Palabras finales

I have asserted elsewhere that social work has always been something of a paradoxical profession, awkwardly located within the schema of capitalist modernity, in

terms of what it ‘sees’, how it ‘knows’, and what it ‘does’ (Hyslop, 2012). Jones (1983) describes this positioning through a critical socialist lens:

Social workers are themselves in a strategic position of considerable sensitivity to the state. They, too, from their different perspective gain an unparalleled view of the state in action; they, too, can see the sorts of problems that are created by these state forms and the immense toll which many capitalist processes exert on clients. There are few state workers such as social workers who inhabit as their primary domain these nether regions of society, and who can gain at first hand some insight into problems and circumstances which the state would like to minimize and hide. (p. 50)

In this analysis social work practice fosters a critical appreciation of the exploitative nature of the social relations inherent within the capitalist state form: that capitalism “hurts” (Garrett, 2013, p.60). However the double bind for social work is that as an engaged and applied profession - one which is organisationally and politically constrained - the ‘operational’ question becomes ‘what can (practically) be done?’ My experience of practice is consistent with this melding of socially configured insight with the exigencies of agency mandated social work practice action. These two levels of knowing are often conflated, or tacitly experienced as seamless, in the real-time, realpolitik of practice action. Potentially subversive insight beneath the ideological skin of the capitalist social form is tempered, perhaps obscured, by an awareness of the discursive limits of casework practice. Significantly the means to obtaining this potentially subversive knowledge (an understanding of systemic social injustice by way of insight into the validity of the ‘other’s’ experience of the social world) is also the primary means for mediating ‘practical resolutions’ within the wider social systems which surround the lives of social work clients: inter-personal communicative engagement.

The process of relational engagement in the practice of social work is challenging because of the conflicted setting which has been alluded to. Nevertheless the notion of respectful relationships may go to the essence of social work as a communicative profession that is underpinned by humanist values:

Successful worker-client relationships, irrespective of the model of practice adopted, are fundamentally built on the (at times very practical) value of respect - respect for their intrinsic worth as human beings accompanied by a sense of what they can become if enough resources are available (see, for example, the positions advanced by Amyarta Sen (2001) and Richard Sennet (2003)). (Gray & McDonald, 2006, p. 15)

The awareness required to effectively manage the demands of respectful relational engagement in a multiply ambiguous context may be characteristic of knowledge in and for social work practice. This contextually generated and applied knowledge can itself be viewed as ambiguous or conflicted. Social work can be seen to preserve oppressive capitalist social relations in the sense that individuated solutions are negotiated or mediated in relation to problems which are structurally located. Social work knowledge cannot be classed as revolutionary in this analysis. However the fact that practice engagement with clients’ lives potentially reveals / creates knowledge of the destructive nature of capitalism means that analysis which challenges bourgeois interests may be promoted. Accordingly the latent possibility for revolutionary consciousness / action remains.

The challenging political context which frames contemporary practice may present a radical developmental opportunity in terms of the dialectical nature of systemic change: the generative power of contradiction. Within the limits of the welfare state model social work is, at worst, perceived as a force for social control and pseudo-benign coercion, or, at its best, as a voice for the empowerment of marginalised citizens (Brodie, Nottingham, & Plunkett, 2008). In the latter analysis social work discourse perpetually pushes the boundaries of the social franchise - extending the ‘Schindler’s list’ of those who are included within the ambit of liberal citizenship (Philp, 1979). Nevertheless this conceptualisation tends to identify the function of social work as an integrative, balancing, or moderating influence within the finite totality of capitalist relations. The neoliberal political turn has arguably ruptured the container which the welfare state provided for social work, and generated something of an identity crisis for the profession. The findings of this thesis suggest that the practice knowledge generated and applied in practice is patently at odds with nascent neoliberal conceptions of self- responsibility and the associated drive to exclude underclass or ‘feral’ elements from the sphere of social citizenship. Arguably, the neoliberal context of practice has heralded a redefinition or marginalisation of social work. Paradoxically it may also motivate individual and collective strategies of resistance, and prefigure opportunities for overtly engaged and critical practice.

