Community Work as Opposition
Tensions and Potentials in a Formalistic Welfare Context
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31265/jcsw.v15i2.304Keywords:
community, social work, social enterprise, welfare, formalism, oppositionAbstract
A number of tensions pertaining to social problems and human suffering become apparent when analysing community work in a Danish welfare setting. As a source for critical reflection, we discern some of these challenges, but also potentials, which relate not only to a Danish context, but to challenges in any highly institutionalized welfare system. Three community work social enterprises serve to exemplify the objectives of addressing social problems by fostering participation and empowerment. To enhance and include the voice of service users, the programmes attempt to cultivate human resources as opposed to perceived formalism and a subsequent diminishment of the potentials of community inclusion. The formalistic governmental agendas are perceived to be unable to appreciate the diversity of service users’ individual needs and social challenges, which produces conflicting prospects. Such a dichotomy between formalistic welfare practices and the ideals represented in the three enterprises offers a podium for users, professionals, policymakers and researchers to consider alternative expressions of community work, and how these can address social problems. We maintain that rapidly changing welfare models require an increased sensitivity to human suffering as a position embedded in the habitus and sociological imagination of community work. It is a source for reflection on the role of welfare arenas perceived as spaces in which service users ideally, based on their own social situation, can improve their social circumstances. It is an invitation to reflect on the potentials of community work in a diversity of cultures and practices.
References
Andersen, L. L. (2018). Neoliberal drivers in hybrid civil society Organizations. In M. Kamali & J. H. Jönsson (Ed.), Neoliberalism, Nordic Welfare States and Social Work (p. 25-34). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315111834-2.
Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities. Verso.
Arendt, H. (2004). The Origins of Totalitarianism. Schocken Books.
Askheim, O., Beresford, P. & Heule, C. (2017). Mend the gap – Strategies for user involvement in social work education. Social Work Education, 36(2), 128-40. https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2016.1248930.
Bak Nielsen, V. (2018). Youth Responses to Neoliberal Erosion of Solidarity. In M. A. Fallov & C. Blad, (Ed.), Social Welfare Responses in a Neoliberal Era: Policies, Practices and Social Problems (p. 224-245). Brill. Studies in Critical Social Sciences; Critical Global Studies. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004384118_012.
Bauman, Z. (2008). Bauman on Bauman. In M. H. Jacobsen & P. Poder, (Ed.) The Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman (p. 231-240). Ashgate.
Bernard, R. H. (1994). Field notes: How to take, code and manage them. In Research Methods in Anthropology. Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (p. 180-207). Sage.
Bevir, M. (2016). Governance and modernist social science. In M. Bevir & R. A. Rhodes (Ed.), Rethinking governance: Ruling, rationalities and resistance (p. 25-34). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315712949.
Branco, F. J. (2016). The circle of social reform: The relationship social work - social policy in Addams and Richmond. European Journal of Social Work, 19(3-4), 405-419. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691457.2015.1084272.
Clarke, S. (2018). Social Work as Community Development: A management model for social change. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315190648.
Decter, J. (2019). Politics Burned a Hole through My Heart. In S. H. Madoff (Ed.), What about Activism? (p. 16-30). Sternberg Press.
Dominelli, L. (2014). Promoting environmental justice through green social work practice: A key challenge for practitioners and educators. International Social Work, 57(4), 338-345. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872814524968.
du Gay, P. & Pedersen, K. Z. (2020). Discretion and Bureaucracy. In T. Evans & P. Hupe, (Ed.) Discretion and the Quest for Controlled Freedom (p. 221-236). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19566-3_15.
Eliasoph, N. (2009). Top-down civic programmes are not grassroots associations: How the differences matter in everyday life. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 20(3), 291-308. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-009-9087-y.
Fallov, M. A., Nissen, M. A., Kjærulff, J., Ringø, P. & Birk, R. H. (2017). Proactive, ambivalent and defensive relations between social work and social policy. In K. Høgsbro & I. Shaw (Ed.). Social Work and Research in Advanced Welfare States (p. 159-174). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315279015-12.
