The dominant discourses in our society powerfully influence what gets "storied" and how it gets storied. Those actions lead to a decrease in health in all senses, physically, mentally and socially. Underpinned by theories of social work . As Cannella ( 1997 ) and many others have discussed, these discourses construct childhood as a universal stage of life, where the process of childhood is through the development of a predetermined and . (2000). 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. Innocence lost and suspicion found: Do we educate for or against social work? Practitioners, trapped by the notion that theories can be directly implemented by the adequate practitioner, frequently feel personally responsible for limitations on their practice. Cole, Nicki Lisa, Ph.D. (2020, August 28). Gorman, R. (2004). Thus, Maxine is positioned to assess and discipline Ms. M. She cannot find room for the very insider knowledge she is supposed to have. 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. O'Brien, C.-A. Ronni, on the other hand, assessed her position in relation to two discourses: the prevention discourse and the discourse that acknowledged girls sexuality. The post-colonial critic: Interviews, strategies, dialogues . Yet, as Linda Weinberg (Weinberg, 2004), in her work on the construction of practice judgments, notes that to locate ethics within the actions of individual practitioners, as if they were free to make decisions irrespective of the broader environment in which they work, is to neglect the significant ways that structures shape those constructions and to erect an impossible standard for those embodies practitioners mired in institutional regimes, working with finite resources and conflicting requirements and expectations (Weinberg, 2004, p.204). The second case study (Gorman, 2004) takes place during a practicum in a school setting. Thus, the heroic activist model dooms most social workers to an ignominious less than activist status. In order to achieve a critical social work practice a practice capable of grasping towards an ethics of practice - we needed to raise questions about the construction of experience in the classs case studies. 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. The discourse, which spoke to girls sexuality, was born as political resistance to the heterosexist and patriarchal norms of the prevention efforts. As one of us, she is expected to deploy white, Western knowledge with her Caribbean clients - clients she is given because of her special knowledge. In other words, she embodies the contradiction between professional expectations to deploy Eurocentric knowledge while also being positioned to deliver service to those who are an exception to that knowledge. 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. Further, they suggest that reflexivity is not simply an augmentation of practice by individual professionals, but a profession-wide responsibility. Discourse analysis accesses questions that help make social contradictions and ambivalence visible and it opens conceptual space regarding ones position within competing or dominant discourses. Maxine was routinely assigned cases involving immigrant people of colour because she herself is an immigrant woman of colour. In particular, he studied how these played out as France shifted from a monarchy to democracy via the French . In the book of abstracts, our abstract was 115 of 119. 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). 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. People are understood to be members of social groupsusually . For example, Ronni mobilizes a libratory discourses as a way of resisting prevention discourses. Original language. This toolkit is meant for anyone who feels there is a lack of productive discourse around issues of diversity and the role of identity in social relationships, both on a micro (individual) and macro (communal) level. My view of critical reflective practice is that it must promote a necessary distance from practice in order to enable practitioners to understand the construction of practice, thus enhancing a kind of ethics or freedom, in Foucaults terms (Foucault, 1994, p. 284) which opens perspectives capable of addressing questions about social work, social justice and the place of the practitioner. Gee's definition of Discourse is a theory that explains how language works in society. We administer welfare policies that cement poverty. 14) through which certain social phenomena, such as 'need', 'knowledge' and 'intervention', are constructed. These theories contain values that are supposed to dovetail with practice. Marston, G. (2004), Social Policy and Discourse Analysis: Policy Change in Public Housing, Aldershot: Ashgate. We can raise questions about practices that may be outside such reproduction. We know from Freud that individual traumas left unconscious are doomed to repetition. Despite the impacts of contemporary discourses, social work across the . She remembered the case with a sense of failure, and her recounting of the case was marked by a kind of unexplained sorrow. London: Sage. 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. The biomedical discourse is one of the most influential discourses in the health care profession today (Healy, p. 20). Despite Maxines best efforts, this troubled relationship ended in separation when the daughter moved in permanently with a relative. Critical case study: My experience with Tara .Unpublished manuscript, Toronto. Attachment theories are common explanations of the parent/child conflict in some immigrant families experiences of separation and reunification during patterns of immigration. (French social theorist Michel Foucaultwrote prolifically about institutions, power, and discourse. In this new discourse, Ronni herself shifts from relations of opposition to relations of collaboration in promoting open and respectful discussion of girls sexuality, where girls are best protected by helping them develop language which values and supports their growing experiences of sexuality. 16, Issue. knowledge is not simply a resource to deploy in practice. The failures of this fantasy cause us to suffer, to apologize, to despair. Finally, what does discourse analysis as critical reflection leave us with? Critical discourse analysis (or discourse analysis) is a research method for studying written or spoken language in relation to its social context. Contested territory: Sexualities and social work. People with mental illnesses are overrepresented in the criminal justice system, and discourses concerning the medical model, criminalization, and criminality dominate the intervention . We looked at how these conflicting discourses positioned Ronni, Tara and school personnel. 