Goldstein (1990) proposes that social work carries a compassionate ethic which he suggests may be related to an alternative knowledge structure, or at the least to an alternate stream within the value system of the liberal enlightenment heritage:

At its origins, and to the extent that these values have persisted over time, social work might be called “social humanism.” Adams’s “social ethics” and

Richmond’s “serving humanity” are, in effect, natural extensions of the humanitarian commitments to charity, philanthropy, and caring that social work inherited when philanthropy became organized. The “social” in social work is the expression of this heritage. Implicit in these commitments is the recognition that we are, at the root of things, social beings existing with one another in a state of symbiosis, interdependence, and community. On reflection, this philosophical and also practical understanding of the social context of the human state might have served as the substratum or wellspring of the profession’s knowledge structure. (pp. 32–33)

This formulation is significant for this thesis because it allows for the possibility that social work carries a submerged and unique narrative: that social work practice knowledge may be derived from distinct sources of influence that are specific to the social work practice context.

Goldstein (1990) further proposes that social work sought an alignment with science in its search for professional status in the twentieth century. This linkage of social work with medico-scientific knowledge can also be identified as something of a constitutive paradox (Blundo, 2001; Cnaan & Dichter, 2008; Parton & O’Byrne, 2000). Modernist science seeks to develop understandings of the world by means of classifications and categorisations that are enabled by a foundational reliance on scientific method as the mechanism for producing definitive truth. The associated practice orientation demands a stance of calculative distancing: a dispassionate separation of scientist and subject. The comparative validity of ‘social science knowledge’ - relative to the explanatory power of the physical sciences - is undermined by the complex and contingent nature of the social world.22 In the case of social work, a particular seed of unease is intrinsically planted in my view. Social work is a socially applied and relational activity. It requires an engagement between practitioner and client that is social in nature: communicative, embodied, emotional and ethical (Parton and O’Byrne, 2000). It is as much a practice ‘craft’ as it is a science. As Ignatieff (1994) has observed, the poetics and the politics of care for strangers involve “gestures too much a matter of human art to be made a consistent matter of administrative routine” (p. 16).

According to Goldstein (1990), knowledge for social work may be more accurately located by attention to the experience of social work practice: to ‘practice wisdom and artistry’. In entering the world of ‘the other’…

22

For a discussion about the pitfalls of oversimplifying the positivist versus interpretivist (science versus art) debate concerning the appropriate form of knowledge for social work see Shaw (2010, pp. 246–263). Also see Bryman (2012, p. 28) in relation to the problem of conflating positivism with science. For a related in-depth consideration of the fraught relationship between social research and the notion of scientific neutrality, see Soydan (2010, pp. 131-148).

…we quickly discover that we are dealing with uniquely personal and often opaque personal constructs and stories, with lives that are fluidly in process, with a culture that is in some ways alien to us, with odd metaphors and uncommon moral overtones, with beliefs in myths, legends, and faiths. (p. 41) The friction which exists between relational engagement and assessment processes associated with scientific classification and measurement is an underlying source of tension in practice. Pease (2010) links the current ascendancy of evidence-based practice with the scientific paradigm, suggesting that this phenomenon needs to be understood within the context of a wider politically situated debate about the nature and credibility of differing forms of knowing in and for social work. This epistemological question is further explored within this and subsequent chapters. Arguably the limited view of social work practice knowledge afforded by the contemporary preoccupation with technical measurement tends to occlude more expansive and critical understandings of practice knowledge. Such conflict may be experienced as an obstacle but it may also be seen to generate a creative process which practitioners actively manage.

The tension between bureaucratic constraint and client need may be historically endemic to social work. Such conflict can be experienced as an obstacle but it may also be seen to generate a creative process which practitioners actively manage through the practice processes of discretionary or relational ‘artistry’, which Goldstein alludes to. Arguably, however, a reconfigured ‘government of the social’ has been generated by the global expansion of capitalist development in neoliberal times. Late capitalism is witness to the increased incarceration and demonisation of those who are positioned as surplus to the economic order (Wacquant, 2009). The dominance of instrumental approaches to practice may also mean that any emancipatory potential generated by social work practice knowledge is increasingly limited - the insight into the lives of the socially marginalised which practice affords is increasingly reinterpreted as a means of locating, classifying, and disciplining the sub-proletarian poor. In this analysis social work becomes implicated in both the physical and the symbolic / classificatory violence of the neoliberal state (Garrett 2013, p.179).