When we reflect on what is left out of the discursive construction of our practice, we are stepping back from our immersion in such discourses as reality in order to examine whether our practice is being shaped in ways that contradict or constrain our commitments to social justice. Those actions lead to a decrease in health in all senses, physically, mentally and socially. Abstract. Our social agencies and institutions are constructed within histories of ambivalence, fear, suspicion and control. . The failures of this fantasy cause us to suffer, to apologize, to despair. 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. Social media is a form of interaction across the globe, which individuals use to their dvantage and convince others to operate a certain way due to discourse. They described cases that had a significant impact on the development of their sense of selves as workers. John J. Rodger: John J. Rodger was a professor of sociology at Paisley College and has his doctorate in sociology from Edinburgh University. Ronni came to see that this discursive position cancelled out the possibility of calling on school personnel as resources for Tara - resources that had the potential to protect her as a young girl with particular vulnerabilities. In J. Butler & J. Scott (Eds. What is discourse in social work? Goodreads. Stamp, M. (2004). 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. In social work research, this ap- 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). In particular, dominant structures are subject to question because of the ways in which meanings are constructed on oppositional lines (p. 203). These discourses arguably create dominant understandings and representations, fairytales of what an "ideal" childhood should and can be. Relatively little published research explores issues pertaining to menstruation in school education. 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. Dominant is any Discourse that will help you in life, or acquire more "goods" (money, status, etc. . She has taught and researched at institutions including the University of California-Santa Barbara, Pomona College, and University of York. Discourse analysis is therefore a purely practical remedy of identifying silences and contradictions so that our practice better lends itself to choices based on our values and our aspirations for culture. In this case, those discourses were set up with the prevention and risk discourse as repressive and the validation of sexuality discourse as progressive and libratory for young women. 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. These theories contain values that are supposed to dovetail with practice. In discussions of immigration reform, the most frequently spoken word was illegal, followed by immigrants, country, border, illegals, and citizens.. 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. Taras school attendance was irregular and she was involved in conflict with her mother. When oppositions are in place, what boundaries are erected? 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. Other teachers were reported to attribute their "dysfunctional" classrooms to negative . 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). Crucially, it is underpinned by a critical . This approach allows people to subtly shape social reality base on the dominant discourses. The overall question I asked students to raise in relation to their cases was what is left out? Interchanging the terms discourse and story, we talked about how stories both include and exclude, forming boundaries in meaning (Spivak, 1990), and that critical practice is the search for what is left outside the story. Van Dijk, 1995:353; Jahedi, Abdullah &Mukundan, 2014:29). The words that dominated a 2011 Republican presidential debate hosted by Fox News. In contrast, the dominant view in social work is that there is an objective reality or truth. Another example of a dominant discourse is the discourse around climate change. Ronnis approach had an explicitly political agenda: she opposed prevention discourses as ways of silencing female desire. I would like to turn to two case studies which illustrate how discourse analysis was used by students. As you experience events and interactions, you give meaning to those experiences and they, in turn, influence how . Social work practices: Contemporary perspectives on change. Its evident that discourse is the compilation of particular ideologies and beliefs concerning a certain bracket in the society. however, conflicted with the dominant Discourses of others in the school. In doing so it produces much of what occurs within us and within society. Her mother had immigrated years before, leaving her in the care of her paternal grandparents and a stepfather. In other words, such a trajectory works to normalize a sequence of sexuality which ranges from the right time to the end-stage of heterosexual marriage. Weinberg, L. (2004). For example, Ronni mobilizes a libratory discourses as a way of resisting prevention discourses. In order to provide a frame for critical reflection on their cases, I chose four elements of associated with discourse analysis: 1) Identification of ruling discourses in the case studies; 2) the oppositions and contradictions between discourses; 3) positions for actors created by discourses which in turn shape perspectives and actions; 4) and the constructed nature of experience itself. 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. When we hear words like this, concepts charged full of meaning, we deduce things about the people involved--that they are lawless, crazed, dangerous, and violent. Our constructed location is often a painful one. Gorman, R. (2004). These wordsreflect and reproduce very particular values, ideas, and beliefs about immigrants and U.S. citizensideas about rights, resources, and belonging. In narrative therapy, there is an emphasis on the stories that you develop and carry with you through your life. It is important to understand how the opposition itself locks out practice opportunities. 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 . Discourse transmits and produces power; it undermines and . 16, Issue. 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. 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). The . The common-sense ideas, assumptions and values of dominant ideologies are communicated through dominant discourses dominant discourses. 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). (2000). O'Brien, C.-A. Discourse, as a social construct, is created and perpetuated . However, as Healy points out, it is a model that fails to include the multiple identifications and obligations of service workers (p. 136). The case involved a single mother originally from the Caribbean. The purpose was to analyze how such discourses produced their conceptions of the cases and how they confined their thinking about the case. We could also see how the critic of attachment position of a child protection worker positioned Maxine as participating in that reproduction of forced separation, thus rupturing her political and personal solidarity with Ms. M. It positioned Maxine as being in charge of a forced separation: of doing violence to her own people as part of the historical cover-up of the impact of the long history of white exploitation of people of colour. In social work, critical practice is crucial because social work is a nexus where social contradictions are manifest. 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. Such an analysis might allow us to ask the kind of questions that are the heart of social work ethics: How, for example, could we think differently about child welfare practices with black families if our work were guided first and foremost by a desire to find forms of practice that take into account centuries of trauma from racial injustice? Spivak, G. (1990). (1992). Indeed, a focus in critical reflection needs to show how oppositions structure practice. 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. Thus, Maxine is positioned to assess and discipline Ms. M. She cannot find room for the very insider knowledge she is supposed to have. 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. My students came to class as failed heroes. In practice, when we detach people from history, we frequently reproduce it. A conflict occurred between Ronnis perspective and that of school personnel when Tara disclosed her pregnancy to Ronni. 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. Most social workers take up the profession because of personal ideals. Many times our investigations pointed to opposing discourses - discourses that counteract each other. 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. Carolyn Taylor and Susan White make a distinction between reflection and reflexivity where the latter adds a critical dimension by calling taken-for-granted assumptions into questions (Taylor & White, 2000). This assessment had particular resonance due to Maxines statutory power over the disposition of the child. Discourse analysis can provide new vantage points from which to reconstruct practice theory in ways that are more consciously oriented to our social justice commitments. In J. Butler & J. Scott (Eds. 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. 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. Critical Social Work, 2(1). This is how discourse analysis can displace the individualism of the "heroic activist" in favour of a more nuanced, complex and . Foucault believed that discourse is created by those in power for specific reasons and is often used as a form of social control. 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. 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. Biomedicine is a dominant and pervasive model in health care settings and there are strengths and limitations in working within the this discourse. These alternative viewpoints are important because discourses are structured through power relations so that the identification of what is outside prevailing stories may give us a better picture of how power operates. Mezirow, J. From this position, responsibility for the problems were located in the mother, who, in attachment terms, did not properly manage the separation and reunification issues. Pregnant with possibility: Reducing ethical trespasses in social work practice with young single mothers. 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. 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.

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