We began to think about the history of forced separation and forced disruption of families beginning with the importation of African slaves to the Caribbean. Cole, Nicki Lisa, Ph.D. (2020, August 28). Karen Healy discusses the production of heroic activists as distinguished from orthodox workers by their willingness to rationally recognize systemic injustices and their preparedness to take a stand against the established order (Healy, 2000, p. 135). This theoretical perspective creates discursive boundaries around caregiver and child. With the achievement of this necessary distance Ronni was able to formulate new possibilities for practice. With trepidation, I began the class by asking students to submit a case study from their practice experience that they would like to study collectively using a form of discourse analysis. Such questioning opens up as social workers attempt to account for their own social construction within the cultural construct of social work. Discourses facilitate the process by which certain information comes to be accepted as unquestionable truth. Geography. Major theorists such as Michel Foucault and Stuart Hall . The concepts of discourse, power and governmentality have become important in understanding social processes. In the book of abstracts, our abstract was 115 of 119. Stamp, M. (2004). (1992). Helping people learn what they do: Breaking dependence on experts. Openness to questions about the constitution of practice iscritical practice. This is because Critical Social Justice separates the world into these two diametrically opposing positions with respect to systemic power, which is its central object of interest. We can also assess how discourses position us in relation to other professionals and to clients. The summer of 2020 was a season of racial reckoning for journalism in the United States. Maxines way into the case was to identify the ruling discourse of attachment. Thus, ideologies have both a theoretical . 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. Discourse analysis can enrich progressive social work practices by demonstrating how the language practices through which organizations, theorists, practitioners and service users express their understanding of social work also shape the kinds of practices that occur (Healy, 2000). Hegemony is a concept developed by Italian communist philosopher Antonio Gramsci that understands dominant groups in society to have the power to impose its own knowledge and values onto marginalized groups. Maxines client, for example, comes to Canada seeking greater opportunity: opportunity that originated over two hundred years ago when my ancestors on the coast of Rhode Island traded with the Caribbean for goods produced by slave labour thus giving birth to the very American capitalism that created the need for Maxines and Ms. Ms migration in search of opportunity. New Discourses Commentary. Ronni believed that such discourses silenced and disciplined not only young women such as Tara, but all young womens diverse and fluid experiences of sexuality. Pregnant with possibility: Reducing ethical trespasses in social work practice with young single mothers. 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. Many times our investigations pointed to opposing discourses - discourses that counteract each other. Were asked to help but not make people dependent. Disrupting the Dominant Discourse: Rethinking. Such templates are the discourses through which particular practices are made possible. 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. When "criminals" are "looting," shooting them on site is framed as justified. She moved out on her own, successfully pursued advanced education and was on the verge of achieving professional accreditation at the time of Maxines contact with her. 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). Critical case study: My experience with Tara .Unpublished manuscript, Toronto. 131-155). 2) Such recognition allows us to examine practice for the ways that history reproduces itself in our daily actions and reactions. (1999). These discourses are effects of power, usually when an opposing discourse is mobilized to resist another. She engaged in low level self-mutilation and in sexual activity. Indeed, more how tos could only add to their apology stance. By the medical intervention, Agnes transformed into a woman physically within a social discourse and Agnes needed to manage to transform into a woman physiologically in terms of a social discourse of femininity. I will outline how critical reflection based on discourse analysis may generate useful perspectives for practitioners who struggle to make sense of the gap between critical aspirations and practice realities. 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. It was clear to me that the emotions described in these cases could only be exacerbated by introducing newer and improved practice theories, as if the proper application of such theories could have achieved different outcomes, thus alleviating individual failure. asserts that discourses, in Fou- cault's work, are ways of constituting knowledge, together with the social practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations. The knowledge she is expected to deploy is based on attachment theory the personality damage that results from interrupted early attachment. In particular, dominant structures are subject to question because of the ways in which meanings are constructed on oppositional lines (p. 203). Abstract. 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, & Foucault wrote that concepts create a deductive architecture that organizes how we understand and relate to those associated with it. 14) through which certain social phenomena, such as 'need', 'knowledge' and 'intervention', are constructed. Case study: Lady Caribbean. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. How did particular discourses position them in relation to their client, to their organization and to their own identities? "Experience". 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. Gadamer, H.-G. (1992). Such a process enabled them to stand back from the scope of their practice in order to understand its construction within a particular discursive space. My students came to class as failed heroes. We administer welfare policies that cement poverty. The community discourse is consistent with the social work value base in emphasising social justice, community empowerment and the rights of marginalised groups (Ife, 2008). We can raise questions about practices that may be outside such reproduction. With the increasing prevalence of neo-conservative and managerial discourses, it is argued that a dominant focus on individualism diminishes the understanding of how the social context can impact on people's lives (Houston, 2016) and moves away from collectivist values . Ronnis approach had an explicitly political agenda: she opposed prevention discourses as ways of silencing female desire. Social workers are the bodies in the middle of this site and must act within the force field of contradictions. As such, discourse, power, and knowledge are intimately connected, and work together to create hierarchies. as social subjects (e.g. which can be measured and known through research . 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. Maxine was routinely assigned cases involving immigrant people of colour because she herself is an immigrant woman of colour. Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Brookfield, S. (1996). Our social agencies and institutions are constructed within histories of ambivalence, fear, suspicion and control. Although ageism is prevalent in many forms, one significant manifestation is in and through common discourse. You: Hmm, that's . Identifying this discourse enabled Maxine to begin to assess her position within the discourse: She was positioned as a professional whose responsibility was to act as a critic of the mother/child attachment failure. Teaching this class was a daunting prospect. second revised edition ed.). Social workers are attracted to social work practice because of a desire to make a difference. 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. In this kind of opposition, chances for dialogue about complicated issues, chances for Ronni to promote change through communication of her perspective, and to use the experience of the school personnel for her own learning and growth were limited. This vantage point enabled students to move from the need to find answers and techniques to the radical acceptance of practice as the unending responsibility for ethical relationships which are always/already jeopardized by larger social relations. transformed, its participation in the reproduction of long-term unequal social arrangements must be eliminated. (1998). If ideology is a worldview, discourse is how we organize and express that worldview in thought and language. In other words, they take different ontological stances.Extreme constructivists argue that all human knowledge and experience is socially constructed, and that there is no reality beyond discourse (Potter 1997).Critical realists, on the other hand, argue that there is a physical . The end of innocence. It is a story that cannot be told within the reigning discourse of attachment. In J. Butler & J. Scott (Eds. . In taking up that alignment, she positioned herself as Taras protector her shield against school personnel with their regressive focus on prevention of acknowledgment of sexuality. These were oppositional discourses. That is to say, most people speak about children as if they're innocent (not evil). This vantage point opens opportunities for practice that work towards Ronnis social justice goals. Dominant discourse demonstrates how reality has been socially constructed. 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. Foucault believed that discourse is created by those in power for specific reasons and is often used as a form of social control. 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