Unpublished Ph.D., University of Toronto, Toronto. Dominant discourses can be found in propaganda, cultural messages, and mass media. We know from Freud that individual traumas left unconscious are doomed to repetition. 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. I am interested in a critical ethics of practice because social workers as people suffer when the results of practice seem so meager in comparison to the ideals inherent in social work education, in agency expectations, and in implicit norms which define professional. In conventional social work education, practitioners are asked to believe that they will learn a theory, and then learn how to implement it. Ronni, in identifying the prevention discourse in her school, is able to bring into view the disciplinary force of this discourse; to prevent girls from dealing with sex until the socially appropriate age thus reinforcing heterosexism and sexism. Thus, Maxine is positioned to assess and discipline Ms. M. She cannot find room for the very insider knowledge she is supposed to have. Van Dijk, 1995:353; Jahedi, Abdullah &Mukundan, 2014:29). Stamp, M. (2004). 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. Major theorists such as Michel Foucault and Stuart Hall . When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. She did so by allowing Tara to talk openly and honestly about her sexuality, her feelings about school and family. Maxinestamp358@hotmail.com. Marston, G. (2004), Social Policy and Discourse Analysis: Policy Change in Public Housing, Aldershot: Ashgate. However, despite numerous revolutions within the field of mental health, the biological paradigm has remained largely dominant within western healthcare, especially in orientating the understanding and treatment of . The purpose was to analyze how such discourses produced their conceptions of the cases and how they confined their thinking about the case. 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 class, we worked to identify the existence of two, opposing discourses: one was the prevention and risk education approach of the school and the other was Ronnis libratory approach to girls and sexuality. 131-155). Non Dominant Discourses are what " brings solidarity with a particular social network ". Peer specialists with incarceration histories constructed new identities through their training and peer work by valuing experiential knowledge. Maxine was routinely assigned cases involving immigrant people of colour because she herself is an immigrant woman of colour. Gee's definition of Discourse is a theory that explains how language works in society. This is because that insider knowledge is knowledge of historical trauma, injustice, racism and white privilege, and it is certainly outside the boundaries of attachment discourses. In Critical Social Justice, dominance is the yang to oppression's yin. It aims to understand how language is used in real life situations. Michel Foucault. 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). ), Transforming social work practice: Postmodern critical perspectives. The essential question is: If reflective practice derives theory from experience, how do we critically problematise the very experience from which we draw our conclusions? Maxine made extraordinary efforts to help Ms. M and her daughter, but to no avail, because her constructed participation in this reproduction process was the root of her pain. Our social agencies and institutions are constructed within histories of ambivalence, fear, suspicion and control. are discursive; (iii) discourse constitutes society and culture; (iv) discourse does ideological work; (v) discourse is historical; (vi) the link between text and society is mediated; (vii) discourse analysis is interpretative and explanatory; (viii) discourse is a form of social action (cf. 16, Issue. 22-40). Neither prevention nor liberation could include the notion of protection of young women from sexual harm. 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. 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. We separate those who deserve help from those who dont while believing in fair redistribution of resources. We needed instead, a process of understanding the construction of pain, apology and failure in social work practice - a process that allowed them to be the heroes they were by virtue of their willingness to think, self-reflect, and ultimately, be brave enough to uphold the primacy of question over answer while rejecting paralysis. Class, race, culture, history are excluded as the focus on the dyad is retained as an explanation for family breakdown. Many times our investigations pointed to opposing discourses - discourses that counteract each other. 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. When we fail, we describe the result as burnout. 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. Thus, the heroic activist model dooms most social workers to an ignominious less than activist status. Further, they suggest that reflexivity is not simply an augmentation of practice by individual professionals, but a profession-wide responsibility. (French social theorist Michel Foucaultwrote prolifically about institutions, power, and discourse. These were oppositional discourses. Here, I want to gather strands of the previous discussion. On reflection, she sees that the opposition excludes aspects which both discursive positions require the inclusion of protection. Institutions organize knowledge-producing communities and shape the production of discourse and knowledge, all of which is framed and prodded along by ideology. Teaching this class was a daunting prospect. In the aftermath of George Floyd's murder in the streets of Minneapolis 1 and the ensuing protests against police brutality, systemic racism and racial injustice, journalists of color were speaking out against institutional racism in their own industry (Farhi and Ellison, 2020). John J. Rodger: John J. Rodger was a professor of sociology at Paisley College and has his doctorate in sociology from Edinburgh University. 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). In other words, from a poststructural point of view, discourses are the sets of language practices that shape our thoughts, actions and even our identities," as quoted from Karen Healy, 2014, p. 3. Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Openness to questions about the constitution of practice iscritical practice. My hope is that understanding our social construction through discourse analysis can open space for reconceptualizing the apologetic social worker by tempering the unrealistic goals of professional knowledge and valuing the intellectual interest afforded by the kinds of questions with which social work is engaged. Three types of ideology relating to social work are explored, and it is proposed that such case examples (among others) have, and continue to, maintain a significant influence within state social work. We began to think about the ways slavery is replicated in different incarnations following the end of slavery. New Discourses Commentary. ), and it may be spoken in . Discourses delineate what can be said within a given set of ideas so that critical practice is exercised when we try to look at what is excluded by a particular discourse in order to alternative viewpoints. (1999). Case study: Lady Caribbean. The case involved a single mother originally from the Caribbean. We know all too well the struggles of the child protection workers, welfare workers, and hospital workers who find it difficult to face the fate of their ideals within the construction of their practice. 