By providing social workers with a greater understanding of the history, epistemology, and key assumptions, this article aims to promote critical awareness and critical reflection on how the biomedical paradigm may be influencing health care environments. When people wish to make social change, how we talk about people and their place in society cannot be left out of the process. 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. His theory of Discourse is grounded in social and cultural views of literacy. It can also be narrowing and constraining, causing us to evolve and transmit ideologies that skew irrevocably how we interpret the world (Brookfield, 1996, p. 36). A historical perspective, unavailable in attachment discourses and child welfare practices, allowed new possibilities of an ethics of practice to emerge. Particular discourses sustain particular worldviews. So we could say that the 'dominant discourse' about children is that they're innocent. I argue that understanding this process of production is a way of doing ethics which reduces, or at least acknowledges the unintended, often subliminal consequences of practice that flow from social ambivalence which constructs social workers and service recipients in the conduct of practice. In this section, I want to articulate why I think that approaching practice from discourse analysis contributes to critical reflection, and what such reflection does for practice. This understanding allows us to assess our own construction in power and language. Ronni aligned herself politically with resistance to heterosexism and patriarchy. In considering this approach to the course, I had begun to feel like Alice in Wonderland, believing as I did, that such conventions produce ever greater disjunctions between practitioners experiences and orthodox social work education. In identifying this, Ronni restructures her practice in light of what has previously been left out. And into this breach enter social workers with our desire to make a difference, and our theories on how to do that. 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. They are criminal objects in need of control. https://www.thoughtco.com/discourse-definition-3026070 (accessed March 2, 2023). 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. As such, discourse, power, and knowledge are intimately connected, and work together to create hierarchies. These dominant discourses often reflect erroneous assumptions about the root causes of ill health, individualistic ideas of risk and risk management and individual responsibility, taken for granted assumptions about the importance of efficiency over effectiveness, and the inevitability of health and social inequities as a function of poor . O'Brien, C.-A. She engaged in low level self-mutilation and in sexual activity. London: Routledge. Social work is a nodal point where history, culture and individual meet within an imperative for action. A few examples include the discourse on illegal migrants, discourse on disabilities and mental illness, discourse on social behavior, discourse on the position of the youth in the society and much more. When they enter the world of practice, they are thrown into sites constructed by contradictions and ambivalences where their subjectivities as practitioners embody these contradictions, yet they still expect to enact their ideals. Case study: Lady Caribbean. No wonder we cling to the fantasy of the smooth trajectory of practice. Elements of postmodern theory provided a way into the achievement of this necessary distance. A postmodern perspective, in Jan Fooks view (Fook, 1999), pays attention to the ways in which social relations and structures are constructed, particularly to the ways in which language, narrative, and discourses shape power relations and our understanding of them. Disrupting the Dominant Discourse: Rethinking. The common-sense ideas, assumptions and values of dominant ideologies are communicated through dominant discourses dominant discourses. She had two teen-aged daughters who had been left in the country of origin as very young children while Ms. M established herself in Canada. These assessments can afford us more choice, or simply the awareness of the impossibility of certain choices in the conduct of practice. ), Feminists theorize the political (pp. Discourse is a coherently-arranged, serious and systematic treatment of a topic in spoken or written language. 1 Discourse is, thus, a way of organising knowledge that . Stamp, M. (2004). Discourses which augment the power of elites are called dominant or official discourses by poststructuralists. In contrast, when a concept like uprising is used in the contexts of Ferguson or Baltimore, or "survival" in the context of New Orleans,we deduce very different things about those involved and are more likely to see them as human subjects, rather than dangerous objects. This paper concerns the relation between critical reflective practice and social workers lived experience of the complicated and contradictory world of practice. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site. The hold of possessive individualism in the helping professions means that the target of practice is the individual, community, or family in the present . These concepts reveal the way that power enables believers to control the data released and discussed, as well as what is acceptable and what is not acceptable within the . Healy, K. (2000). Van Dijk, 1995:353; Jahedi, Abdullah &Mukundan, 2014:29). Taking the case of racially charged events in Ferguson, MO, and Baltimore, MD that played out from 2014 through 2015, we can also see Foucaults articulation of the discursive concept at play. Dominant culture is a group whose members hold more power relative to other members in society. The sections below describe the dominant discourses identified in our sample by discussing the underlying categories that integrate them and illustrating each discourse with examples of coded tweets from different keywords (for a complete list of discourse categories, see Table 5). . It aims to understand how language is used in real life situations. It is important to understand how the opposition itself locks out practice opportunities. Discourses facilitate the process by which certain information comes to be accepted as unquestionable truth. When Maxine regards Ms. M. through the attachment lens, her own experiences as a Caribbean woman, her history, and her solidarity with other Caribbean women is excluded. Ronni_Gorman@yahoo.ca. These were oppositional discourses. Social work is characterized by a biological, psychological and social framework in its understanding of human behavior and development. We draw on theories within social gerontology whilst also . 22-40). It is the place where larger cultural and social conflicts and contradictions regarding independence and dependence, deserving and undeserving, institutional and residual, difference and sameness, individualism and collectivism, authority and freedom meet unresolved but expressed through the contradictions that inhere in practice. Thus, Maxine as a professional is treated with disdainful suspicion by Ms. M. Maxine herself feels to blame for failure to make a difference with the case. These discourses are effects of power, usually when an opposing discourse is mobilized to resist another. Yet we are also constructed from the histories of the world, and all discourses are born from history. It constitutes the categories of academic writing aimed at teaching students the method of organizing and expressing thoughts in expository paragraphs. 