what is a dominant discourse in social work

Flax, J. Discourse transmits and produces power; it undermines and . Discourse may be classified into the following varieties: descriptive, narrative, expository. Introduction to Discourse in Sociology. Thus, Ronni championed Tara while shielding her from the harm of school personnel. . Institutions organize knowledge-producing communities and shape the production of discourse and knowledge, all of which is framed and prodded along by ideology. In J. Butler & J. Scott (Eds. Ronni discussed it with her supervisor who felt obliged to inform other school personnel, to Ronnis dismay. Following her immigration, she lived only for a short time with her mother, from whom she had been separated for most of her childhood. Critical case study: My experience with Tara .Unpublished manuscript, Toronto. 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. Rossiter, A. Further, they suggest that reflexivity is not simply an augmentation of practice by individual professionals, but a profession-wide responsibility. Because discourse has so much meaning and deeply powerful implications in society, it is often the site of conflict and struggle. Biomedicine is a dominant and pervasive model in health care settings and there are strengths and limitations in working within the this discourse. 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. What is discourse in social work? Gorman, R. (2004). New Discourses Commentary. We draw on theories within social gerontology whilst also . 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. 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. Ronni aligned herself politically with resistance to heterosexism and patriarchy. Many times our investigations pointed to opposing discourses - discourses that counteract each other. Scott, J. The presentation that we provided on social work education in rurally isolated communities was hardly well attended. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/discourse-definition-3026070. Many now use them as a frame of analysis for their research. New York: Columbia University Press. Foucault adopted the term 'discourse' to denote a historically contingent social system that produces knowledge and meaning. They are criminal objects in need of control. 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. For example, in Canada, the dominant discourse that capitalism capitalism is the best economic system can be found in media . John J. Rodger: John J. Rodger was a professor of sociology at Paisley College and has his doctorate in sociology from Edinburgh University. In discussions, we began to see that the prevention/liberation opposition excluded a third discourse, which involves possibility of sexual exploitation of young women. Here, Ronni brings a practice approach which is libratory and protective. Ronni_Gorman@yahoo.ca. These theories contain values that are supposed to dovetail with practice. Abstract. 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 . This is how discourse analysis can displace the individualism of the heroic activist in favour of a more nuanced, complex and sophisticated analysis. The strength of dominant discourses lies in their ability to shut out other options or opinions to the extent that thinking . One of the advantages of identifying discourses-in-use in practice is that we gain access to how we are positioned within discourses. On reflection, she sees that the opposition excludes aspects which both discursive positions require the inclusion of protection. Understanding our perspectives as contingent enables us to understand our own complicated construction within a field of multiple stories giving rise to multiple perspectives. Michel Foucault. Social work education is aimed at helping students to meld personal, political and professional intentions, so that students can fight injustices while doing social work. As such, discourse is imbued with attitudes and . Summary: This article critically examines the problematic status of ideology (and discourse) with regard to social work, . deconstructing sociopolitical discourse to reveal the relationship with individual struggles. 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. 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. Peer specialists with incarceration histories constructed new identities through their training and peer work by valuing experiential knowledge. I was at once horrified by the level of individual self-recrimination in the cases, and inspired by the deep levels of commitment, thought and reflection evidenced by these students. Contested territory: Sexualities and social work. Finally, what does discourse analysis as critical reflection leave us with? Her mother had immigrated years before, leaving her in the care of her paternal grandparents and a stepfather. People are understood to be members of social groupsusually . Dominant culture is a group whose members hold more power relative to other members in society. 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. 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. 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? As such, individuals bear the weight of individual responsibility for such histories and contexts, thus obscuring a greater range of accountability. This is why it is critical reflection. 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. Ms. M had immigrated to Canada when she was an adolescent. 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. knowledge is not simply a resource to deploy in practice. We administer welfare policies that cement poverty. 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. O'Brien, C.-A. In narrative therapy, there is an emphasis on the stories that you develop and carry with you through your life. Critical social work helps people to understand the dominant ideology discourse and relocate subjectively in to that discourse. Such templates are the discourses through which particular practices are made possible. Healy, K. (2000). Assessing the impact and implications for social workers of an innovative children's services programme aimed to support workforce reform and integrated working. 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 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. (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. 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 common-sense ideas, assumptions and values of dominant ideologies are communicated through dominant discourses dominant discourses. 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 . 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. Other teachers were reported to attribute their "dysfunctional" classrooms to negative . The hold of possessive individualism in the helping professions means that the target of practice is the individual, community, or family in the present . 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).

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