Ferguson, I. & Lavalette, M. (2013). Critical and radical social work: an introduction. Critical and Radical Social Work, 1(1), 3-14. https://doi.org/10.1332/204986013X665938.
Fook, J. (2012). Social work: A critical approach to practice. Sage.
Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), 777–795. https://doi.org/10.1086/448181.
Garrett, P. M. & Bertotti, T. F. (2017). Social work and the politics of ‘austerity’: Ireland and Italy. European Journal of Social Work, 20(1), 29-41. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691457.2016.1185698.
Gibson, K., Graham, J. & Cameron, J. (2010). Community enterprises: Imagining and enacting alternatives to capitalism. In J. Hillier & P. Healey (Ed.) The Ashgate research companion to planning theory: Conceptual challenges for spatial planning (p. 291-298). Ashgate.
Goffman, E. (1968). Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. AldineTransaction.
Graeber, D. (2014). Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Prickly Paradigm.
Gramsci, A. (1999). Selections from the prison notebooks. ElecBook.
Habermas, J. (1971). Knowledge and Human Interests. Beacon Press.
Hammersley, M. & Atkinson, P. (2007). Ethnography. Principles in Practice. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203944769.
Hannerz, U. (2010). Diversity is Our Business. American Anthropologist, 112(4), 531-559. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2010.01274.x.
Harington, P. & Beddoe, L. (2013). Civic practice: A new professional paradigm for social work. Journal of Social Work, 14(2), 147-164. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468017313477316.
Hastrup, K. (2018). Collaborative Moments: Expanding the Anthropological Field through Cross-Disciplinary Practice. Ethnos. Journal of Anthropology 83(2), 316-334. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2016.1270343.
Healy, K. (2014). Social Work Theories in Context: Creating Frameworks for Practice. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-02425-1.
IFSW [International Federation of Social Workers] (2017). The International definition of social work. IFSW. http://ifsw.org/policies/definition-of-social-work/.
Jegermalm, M., Wilinska, M., Bravell, M. E., Bülow, P. & Torgé, C. J. (2018). Filling the gaps? The role of voluntary organizations in supporting older people with severe mental illnesses. Nordic Social Work Research, 10(3), 219-229. https://doi.org/10.1080/2156857X.2018.1555096.
Jewson, N. (2007). Cultivating network analysis. In J. Hughes, N. Jewson & L. Unwin (Ed.), Communities of Practice. Critical Perspectives (p. 68-82). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/NOE0415364737.ch6.
Juujärvi, S., Kallunki, E. & Luostari, H. (2020). Ethical Decision-Making of Social Welfare Workers in the Transition of Services. Ethics and Social Welfare, 14(1), 65-83. https://doi.org/10.1080/17496535.2019.1710546.
Kamali, M. & Jönsson, J. H. (2019). Revolutionary social work: promoting sustainable justice. Critical and Radical Social Work, 7(3), 293–314. https://doi.org/10.1332/204986019X15688881109268.
Kirk, S. A. & Reid, W. J. (2002). Science and Social Work. A Critical Appraisal. Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/kirk11824.
Kolbjørnsrud, V. (2018). Collaborative organizational forms: on communities, crowds, and new hybrids. Journal of Organisational Design, 7(11), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41469-018-0036-3.
Lelieveldt, H. (2004). Helping Citizens Help Themselves - Neighbourhood Improvement Programs and the Impact of Social Networks, Trust, and Norms on Neighbourhood-Orientated Forms of Participation. Urban Affairs Review, 39(5), 531-551. https://doi.org/10.1177/1078087404263601.
Lichterman, P. & Eliasoph, N. (2014). Civic Action. American Journal of Sociology, 120(3), 798-863. https://doi.org/10.1086/679189.
Lorenz, W. (2005). Social work and a new social order: Challenging neo-liberalism’s erosion of solidarity. Social Work and Society, 3(1), 93-101.
Lyons, K. (2016). International social work: Themes and perspectives. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315251936.
Mannen D. & MacAllister, L. (2017). Dignity by Design: A Shift from Formalistic to Humanistic Design in Organizations. In M. Kostera & M. Pirson (Ed.), Dignity and the Organization. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55562-5_11.