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). Mezirow, J. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/discourse-definition-3026070. What exactly does discourse "construct"? (1998). A discourse of criminality, when usedto discuss protestors, or those struggling to survive theaftermath of a disaster, like Hurricane Katrina in 2004, structures beliefs about right and wrong, and in doing so, sanctions certain kinds of behavior. Biomedicine is a dominant and pervasive model in health care settings and there are strengths and limitations in working within the this discourse. The power of discourse lies in its ability to provide legitimacy for certain kinds of knowledge while undermining others; and, in its ability to create subject positions, and, to turn people into objects that that can be controlled. In order to illustrate these contentions, I want to turn to my experience with a graduate social work class called Advanced Social Work Practice. Once these dependencies were uncovered, alternatives to opposition emerged. Dominant discourse demonstrates how reality has been socially constructed. Innocence lost and suspicion found: Do we educate for or against social work? Lets take a closer look at the relationships between institutions and discourse. New York: Columbia University Press. Joan Scott (Scott, 1992), in her effort to call the innocence of experience into question says: In other words, if experience is the unproblematized foundation of theory, how do we challenge the values and ideologies that are carried in and through experience? Dr. Nicki Lisa Cole is a sociologist. In this sense, sociologists frame discourse as a productive force because it shapes our thoughts, ideas, beliefs, values, identities, interactions with others, and our behavior. "Experience". 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. The presentation that we provided on social work education in rurally isolated communities was hardly well attended. Ronni discussed it with her supervisor who felt obliged to inform other school personnel, to Ronnis dismay. The relationship with the eldest became a child protection matter when Ms. M was investigated for assaulting her eldest daughter, whom she saw as disobedient and disrespectful. Conclusion. This is how discourse analysis can displace the individualism of the heroic activist in favour of a more nuanced, complex and sophisticated analysis. Thus, ideologies have both a theoretical . As a profession, we refuse to accept this, as seen in our constant efforts to define ourselves, clarify the meaning of social work, and hang on definitions of work only social workers can do. Our vagueness is decried as a threat to the existence of the profession which we combat with ever-greater aspirations to professionalism. Major theorists such as Michel Foucault and Stuart Hall . Understanding our perspectives as contingent enables us to understand our own complicated construction within a field of multiple stories giving rise to multiple perspectives. Principles of social justice, human rights, collective responsibility and respect for diversities are central to social work. . Educators from oneTILT define social identity as having these three characteristics: Exists (or is consistently used) to bestow power, benefits, or disadvantage. 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. 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. Critical reflectivity in education and practice. How did particular discourses position them in relation to their client, to their organization and to their own identities? 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. The end of innocence. I would like to turn to two case studies which illustrate how discourse analysis was used by students. 'Oh' prepares the hearer for a surprising or just-remembered item, and 'but' indicates that sentence to follow is in opposition to the one before. Indeed, a focus in critical reflection needs to show how oppositions structure practice. The press of globalization means that more than ever, we interact with people whose historical formation is different from ours. However, the theoretical foundations of social work have been dominated primarily by the psychological and systems perspectives. One of the advantages of identifying discourses-in-use in practice is that we gain access to how we are positioned within discourses. 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. The concepts of discourse, power and governmentality have become important in understanding social processes. For example: A dominant discourse of gender often positions women as gentle and men as active heroes. 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 gain a necessary distance from the complexity of their ambivalently constructed place. . I understand these vantage points in the case studies I will describe as: 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 set of questions which expose the gap between the construction of practice possibilities and social justice values, thus allowing for a new understanding of the limitations, constraints and possibilities within the context of the practice problem. 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. These behaviors and patterns of speech and writing reflect the ideologies of those who have the most power in the society. . We looked at how these conflicting discourses positioned Ronni, Tara and school personnel. No wonder we cling to the fantasy of the smooth trajectory of practice. Discourse transmits and produces power; it undermines and . Ronni aligned herself politically with resistance to heterosexism and patriarchy. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 70(2), 150-161. While not eschewing the need to take positions in other words, without advocating relativism students could look at ways of thinking, at alternative perspectives that were outside the terms of the oppositions. In our case, the class project was to scrutinize the knowledge claims embedded in cases and to understand the implication of such claims for their affective relationship to practice as well as on the experience of their clients. The social worker as heroic activist makes for a comforting conception of social work, but at the expense of learning to face the messiness of social works managed, or constructed place. In N. Miller (Ed. Discourse Markers 'Discourse markers' is the term linguists give to the little words like 'well', 'oh', 'but', and 'and' that break our speech up into parts and show the relation between parts. 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). As such, discourse is imbued with attitudes and . What & quot ; as gentle and men as active heroes is an immigrant of! 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