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). One of the advantages of identifying discourses-in-use in practice is that we gain access to how we are positioned within discourses. A conflict occurred between Ronnis perspective and that of school personnel when Tara disclosed her pregnancy to Ronni. Many now use them as a frame of analysis for their research. I would like to turn to two case studies which illustrate how discourse analysis was used by students. Abstract. 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. Because discourse has so much meaning and deeply powerful implications in society, it is often the site of conflict and struggle. Ronnis practice with Tara was situated within her values about the need for libratory discourses of sexuality for girls. 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 is how discourse analysis can displace the individualism of the "heroic activist" in favour of a more nuanced, complex and . 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. Taken together, these words are part of a discourse that reflects a nationalist ideology (borders, citizens) that frames the U.S. as under attack by a foreign (immigrants)criminal threat (illegal, illegals). They can be found in many forms of media and communication. Although ageism is prevalent in many forms, one significant manifestation is in and through common discourse. 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. The concepts of discourse, power and governmentality have become important in understanding social processes. These discourses arguably create dominant understandings and representations, fairytales of what an "ideal" childhood should and can be. Discourse theorists disagree on which parts of our world are real. 131-155). 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. Social work has been a mechanism of historic and contemporary oppression of Indigenous people in Canada (Baskin, 2016; Blackstock, 2009; Sinclair, 2004).Using moralizing and normalizing discourses, social work has advanced a state-sanctioned, settler colonialist agenda that has harmed Indigenous individuals, families, and communities over generations. second revised edition ed.). In narrative therapy, there is an emphasis on the stories that you develop and carry with you through your life. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. Unpublished Ph.D., University of Toronto, Toronto. When oppositions are in place, what boundaries are erected? In Critical Social Justice, dominance is the yang to oppression's yin. In particular she called for educators to consider alliance with youth based on respect for youths own construction of their realities. Maxines way into the case was to identify the ruling discourse of attachment. Her agency had neither an analysis of the sensitivity of her position in relation to immigrant clients, nor the racist assumptions that grounded these case allocations. as doctors or patients), and it is these social effects of discourse that are focused on in discourse analysis. . Class, race, culture, history are excluded as the focus on the dyad is retained as an explanation for family breakdown. 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. Maxine considered how she was positioned both by discourses of professionalism and by the attachment discourses used to explain Ms. M. As a professional with statutory power, Maxine was given Caribbean family cases due to her insider status. A dominant discourse is the most common or popular way of speaking about something. Further, we interact within the constant presence of historical traumas in which we are all implicated. 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. This is how discourse analysis can displace the individualism of the heroic activist in favour of a more nuanced, complex and sophisticated analysis. The summer of 2020 was a season of racial reckoning for journalism in the United States. Maxinestamp358@hotmail.com. I suggest that this question is a practical practice question which recognizes that our cherished fantasy that practice emanates from theory is rather grandiose in the face of the complex social and historical constructions that produce the moment of practice. Social workers are the bodies in the middle of this site and must act within the force field of contradictions. Ronnis anti-oppressive analysis focused on the disciplinary intent of social works history of excluding the existence of youth sexuality. On Critical Reflection. Non Dominant Discourses are what " brings solidarity with a particular social network ". He wrote and lectured on the interactions between discourse analysis and social relationships in social work. A conventional course on advanced practice should explicate practice theories, perhaps compare and critically analyze them and then devise methods for their application in practice. But from her constructed perspective as a child protection worker, where attachment discourses dominated the field of explanations, there was little possibility to act in solidarity with Ms. M. Indeed, she was profoundly aware of Ms. Ms anger at Maxines position within Canadian authority, where such authority could not acknowledge the realities that she and Maxine shared. No wonder we cling to the fantasy of the smooth trajectory of practice. 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. 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 common-sense ideas, assumptions and values of dominant ideologies are communicated through dominant discourses dominant discourses. Foucault was interested in power and social change. Discourses which augment the power of elites are called dominant or official discourses by poststructuralists. Foucault believed that discourse is created by those in power for specific reasons and is often used as a form of social control. Fook, J. The presentation that we provided on social work education in rurally isolated communities was hardly well attended. A historical perspective, unavailable in attachment discourses and child welfare practices, allowed new possibilities of an ethics of practice to emerge. Again, feeling subsumed by the dominant discourse. Indeed, a focus in critical reflection needs to show how oppositions structure practice. In doing so it produces much of what occurs within us and within society. Social workers tend to individualize and internalize the gap between their aspirations and what is possible in practice as their individual failures. 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). Was a season of racial reckoning for journalism in the book of abstracts, our abstract was 115 of.... Discourses as a form of social works history of excluding the existence of youth.! Are the bodies in the book of abstracts, our abstract was 115 of 119 suspicion:... Used as a form of social works history of excluding the existence of youth sexuality senses... Or official discourses by poststructuralists, they suggest that reflexivity is not simply a resource to deploy in practice that... 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