Marcus, G. E. & Fischer, M. M. (1986). Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. University of Chicago Press.
Mayo, M. (2004). Exclusion, Inclusion and Empowerment. In J. Andersen, J. & B. Siim (Ed.). The Politics of Inclusion and Empowerment - Gender, Class and Citizenship (p. 139-158). Palgrave MacMillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403990013_9.
Mills, C. W. (1959). The Sociological Imagination. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/1891592.
Nissen, M. A. (2015). Social Workers and the Sociological Sense of Social Problems. Qualitative Sociology Review, 11(2), 216-231.
Nykänen, P. (2020). Shared decision making in the social services? Reasons to consider when choosing methods for service user participation. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 26(2), 569-574. https://doi.org/10.1111/jep.13323.
Oltedal, S., Peña, A., & Hean, S. C. (2019). Work division processes in social work with Cuban and Norwegian families. Journal of Comparative Social Work, 14(1), 165-190. https://doi.org/10.31265/jcsw.v14i1.237.
Pentaraki, M. (2019). Practising social work in a context of austerity. European Journal of Social Work, 22(3), 376-387. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691457.2017.1369396.
Pfeilstetter, R. (2017). Anthropology and Social Work: engagement with humans, moral dilemmas and theories of difference. European Journal of Social Work, 20(2), 167-178. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691457.2015.1131148.
Rodríguez, D. M. & Ferreira, J. (2018). The contribution of the intervention in social networks and community social work at the local level to social and human development. European Journal of Social Work, 21(6), 863-875. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691457.2018.1423551.
Rose, S. & Palattiyil, G. (2020). Surviving or thriving? Enhancing the emotional resilience of social workers in their organisational settings. Journal of Social Work, 20(1), 23-42. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468017318793614.
Schauer, F. (1988). Formalism. Yale Law Journal, 97(4), 509-548. https://doi.org/10.2307/796369.
Scott, J. C (1989). Everyday Forms of Resistance. The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies, 4(1), 33-62. https://doi.org/10.22439/cjas.v4i1.1765.
Scott, J. C. (1992). Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. Yale University Press.
Seltzer, M. & Haldar, M. (2015). The other Chicago school - a sociological tradition expropriated and erased. Nordic Social Work Research, 5(sup1), 25-41. https://doi.org/10.1080/2156857X.2015.1067638.
Svensson, C. F. (2014). ‘Making Money is not an End in Itself’: Creating Meaningfulness among Employees of Social Enterprises. Antípoda. Revista de Antropología y Arqueología, (18), 241-255. https://doi.org/10.7440/antipoda18.2014.11
Svensson, C. F. (2016). Sociale virksomheder: udfordringer og muligheder i et modsætningsfyldt felt. Tidsskriftet Social Kritik, (148), 79-89.
Svensson, C. F. (2017). Ethnographic methodology: Experiences from fieldwork among vulnerable informants. SAGE Research Methods Cases. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781526419637.
Thydal, S. & Svensson, C. F. (2017). Facilitating dissident organisation. Perils and potentials of a self-organising initiative. Interface. Journal for and of social movements, 9(2), 329-343.
Torfing, J. (2016). Collaborative Innovation in the Public Sector. Georgetown University Press.
Turner, V. (2008). The Ritual Process. Structure and Anti-Structure. AldineTransaction.
van Bochove, M. & Oldenhof, L. (2020). Institutional Work in Changing Public Service Organizations. Administration & Society, 52(1), 111-137. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095399718786880.
van der Walt, L. & Schmidt, M. (2009). Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism. AK Press.
Villadsen, K., & Turner, B. S. (2016). Tracing the roots of social citizenship: Jane Addams' thought between formal rights and moral obligation. Citizenship Studies, 20(1), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2015.1107028.
Wenger, E. (2008). Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge University Press.
Williams, D. (2012). From top to bottom, a thoroughly stratified world: an anarchist view of inequality and domination. Race, Gender & Class, 19(3-4), 9-34.