Normas generales para la toma de muestras y preparación de  estas para las pruebas

More specifically a number of radical thinkers have sought to explain how society and the powerful within society seek to influence us. Marxists use the term ideology to describe the way in which dominant ideas in society are managed by the most powerful groups who control economic and political power in a particular society (Ferguson et al., 2002). Thus they would point to the increasing value given to individualism and responsibility as powerful tools in controlling the way people think about themselves and the society they live in. For example, the conception of ourselves as individuals requires us to place less emphasis upon our capacity as social beings who also form groups, work collectively, cooperate together and live within wider communities. Indeed the notion of the individual is a specific construct of Western European societies. People from other cultures may have great difficulty in seeing themselves as distinct individuals separate from their family or wider community. Billington et al. (1998) argue that in Japan, for example:

The word ‘I’ cannot be used in a context free sense in Japanese and it is therefore difficult to form a sentence referring to oneself without placing oneself in the context to others. (p48)

An influential Marxist writer in this regard is Antonio Gramsci who used the term hege- mony by which dominant groups in capitalist society ... maintain their dominance by

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What other influences upon your values can you identify?

securing the ‘spontaneous consent’ of subordinate groups, including the working class, through the negotiated construction of a political and ideological consensus which incor- porates both dominant and dominated groups (Strinati, 1995, p165).

The point to make here is that the acceptance of the dominant classes’ cultural, political and moral values is developed through manipulating the consent of the majority of the population. This consent is not necessarily invisible but can be developed by using force alongside the more subtle forms of coercion through, for example, the media. What is important is that the truth of these dominant ideas appears as natural or as ‘common sense’. This idea of common sense has to be continually developed, modified and renewed if it is to make perfect sense to people, but of course it can also be challenged and resisted (Williams, 1977). Thus in our society it is common sense then to see each other as individ- uals more or less separate from others.

More recent thinkers on this subject have used a related but different concept, that of dis- course to describe the way in which persons are influenced in their thinking upon morality and values. The French social philosopher Michel Foucault (1977) uses the term ‘discourse’ for an authoritative way of describing things, in our case what constitutes social work values. A discourse acquires its authority by appearing neutral and is often seen in the way that professionals such as doctors or social workers draw on their professional knowledge to define what problems they should work on, and to define and control the people (ser- vice users) they deliver a service to. In this way a discourse has the power of an institutionalised way of thinking, a social boundary defining what can and cannot be said about a specific topic and about certain people. Discourses are seen to affect our views on all things and are pervasive; in other words, it is not possible to escape discourse. Discourses are propagated by specific institutions and divide up the world in specific ways. For example, we can talk of medical, legal and psychological discourses.

Closely connected with discourse is the idea of power and knowledge or ‘Power/Knowledge’, a term Foucault uses to highlight the fact that every description also regulates what it describes. It is not only that every description is somewhat ‘biased’, but also that the very terms used to describe something reflect power relations. Discourses promote specific kinds of power relations, usually favouring the ‘neutral’ person or profes- sional using the discourse (the lawyer, psychiatrist, professor, doctor, etc.). One of the most powerful discourses in social work is that which is called the ‘Psy discourse’, this dis- course takes the ideas of psychiatry and psychology as underpinning some of the key assumptions about the nature of service users’ problems and the ways in which social workers should treat them (Healey, 2005). Thus when we explore social work values we are also engaged in forms of power by deciding what constitutes a social work value and therefore what can be described and talked about as ethical social work.

For example, two different discourses can be used about the people who were involved in the 7 July 2005 bombings in London. Those who adopt what can be described as an Islamic fundamentalist discourse may see the perpetrators as martyrs, those on the receiv- ing end of such actions may define them as terrorists. In other words, the chosen discourse delivers the vocabulary, expressions and perhaps also the style needed to com- municate. The way that the debate is then developed is confined to the way in which the perpetrators are defined by the discourse which underpins and constrains what can be said about them and how their actions are evaluated.