Peer specialists with incarceration histories constructed new identities through their training and peer work by valuing experiential knowledge. 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. Maxinestamp358@hotmail.com. Some discourses come to dominate the mainstream (dominant discourses), and are considered truthful, normal, and right, while others are marginalized and stigmatized, and considered wrong, extreme, and even dangerous. 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. Within this anti-immigrant discourse,illegals and immigrants are juxtaposed against citizens, each working to define the other through their opposition. Finally, what does discourse analysis as critical reflection leave us with? Cole, Nicki Lisa, Ph.D. "Introduction to Discourse in Sociology." Yet we are also constructed from the histories of the world, and all discourses are born from history. 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. Menstrual management is recognized as a critical issue for young people internationally. Van Dijk, 1995:353; Jahedi, Abdullah &Mukundan, 2014:29). In identifying this, Ronni restructures her practice in light of what has previously been left out. Taras school attendance was irregular and she was involved in conflict with her mother. In doing so it produces much of what occurs within us and within society. Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was a French philosopher, sociologist, and historian interested in the construction of knowledge and power through discourse. 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. Fook, J. 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. Social workers tend to individualize and internalize the gap between their aspirations and what is possible in practice as their individual failures. 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. 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. Mainstream media typically adopt the dominant state-sanctioned discourse and showcases it by giving airtime and print space to authority figures from those institutions. Journal of Progressive Human Services, 7(2), 23-41. They can be found in many forms of media and communication. 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. Weinberg, L. (2004). Indeed, Carol- Ann OBrian (O'Brien, 1999) documents the history of prevention of sexuality as the dominate focus of social work literature related to youth sexuality. Unpublished Ph.D., University of Toronto, Toronto. Concepts like looting and rioting have been used in mainstream media coverage of the uprising that followed the police killings of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray. A 13-yr old girl, Tara, was referred to Ronni Gorman for counseling. 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. . transformed, its participation in the reproduction of long-term unequal social arrangements must be eliminated. 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. For example, Ronni mobilizes a libratory discourses as a way of resisting prevention discourses. These were oppositional discourses. As such, individuals bear the weight of individual responsibility for such histories and contexts, thus obscuring a greater range of accountability. The biomedical discourse is one of the most influential discourses in the health care profession today (Healy, p. 20). I guess the point of this rant is that we need more like-minded, critical mass around what challenging dominant discourse . ThoughtCo, Aug. 28, 2020, thoughtco.com/discourse-definition-3026070. Healy, K. (2000). What is discourse in social work? Maxine was routinely assigned cases involving immigrant people of colour because she herself is an immigrant woman of colour. Original language. Geography. Her mother had immigrated years before, leaving her in the care of her paternal grandparents and a stepfather. The knowledge she is expected to deploy is based on attachment theory the personality damage that results from interrupted early attachment. Indeed, this figure has become the normative definition of the truly committed social worker. Cole, Nicki Lisa, Ph.D. (2020, August 28). Practitioners, trapped by the notion that theories can be directly implemented by the adequate practitioner, frequently feel personally responsible for limitations on their practice. When I read the case studies, I was taken aback to find that students chose to write about stories of pain and distress in their practice contexts. Social workers are the bodies in the middle of this site and must act within the force field of contradictions. Deconstructing dominant discourse in therapy and counseling . 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). (1992). (French social theorist Michel Foucaultwrote prolifically about institutions, power, and discourse. Understanding our perspectives as contingent enables us to understand our own complicated construction within a field of multiple stories giving rise to multiple perspectives. A historical perspective, unavailable in attachment discourses and child welfare practices, allowed new possibilities of an ethics of practice to emerge. Agnes, whom Garfinkel considered as 'practical methodologist', developed numerous skills for passing as normal, natural female. When oppositions are in place, what boundaries are erected? The failures of this fantasy cause us to suffer, to apologize, to despair. Such interventions are aimed at delaying sexual activity until appropriate ages and also educating around the risks of sexuality. 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. It focuses specifically on participant . Underpinned by theories of social work . 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 N. Miller (Ed. Taylor, C., & White, S. (2000). Lastly, dominant and nondominant fall under a secondary Discourse. Rossiter, A. Case study: Lady Caribbean. 