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 order to illustrate these contentions, I want to turn to my experience with a graduate social work class called Advanced Social Work Practice. Work in social psychology has shown that the stereotype of blacks as violent and criminal is alive and well in American society (Eberhardt, Goff, Purdie, & Discourse refers to how we think and communicate about people, things, the social organization of society, and the relationships among and between all three. . We remove children from disadvantaged families by targeting mothering skills. Scott, J. . While reflective practice held promise for liberating professions from misconceptions about the interrelationship between theory and practice, following Schons (1987) introduction of reflective practice, theorists began to identify the problem of incorporating critical analysis into reflective practice ((Brookfield, 1996; Fook, 1999; Mezirow, 1998). He notes that discourse is distinctly material in effect, producing what he calls 'practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak'. 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. The press of globalization means that more than ever, we interact with people whose historical formation is different from ours. Critical discourse analysis (or discourse analysis) is a research method for studying written or spoken language in relation to its social context. (1998). (1999). This contradiction is internalized by Maxine in the form of her belief that she has failed Ms. M and that her monumental efforts did not make a difference in this case. In such a way, Ronni undoes the opposition between risk and liberation, and also revises her relationship to school personnel from that of shielding youth like Tara from harm, to calling on them to reconstruct the discourses through which girls sexuality is understood, and viewing them as potential resources in protecting Tara. 16, Issue. The failures of this fantasy cause us to suffer, to apologize, to despair. Ronni, on the other hand, assessed her position in relation to two discourses: the prevention discourse and the discourse that acknowledged girls sexuality. Second, the current dominant discourse in schools (how people talk about, think about and plan the work of schools and the questions that get asked regarding reform or change) is a hegemonic cultural discourse. We then asked what was left out when discourses were set in opposition. I would like to turn to two case studies which illustrate how discourse analysis was used by students. The end of innocence. At no time did Ronni focus on getting her to stop.. I suggest that we gain new vantage points from which to reconstruct practice theory in ways that are more consciously oriented to our social justice commitments. This theoretical perspective creates discursive boundaries around caregiver and child. Such templates are the discourses through which particular practices are made possible. Social workers are attracted to social work practice because of a desire to make a difference. Social work is embedded is in history and is situated in a present which affords no settled practice, no technical fixes, no uncontested views of itself. Introduction. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. 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. Maxine pointed out, for example, that Caribbean women were previously allowed to immigrate to Canada to take up positions as domestic servants but were expressly forbidden to bring their children. 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. Because discourse has so much meaning and deeply powerful implications in society, it is often the site of conflict and struggle. A Perspective on Critical Social Work. deconstructing sociopolitical discourse to reveal the relationship with individual struggles. We decry racism and declare our allegiance to anti-oppressive practice while working in primarily white agencies. However, the theoretical foundations of social work have been dominated primarily by the psychological and systems perspectives. Ms. M had immigrated to Canada when she was an adolescent. Dominant discourses can be found in propaganda, cultural messages, and mass media. Social workers and other people working in community services have traditionally worked within the dominant discourse of "the poor." The idea of the dominant discourse is that it is often taken for granted and rarely questioned. transformed, its participation in the reproduction of long-term unequal social arrangements must be eliminated. Geography. 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. The post-colonial critic: Interviews, strategies, dialogues . The construction of oppositions helped students identify what they might have left out of their thinking about the cases. third bridge between discourses, the dominant discourse of economic rationalism and the quieter discourses about upholding rights was described but not named. As Ronni says The realization that actually contradicting this discipline would not abolish this discipline did not cross my mind (Gorman, 2004), p. 16). Neatly avoiding how workers are constructed, we ascribe burnout to hearing painful stories of others, to stress, doing more with less, dysfunctional organizations and other explanations that implicate individuals. ), Reading Foucault for social work (pp. Dominant discourse is a way of speaking or behaving on any given topic it is the language and actions that appear most prevalently within a given society. Michel Foucault. The professional is political: An interpretation of the problem of the past in solution-focused therapy. Flax, J. We can ask how this construction is related to our commitments and values. Discourse typically emerges out of social institutions like media and politics (among others), and by virtue of giving structure and order to language and . 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. . This discourse holds that permanent psychological injury results from interruption of the early attachment relationship between child and caregiver. We can also assess how discourses position us in relation to other professionals and to clients. These students either had significant work experience, or experience in a previous practicum to draw from. 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. Rossiter, A. While she understands that such an approach is constructed a fiction it is a construction she chooses to empower because it is grounded in her social justice aspirations. knowledge is not simply a resource to deploy in practice. If ideology is a worldview, discourse is how we organize and express that worldview in thought and language. Narrative therapy is a style of therapy that helps people becomeand embrace beingan expert in their own lives. Younger students enter social work education only knowing that they want to help people. Our graduating students learn that this is an uncool thing to say, so they refine this notion by saying that they want to change the world by ridding it of oppressions, and they are seduced by the image of the heroic activist. as "deviant," in opposition to a dominant desire for adaptation. "Experience". 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