounded and change, or development is kept to a minimum’. Comparably, the development of stereotypes has more serious implications. According to both Hall and Dyer, stereotyping involves reducing, essentialising, naturalising and fixing difference (2013:247), and enabling the exclusion of the ‘stereotyped’ other. Hall recognises that this process is most likely to occur where there are ‘gross inequalities of power’ (2013:247). These inequalities of power can be understood through reference to Bourdieu’s work on distribution of capital, with possession of capital correlating with possession of power.

As a white, able bodied, educated professional, I possess power and capital that outweighs that of the participants in this study, who, despite their diversity are all from a minority ethnicity, are older and have some health conditions affecting their daily life. This difference in power distribution is described in relation to intersectionality in chapter four. Foucault suggests that, in relation to power ‘no-one – neither it’s apparent victims or its agents – can stand wholly outside its field of operation’ (1980 cited in Hall 2013:34), meaning that both the participants and I understand the inequal distribution of power in our interaction. In relation to ethnicity, this power has been misused throughout history in many ways, to represent black and minority ethnic people as less human than white people in a racialised regime of representation (Hall 1981). There is, therefore, a responsibility, from an ethical position and from a social work position (recall Butler’s third principle of non-maleficence) to ensure that this thesis does not contribute to this stereotypical misrepresentation of people.

5.13.2 Addressing Power and Representation

Saussure asserts that ‘we can never cleanse language completely, screening out all other, hidden meanings which might modify or distort what we want to say’ (1960 cited in Hall 2013:17). Here the author intimates that the negative associations of words and meanings will remain despite attempts to redeem them. This is an idea supported by Bakhtin, who

given the constructed nature of meaning, there is always opportunity for development. Hall presents three possible processes for addressing stereotypes, he refers to this process as trans-coding, or re-appropriating meaning. The author outlines examples within recent history; primarily, reversing stereotypes, described as replacing the negative with positive but not disrupting the existence of stereotypes. A development of reversing stereotypes is the balancing of negative with positive associations, progressing the recognition of complexity, however without displacing the negative. Finally, Hall outlines the process of contesting representation from within. Here, rather than avoiding the focus of stereotypes, these should be channelled and used to dismantle pre-existing expectations, introducing new ideas and contesting binary notions of classifications such as race. Gunaratnam’s (2003) concept of ‘doubled research’ can be seen as an interpretation of Hall’s final process.

Gunaratnam suggests that this responsibility can be managed through the implementation of ‘doubled research’ practice. Doubled research refers to research that works with categorisations, acknowledging their problematic nature, in order to contest them and is described in more detail in chapter three. In relation to this research project, the shared Pakistani heritage of the participants was part of the criteria for recruitment to the study, however the analysis enables a spectrum of intersectional disadvantage to be exposed. Gunaratnam describes employing ‘analytic hesitation’ in order to prevent assuming that behaviour or experiences can be reduced, essentialised or naturalised to fit with existing stereotypes including Hall’s racialised regime of representation. Dialogic performance analysis encourages multiple readings of transcripts, enabling the researcher to utilise analytic hesitation. In addition, the requirement of the method to locate support for analysis in the transcript and contextual knowledge of the researcher further contributes to Gunaratnam’s concept.