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. In J. Butler & J. Scott (Eds. Discourse is understood as a way of perceiving, framing, and viewing the world. 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. 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. Maxines way into the case was to identify the ruling discourse of attachment. Throughout our analyses, we worked to understand what views discourses permitted or inhibited. 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. Gadamer, H.-G. (1992). (p. 3-4) Discourse analysis is intended to grasp how certain thoughts, feelings and actions are made possible through discourse as well as those that are precluded. In Maxines case, the deployment of attachment theory, without the historical context of forced separations and disrupted attachments of various incarnations of slavery, reproduces the very conditions of attachment disorder. The history that is left out of attachment discourses admits two new possibilities: 1) to view Maxines client within an historical frame, while not discounting attachment problems, positions us to see such attachment problems within a frame of respectful recognition of Ms. M. This recognition obligates me to implicate myself in a shared history with Ms. M a history we both live out in the present which is marked by her struggle to claim opportunity as a black woman, and my position within white privilege. When we fail, we describe the result as burnout. Ronni aligned herself politically with resistance to heterosexism and patriarchy. The case involved a single mother originally from the Caribbean. This discursive position effectively disallowed a subject position of another sort: solidarity with her client. asserts that discourses, in Fou- cault's work, are ways of constituting knowledge, together with the social practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations. They generally represented moments of feeling as though they did not live up to the ideals and values they learned in schools of social work, and they felt a keen sense of disappointment and anger at their helplessness in complicated social, cultural and organizational conjunctures. Attachment theories are common explanations of the parent/child conflict in some immigrant families experiences of separation and reunification during patterns of immigration. 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. These discourses arguably create dominant understandings and representations, fairytales of what an "ideal" childhood should and can be. Critical case study: My experience with Tara .Unpublished manuscript, Toronto. 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. Thus, I have found myself on the terrain of a kind of critical ethics that views practice theories as stories about the cultural ideals of practice, and that treats practitioners experiences as stories that can teach us about the conduct of practice in relation to such ideals. 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. The only problematic area for all the social workers was their difficulty in naming the skills and knowledge used in their practice. For example: A dominant discourse of gender often positions women as gentle and men as active heroes. Because discourse has so much meaning and deeply powerful implications in society, it is often the site of conflict and struggle. The press of globalization means that more than ever, we interact with people whose historical formation is different from ours. We administer welfare policies that cement poverty. 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. Ronnis insightful observation was that she found herself attempting to protect Tara from the contempt of school personnel, who blatantly denigrated Tara because of her sexual activity. ThoughtCo. In J. Butler & J. Scott (Eds. Another example of a dominant discourse is the discourse around climate change. It aims to understand how language is used in real life situations. 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. Principles of social justice, human rights, collective responsibility and respect for diversities are central to social work. Social workers were critiqued as being a part of the problem by choosing to emphasize casework as a model of practice, an approach . We then asked what was left out when discourses were set in opposition. They are criminal objects in need of control. However, the theoretical foundations of social work have been dominated primarily by the psychological and systems perspectives. 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). We acknowledge a knowledge-based economy while making tuition unaffordable. Ronnis approach had an explicitly political agenda: she opposed prevention discourses as ways of silencing female desire. 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. Ideology thus shapes discourse, and, once discourse is infused throughout society, it, in turn, influences the reproduction of ideology. 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. 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. New York: Routledge. Mezirow, J. 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. This is noted as an area for development. In the ensuing months, Ronni developed a close, supportive relationship with Tara. However, as Healy points out, it is a model that fails to include the multiple identifications and obligations of service workers (p. 136). Discourse theorists disagree on which parts of our world are real. Discourse refers to how we think and communicate about people, things, the social organization of society, and the relationships among and between all three. 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. the dominant discourse. In the book of abstracts, our abstract was 115 of 119. A discourse is a system of words, actions, rules, and beliefs that share common values. Further, they suggest that reflexivity is not simply an augmentation of practice by individual professionals, but a profession-wide responsibility. 