Contested territory: Sexualities and social work. Taylor, C., & White, S. (2000). Biomedicine is a dominant and pervasive model in health care settings and there are strengths and limitations in working within the this discourse. 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. My students came to class as failed heroes. 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. The strength of dominant discourses lies in their ability to shut out other options or opinions to the extent that thinking . . This desire is subjected to the strange twists and turns of which take place inside the institutions of practice. Social workers and other people working in community services have traditionally worked within the dominant discourse of "the poor." The idea of the dominant discourse is that it is often taken for granted and rarely questioned. 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. Dominant Ideology Definition. This paper concerns the relation between critical reflective practice and social workers lived experience of the complicated and contradictory world of practice. 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. If ideology is a worldview, discourse is how we organize and express that worldview in thought and language. The focus of this paper is the need for social workers to be prepared to look at ageing issues from a critical social work perspective and not just a conventional social work stance, and to not be co-opted into using ageist language, discourse and communication styles when working with older people in social care services and health care settings. The words that dominated a 2011 Republican presidential debate hosted by Fox News. 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. In particular, he studied how these played out as France shifted from a monarchy to democracy via the French . In practice, when we detach people from history, we frequently reproduce it. Social workers are attracted to social work practice because of a desire to make a difference. 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. . Dominant is any Discourse that will help you in life, or acquire more "goods" (money, status, etc. On Critical Reflection. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575-599. Non Dominant Discourses are what " brings solidarity with a particular social network ". When we look outside the boundaries of discourses, we may discover practice questions which help us reflect on power and possibility. After all, says Stephen Brookfield, Experience can teach us habits of bigotry, stereotyping and disregard for significant but inconvenient information. ), Feminists theorize the political (pp. 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. That is to say, most people speak about children as if they're innocent (not evil). In J. Butler & J. Scott (Eds. 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. Discourses which augment the power of elites are called dominant or official discourses by poststructuralists. In doing so it produces much of what occurs within us and within society. (1998). We can raise questions about practices that may be outside such reproduction. (2000). Actions that follow a Dominant Traditional model of Masculinity include risk behaviors (drinking and driving, fighting, breaking rules), not seeking help and not having desired egalitarian relationships, among others. 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). The case studies were stories of clients whom they remembered with a sense of failure or apology or shame. 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. 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. Particular discourses sustain particular worldviews. Gee's definition of Discourse is a theory that explains how language works in society. 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. The post-colonial critic: Interviews, strategies, dialogues . 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? Menstrual management is recognized as a critical issue for young people internationally. 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. In discussions of immigration reform, the most frequently spoken word was illegal, followed by immigrants, country, border, illegals, and citizens.. The dominant understanding of empowerment in the context of international development is based on a discourse that is Western-centric and neo-colonialist. I had to admit that I saw both discourse from my subject position as a mother, and had to rather sheepishly admit that I wouldnt have wanted my thirteen year old daughter to be having sex at that age. 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. Understanding these Discourses allows you to develop the power and status you need to be successful, as well as making the bond stronger between you and that secondary Discourse. Critical social work helps people to understand the dominant ideology discourse and relocate subjectively in to that discourse. Ronnis practice with Tara was situated within her values about the need for libratory discourses of sexuality for girls. 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. 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. 22-40). Educators from oneTILT define social identity as having these three characteristics: Exists (or is consistently used) to bestow power, benefits, or disadvantage. 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. 445-463). This discursive position effectively disallowed a subject position of another sort: solidarity with her client. This vantage point opens opportunities for practice that work towards Ronnis social justice goals. 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. How did some discursive positions conflict with their own self-knowledge? She remembered the case with a sense of failure, and her recounting of the case was marked by a kind of unexplained sorrow. Lets take a closer look at the relationships between institutions and discourse. A discourse analyst is then less interested in assessing the truth or falsity of the social reality as shaped by a particular discourse, than in the ways that people use language to construct their accounts of their social world. In N. Miller (Ed. Critical reflectivity in education and practice. Gadamer, H.