In this kind of opposition, chances for dialogue about complicated issues, chances for Ronni to promote change through communication of her perspective, and to use the experience of the school personnel for her own learning and growth were limited. 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. 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. 16, Issue. The essential question is: If reflective practice derives theory from experience, how do we critically problematise the very experience from which we draw our conclusions? Pregnant with possibility: Reducing ethical trespasses in social work practice with young single mothers. The biomedical discourse is one of the most influential discourses in the health care profession today (Healy, p. 20). 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, 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. We dont know how to know social work as a constructed place, and ourselves as constructed subjectivities within that political space (Rossiter, 2000). Dominant culture is a group whose members hold more power relative to other members in society. A conflict occurred between Ronnis perspective and that of school personnel when Tara disclosed her pregnancy to Ronni. The only problematic area for all the social workers was their difficulty in naming the skills and knowledge used in their practice. 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 . We administer welfare policies that cement poverty. Again, feeling subsumed by the dominant discourse. These ideas challenge dominant discourses and emphasise a process of active engagement with communities to counter in- . Maxine Stamp (Stamp, 2004) wrote about a case she encountered when she worked in a child protection agency. Such critical analysis allows us to contemplate a major question at the heart of her practice: How can historical consciousness, left out of psychological discourses, contribute to forming relations of solidarity with our clients, thus enabling practice better aligned with justice? In contrast, the dominant view in social work is that there is an objective reality or truth. Work in social psychology has shown that the stereotype of blacks as violent and criminal is alive and well in American society (Eberhardt, Goff, Purdie, & as "deviant," in opposition to a dominant desire for adaptation. As such, discourse, power, and knowledge are intimately connected, and work together to create hierarchies. She remembered the case with a sense of failure, and her recounting of the case was marked by a kind of unexplained sorrow. These students either had significant work experience, or experience in a previous practicum to draw from. 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 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. 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. ThoughtCo, Aug. 28, 2020, thoughtco.com/discourse-definition-3026070. Narrative therapy is a style of therapy that helps people becomeand embrace beingan expert in their own lives. Global power dynamics play a significantly influential role in determining what discourses become dominant and inform development practice. In taking up that alignment, she positioned herself as Taras protector her shield against school personnel with their regressive focus on prevention of acknowledgment of sexuality. 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. Ronnis approach had an explicitly political agenda: she opposed prevention discourses as ways of silencing female desire. 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. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. 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. . 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. 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. That is to say, most people speak about children as if they're innocent (not evil). Geography. For example, Tonkiss considered different explanations of juvenile crime constructed within discourses 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. Maxine was devastated at her inability to put the relationship between mother and daughter to rights. She saw herself trying to mitigate the schools responses to Tara while at the same time working with Tara in ways that decreased criticism and control around sexuality, and opened a relationship of respect based on non-judgmental listening to Taras perceptions about sexuality and relationships. In practice, when we detach people from history, we frequently reproduce it. 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. Taras school attendance was irregular and she was involved in conflict with her mother. Thus, Maxine is positioned to assess and discipline Ms. M. She cannot find room for the very insider knowledge she is supposed to have. 3, p. Dominant discourses can be found in propaganda, cultural messages, and mass media. Discourse theorists disagree on which parts of our world are real. Discourses become dominant because they are unconsciously operated daily, which inspire social inequality to take place in society (Kerry H. Robinson show more content In turn, such assessments act against the internalization of the contradictions played out in social work practice. We looked at how these conflicting discourses positioned Ronni, Tara and school personnel. We know from Freud that individual traumas left unconscious are doomed to repetition. 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. In narrative therapy, there is an emphasis on the stories that you develop and carry with you through your life. Critical case study: My experience with Tara .Unpublished manuscript, Toronto. The dominant discourses in our society powerfully influence what gets "storied" and how it gets storied. 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. Maxinestamp358@hotmail.com. A discourse of criminality, when usedto discuss protestors, or those struggling to survive theaftermath of a disaster, like Hurricane Katrina in 2004, structures beliefs about right and wrong, and in doing so, sanctions certain kinds of behavior. 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. 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. Social work is a nodal point where history, culture and individual meet within an imperative for action. Perhaps you are a teacher, youth group facilitator, student affairs personnel or manage a team that works with an . ), Reading Foucault for social work (pp. There may be ethical dilemmas that need to be resolved via ethics codes and decision-making schema, but practitioners will follow the prescriptions of liberalism by making correct decisions, craftily implementing theory through the right interventions, and now, even overturning racism, classism and sexism in the process. When oppositions are in place, what boundaries are erected? When "criminals" are "looting," shooting them on site is framed as justified. Indeed, a focus in critical reflection needs to show how oppositions structure practice. The press of globalization means that more than ever, we interact with people whose historical formation is different from ours. Menstrual management is recognized as a critical issue for young people internationally. And into this breach enter social workers with our desire to make a difference, and our theories on how to do that. Taylor, C., & White, S. (2000). We can raise questions about practices that may be outside such reproduction. Neither prevention nor liberation could include the notion of protection of young women from sexual harm. 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. 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. The professional is political: An interpretation of the problem of the past in solution-focused therapy. We then asked what was left out when discourses were set in opposition. (1999). This discursive position effectively disallowed a subject position of another sort: solidarity with her client. 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. 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. 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. 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? Peer specialists with incarceration histories constructed new identities through their training and peer work by valuing experiential knowledge. This assessment had particular resonance due to Maxines statutory power over the disposition of the child. Finally the strengths perspective will be . I guess the point of this rant is that we need more like-minded, critical mass around what challenging dominant discourse . 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. It constitutes the categories of academic writing aimed at teaching students the method of organizing and expressing thoughts in expository paragraphs. Even in the face of power differentials, they challenged dominant discourses directly and indirectly and advocated for various forms of help for the people with whom they worked. Rossiter, A. 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. Stamp, M. (2004). So we could say that the 'dominant discourse' about children is that they're innocent. We frequently found that dependencies within competing discourses were obscured by oppositions. 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. New Discourses Commentary. Once discourses were identified, students could discover how those discourses created subject positions for themselves, their clients and others involved in the case. In A. Chambon & A. Irving & L. Epstein (Eds. Conflicts between discursive fields can position practitioners in, for example, good/bad or radical/conservative kinds of splits that freeze subject positions, thus prefiguring relationships. 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 gain a necessary distance from the complexity of their ambivalently constructed place. 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 effect she creates a new discursive position that better aligns her practice with her political commitments. 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. Explicitly political agenda: she opposed prevention discourses as ways of silencing desire. 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