The renaissance will not be televised

Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work

The call to radicalise social work is not new. Some of us are “mature” enough toremember Bailey and Brake’s 1975 treatise on the subject. Radical concepts slip and slide around the social work agenda in a semisustainable way. But its enduring presence is masked by terms that fit less controversially into the conservative world order: critical, structural, and transformative among them.In this comment piece, I argue that we do not need to merely revitalise the radical but to name it, proudly and loudly.

Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work, 2017

Critical and Radical Social Work, 2013

""In this article we argue that current reform proposals coming from Robert Pinker and others are challenging the universalist premises of generic social work. Pinker et al. argue that social work should, for the sake of efficiency and performance, be a connected set of specialist activities. This 'determinate dispersal' which we recognise as falling within the remit of postmodern strategies, we contrast with the far more libertarian ideas of the noted post-modern theorist J.F Lyotard. Thus we side the political and cultural meanings of Pinker s ideas between generic social work which upholds ideas of universal ethical values and universal provision, and those of Lyotard whose anti-foundationalism proposes a radically heterogeneous society with no central value-structure. We express our concern that the 'new specialist' remit may allow too much power to the social worker. Thus we have considerable sympathy for Lyotard's call for a radical agonistics - a field wherein the inequalities of power between say, a worker and her client, to some extent can be redressed.""

Social Work in Europe, 2001

2021

Radical social work can trace its roots back to the beginning of the 20th century, but it exploded onto the social work consciousness with a vengeance in the 1970's. Radical social work was seen by many as the panacea to the prevailing mindset of individualising issues as opposed to viewing them within the context of broader societal ills. Over the last 40 years, with the onset of neoliberalism, radical social work has seen quite a steep decline; so much so that it is not widely practiced amongst most social work professionals. This research picks up that point and asks: What are the barriers that block practitioners from practicing radically in Aotearoa New Zealand? Using a qualitative methodological approach, 16 semi-structured face to face or phone interviews were conducted and transcribed. Through a thematic analysis of the data, key barriers to radical social work practice were identified. It was found social work education, contemporary social service funding regimes and h...

International Journal of Social Welfare

""This article is a follow-up to our article ‘Revisiting social work as art’ and in part a response to Karen Healy’s reply [both published in IJSW 17(2)]. It is, however, also a significant extension of this material since it engages with more general concerns about the critical project that is intrinsic to social work. Social work is not just about self-foundation based on knowledge, values and skills formation, but also about self assertion.Crucially, it is through this notion of self-assertion that social work can be best understood as an agent of change. This transformative aspect of social work is our central focus. We are not concerned with structural conditions of power and domination but with theorising what a transformative politics would look like for social work using the lens of the French political philosopher Alain Badiou as a conceptual medium for permitting the return of the political for social work.""

2020