-G. (1992). In Critical Social Justice, dominance is the yang to oppression's yin. Ms. M had immigrated to Canada when she was an adolescent. At no time did Ronni focus on getting her to stop.. St. Leonards NSW, Australia: Allen & Unwin. Dominant discourse demonstrates how reality has been socially constructed. The end of innocence. Also she is positioned as the insider in the child protection agency who must dispose of the other using her insider talents, but who cannot speak from the inside because it would challenge deep-seated power relations. In turn, such assessments act against the internalization of the contradictions played out in social work practice. Social work is placed and places itself outside what are understood as the academic rules for (1999). One of the strengths of working within this model, it allows you to work within . A 13-yr old girl, Tara, was referred to Ronni Gorman for counseling. One of the advantages of identifying discourses-in-use in practice is that we gain access to how we are positioned within discourses. 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. . I would like to turn to two case studies which illustrate how discourse analysis was used by students. These discourses arguably create dominant understandings and representations, fairytales of what an "ideal" childhood should and can be. 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. Discourse refers to how we think and communicate about people, things, the social organization of society, and the relationships among and between all three. Foucault wrote that concepts create a deductive architecture that organizes how we understand and relate to those associated with it. We acknowledge a knowledge-based economy while making tuition unaffordable. Ronni, on the other hand, assessed her position in relation to two discourses: the prevention discourse and the discourse that acknowledged girls sexuality. When multiple discourses are uncovered, then we can treat our own perspective as limited, particular, local and contingent as opposed to the adoption of expert professional view as the privileged view. Social Work and Social Sciences Review, Vol. 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. Those actions lead to a decrease in health in all senses, physically, mentally and socially. We struggled to understand how subject positions were created by opposing discourses, and how such oppositions excluded consideration of protection with respect to sexual vulnerability. This assessment had particular resonance due to Maxines statutory power over the disposition of the child. The summer of 2020 was a season of racial reckoning for journalism in the United States. We decry racism and declare our allegiance to anti-oppressive practice while working in primarily white agencies. Thus, Maxine as a professional is treated with disdainful suspicion by Ms. M. Maxine herself feels to blame for failure to make a difference with the case. New York: Columbia University Press. Further, they suggest that reflexivity is not simply an augmentation of practice by individual professionals, but a profession-wide responsibility. Taking the case of racially charged events in Ferguson, MO, and Baltimore, MD that played out from 2014 through 2015, we can also see Foucaults articulation of the discursive concept at play. Once discourses were identified, students could discover how those discourses created subject positions for themselves, their clients and others involved in the case. But how do we scrutinize knowledge claims? And into this breach enter social workers with our desire to make a difference, and our theories on how to do that. as "deviant," in opposition to a dominant desire for adaptation. Understanding our perspectives as contingent enables us to understand our own complicated construction within a field of multiple stories giving rise to multiple perspectives. Perhaps an alternative way to understand burnout is to see it as deep disappointment that results when we are unable to enact the values we hold and have been encouraged to hold, and when that disappointment is interpolated as our fault or the agencys fault, at the expense of understanding the social construction of the failure. Disrupting the Dominant Discourse: Rethinking. For example, Tonkiss considered different explanations of juvenile crime constructed within discourses 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. 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, and who often mediate that gap as a sense of personal failure. Ronni worked with Tara from a critique of prevention and risk education strategies normally used in dealing with girls sexuality. 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. as doctors or patients), and it is these social effects of discourse that are focused on in discourse analysis. Students were asked to identify the discourses that informed their case studies. 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. Ronnis analysis moved beyond opposition through a new discourse of health-oriented openness to girls sexuality in which protection is configured as part of healthy sexuality. (2001). 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. I am arguing that social work, because of its focus on marginalized people, is a concentrated site of social, political and cultural ambivalence and contradiction. 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. 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. Major theorists such as Michel Foucault and Stuart Hall . Critical case study: My experience with Tara .Unpublished manuscript, Toronto. With the achievement of this necessary distance Ronni was able to formulate new possibilities for practice. Social workers are the bodies in the middle of this site and must act within the force field of contradictions. Biomedicine is a dominant and pervasive model in health care settings and there are strengths and limitations in working within the this discourse. Understanding our constructed place in social work depends on identifying how language creates templates of shared understandings. 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. The academic rules for ( 1999 ) the words that dominated a 2011 Republican presidential debate hosted by News. Critique of prevention and risk education strategies normally used in dealing with girls sexuality, C., & ;! 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