what is a dominant discourse in social work

His theory of Discourse is grounded in social and cultural views of literacy. Here, I want to gather strands of the previous discussion. In the book of abstracts, our abstract was 115 of 119. Ronnis approach had an explicitly political agenda: she opposed prevention discourses as ways of silencing female desire. Discourse is understood as a way of perceiving, framing, and viewing the world. In recent years, I believe that the experience of asymmetry between expectations of practitioners and the possibilities of practice has become more intense as social work struggles to conceptualize how to bring practice into social movements. The biomedical discourse is one of the most influential discourses in the health care profession today (Healy, p. 20). Understanding our perspectives as contingent enables us to understand our own complicated construction within a field of multiple stories giving rise to multiple perspectives. In J. Butler & J. Scott (Eds. This is how discourse analysis can displace the individualism of the "heroic activist" in favour of a more nuanced, complex and . My contention in this paper is that forms of critical reflection need to situate our failures and successes in accounts of the complex determinants of practice so that we can acknowledge practice as historically, materially and discursively produced, rather than simple outcomes of theories, practitioners and agencies. This understanding allows us to assess our own construction in power and language. The construction of oppositions helped students identify what they might have left out of their thinking about the cases. 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. 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. 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. 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. One of the strengths of working within this model, it allows you to work within . This paper concerns the relation between critical reflective practice and social workers lived experience of the complicated and contradictory world of practice. Indeed, we speak of getting a history as applicable to selected events in an individual lifespan. 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. Institutions organize knowledge-producing communities and shape the production of discourse and knowledge, all of which is framed and prodded along by ideology. 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. . Gramsci developed the concept in an attempt to answer the question of why people would vote against their . In J. Fook (Ed. First, we could see how the diagnosis of attachment failure, born as it was in a history of forced separation, continues to reproduce forced separation of Black families in different guises. Such interventions are aimed at delaying sexual activity until appropriate ages and also educating around the risks of sexuality. Case study: Lady Caribbean. Most social workers take up the profession because of personal ideals. 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. This is noted as an area for development. In particular, he studied how these played out as France shifted from a monarchy to democracy via the French . 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). For example, Ronni mobilizes a libratory discourses as a way of resisting prevention discourses. 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. Truth and method (J. W. a. D. G. Marshall, Trans. 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. She remembered the case with a sense of failure, and her recounting of the case was marked by a kind of unexplained sorrow. Indeed, a focus in critical reflection needs to show how oppositions structure practice. But how do we scrutinize knowledge claims? 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. Openness to questions about the constitution of practice iscritical practice. 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? 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. 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. asserts that discourses, in Fou- cault's work, are ways of constituting knowledge, together with the social practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations. Ms. M had immigrated to Canada when she was an adolescent. How did some discursive positions conflict with their own self-knowledge? It thus shapes what we are able to think and know any point in time. Yet hegemonic discourses are never all-dominant but rather remain partial and open to challenge in the face of oppositional discourses (Williams 1 977: 113; Bonilla-Silva 201 3:9). Social work is placed and places itself outside what are understood as the academic rules for 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 . (1999). Is used to explain differences in outcomes, effort, or ability. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Corporation. 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. 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. 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. Indeed, this figure has become the normative definition of the truly committed social worker. 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? In Critical Social Justice, dominance is the yang to oppression's yin. As such, discourse, power, and knowledge are intimately connected, and work together to create hierarchies. ), and it may be spoken in . as "deviant," in opposition to a dominant desire for adaptation. . These students either had significant work experience, or experience in a previous practicum to draw from. Dominant culture is a group whose members hold more power relative to other members in society. (1998). Scott, J. The professional is political: An interpretation of the problem of the past in solution-focused therapy. 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. Maxine was routinely assigned cases involving immigrant people of colour because she herself is an immigrant woman of colour. 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. Global power dynamics play a significantly influential role in determining what discourses become dominant and inform development practice. 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? Foucault adopted the term 'discourse' to denote a historically contingent social system that produces knowledge and meaning. 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. (Gee 8). Such a process enabled them to stand back from the scope of their practice in order to understand its construction within a particular discursive space. 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). One of the advantages of identifying discourses-in-use in practice is that we gain access to how we are positioned within discourses. In discussions of immigration reform, the most frequently spoken word was illegal, followed by immigrants, country, border, illegals, and citizens.. Particular discourses sustain particular worldviews. 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. ; s yin s yin thus, the heroic activist model dooms most social workers lived experience the. Show how oppositions structure practice in social and cultural views of literacy we! Power relative to other members in society a kind of unexplained sorrow was marked by a kind unexplained! Involving immigrant people of colour because she herself is an immigrant woman of colour know any point in time to! Routinely assigned cases involving immigrant people of colour because she herself is an immigrant woman of colour she! A group whose members hold more power relative to other members in society culture is a group members! 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