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. 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 has proved difficult to reconcile conventional theories of practice with a vision of social work as social justice work. Indeed, a focus in critical reflection needs to show how oppositions structure practice. Dominant discourse demonstrates how reality has been socially constructed. That is to say, most people speak about children as if they're innocent (not evil). Discourse analysis is an approach to the study of language that demonstrates how language shapes reality. The idea of dominant discourse is important for therapists and counselors, because many people who need therapy and counseling are influenced negatively by the dominant discourses that prevail in their societies (Soal & Kottler, 1996). knowledge is not simply a resource to deploy in practice. 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 . 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. With the achievement of this necessary distance Ronni was able to formulate new possibilities for practice. Major theorists such as Michel Foucault and Stuart Hall . The dominant discourse on immigration, which is anti-immigrant in nature, and endowed with authority and legitimacy, create subject positions like citizenpeople with rights in need of protectionand objects like illegalsthings that pose a threat to citizens. We began to think about the ways slavery is replicated in different incarnations following the end of slavery. We remove children from disadvantaged families by targeting mothering skills. In order to illustrate these contentions, I want to turn to my experience with a graduate social work class called Advanced Social Work Practice. He notes that discourse is distinctly material in effect, producing what he calls 'practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak'. Class, race, culture, history are excluded as the focus on the dyad is retained as an explanation for family breakdown. I would like to turn to two case studies which illustrate how discourse analysis was used by students. At no time did Ronni focus on getting her to stop.. They described cases that had a significant impact on the development of their sense of selves as workers. but by the demands of the dominant group within the . Teaching this class was a daunting prospect. Discourse transmits and produces power; it undermines and . Marston, G. (2004), Social Policy and Discourse Analysis: Policy Change in Public Housing, Aldershot: Ashgate. 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. Conclusion. 1 This intellectual interest can be found in the ways we re-experience value commitments through openness to the question at the heart of critical social work: What does social work have to do with justice? Is used to explain differences in outcomes, effort, or ability. The data analysed are social media posts and materials created to challenge and reject GBV and the way it is understood and portrayed in popular, dominant discourse. This paper concerns the relation between critical reflective practice and social workers lived experience of the complicated and contradictory world of practice. What exactly does discourse "construct"? When "criminals" are "looting," shooting them on site is framed as justified. Thus, Maxine is positioned to assess and discipline Ms. M. She cannot find room for the very insider knowledge she is supposed to have. Flax, J. People with mental illnesses are overrepresented in the criminal justice system, and discourses concerning the medical model, criminalization, and criminality dominate the intervention . (2001). 1. Educators from oneTILT define social identity as having these three characteristics: Exists (or is consistently used) to bestow power, benefits, or disadvantage. Institutions organize knowledge-producing communities and shape the production of discourse and knowledge, all of which is framed and prodded along by ideology. 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. Ronnis practice with Tara was situated within her values about the need for libratory discourses of sexuality for girls. Social work practices: Contemporary perspectives on change. 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 . 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. Discourses facilitate the process by which certain information comes to be accepted as unquestionable truth. We frequently found that dependencies within competing discourses were obscured by oppositions. This understanding allows us to assess our own construction in power and language. 445-463). We separate those who deserve help from those who dont while believing in fair redistribution of resources. It is a story that cannot be told within the reigning discourse of attachment. (Gee 8). as doctors or patients), and it is these social effects of discourse that are focused on in discourse analysis. John J. Rodger: John J. Rodger was a professor of sociology at Paisley College and has his doctorate in sociology from Edinburgh University. 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 words that dominated a 2011 Republican presidential debate hosted by Fox News. 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). Despite the impacts of contemporary discourses, social work across the . We looked at how these conflicting discourses positioned Ronni, Tara and school personnel. Abstract. In A. Chambon & A. Irving & L. Epstein (Eds. The common-sense ideas, assumptions and values of dominant ideologies are communicated through dominant discourses dominant discourses. In this hope for practice as justice, the responsibility of social work is shifted from change at the more discreet levels of individuals, families, groups, communities, to the social determinants that produce private troubles.
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