SOCIAL WORK IN A CORPORATE ERA
Contemporary Social Work Studies
Series Editor:
Robin Lovelock, University of Southampton, UK
Series Advisory Board:
Lena Dominelli, University of Southampton, UK
Peter Ford, University of Southampton, UK
Lorraine Gutierrez, University of Michigan, USA
Wa lter Lorenz, Free University of Bozen! Bolzano, Italy
Karen Lyons, University of East London, UK
Joan Orme, University of Glasgow, UK
Jackie Powell, University of Southampton, UK
Chris Wa rren-Adamson, University of Southampton, UK
Contemporary Social Work Studies (CSWS) is a series disseminating high quality new research and scholarship in the discipline and profession of social work. The series promotes critical engagement with contemporary issues relevant across the social work community and captures the diversity of interests currently evident at national, international and local levels.
CSWS is located in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Southampton, and is a development from the successful series of books published by Ashgate in association with CEDR (the Centre for Evaluative and Developmental Research) from 1991.
Titles include:
Reflecting on Social Work-Discipline and Profession
Edited by Robin Lovelock, Karen Lyons and Jackie Powell
Broadening Horizons: International Exchanges in Social Work
Edited by Lena Dominelli and Wanda Thomas Bernard
Beyond Racial Divides: Ethnicities in Social Work Practice
Edited by Lena Dominelli, Walter Lorenz and Haluk Soydan
Valuing the Field: Child Welfare in an International Context
Edited by Marilyn Callahan, Sven Hessle and Susan Strega
Social Work in Higher Education: Demise or Development?
Karen Lyons
Social Work in a Corporate Era
Practices of Power and Resistance
Edited by
Linda Davies and Peter Leonard
McGill University, Canada
First published 2004 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2017 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright Linda Davies and Peter Leonard 2004
Linda Davies and Peter Leonard have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Social work in a corporate era: practices of power and
resistance. - (Contemporary social work studies)
1. Social service
I. Davies, Linda II. Leonard, Peter, 1930
361.3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Social work in a corporate era: practices of power and resistance / by Linda Davies
and Peter Leonard [editors].
p. cm. -- (Contemporary social work studies)
ISBN 0-7546-3883-9
1. Social service. I. Davies, Linda. II. Leonard, Peter, 1930- III. Series.
HV40.S61785 2004
361.3dc22
2004014023
ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-3883-4 (hbk)
Sara Collings is a doctoral student in the School of Social Work, McGill University, Canada.
Linda Davies is Associate Professor in the School of Social Work, McGill University, Canada.
Kamal Fahmi completed his PhD in 2004 from the School of Social Work, McGill University, Canada.
Jan Fook is Professor and Director, Center for Professional Development, La Trobe University, Australia.
Michele Gnanamuttu is a doctoral student in the School of Social Work, McGill University, Canada.
Amanda Grenier is Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work, McGill University, Canada.
Karen Healy is Associate Professor in the School of Social Work and Applied Human Sciences, The University of Queensland, Australia.
Peter Leonard is Professor in the School of Social Work, McGill University, Canada.
Laura Mastronardi is Coordinator of the Certificate Program in Northern Social Work Practice, School of Social Work, McGill University and a doctoral student in McGill's Faculty of Education.
Gabrielle Meagher is senior lecturer in the Discipline of Political Economy at The University of Sydney, Australia.
Anthony Par is Associate Professor, Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University, Canada.
Nigel Parton is Professor of Child Care and Director of the Centre for Applied Childhood Studies at the University ofHuddersfield, England.
Linda Davies and Peter Leonard
This book takes a critical stand on the location of social work within the crises and contradictions of this particular juncture in the history of Western countries. At this historical moment, we witness both the increasing exercise of state and corporate power and the growth of new kinds of collective resistance. These forces and counter-forces, and their effects, arise in the context of global problems of economic exploitation, poverty, racism and social exclusion - problems with which social workers are confronted in their own and their clients' experiences, and to which they must respond.
We believe that these structural problems and the crises they create demand a responding dissent at every level, from mass political protest to individual and small-scale resistance. At the level of social work theory and practice, we argue that it is necessary to draw upon the critical tradition embedded in modernity while, simultaneously, confronting the tragic failures of this tradition in the oppressive example of state socialism. A reflective critique of the critical tradition itself should, we maintain, build on elements from a range of 'post-theories' postmodernism, post-structuralism and post-colonialism. The intellectual and practical problems of rebuilding social work on the theoretical basis of emancipatory narratives, on the one hand, and post-modern deconstructions of those narratives, on the other, are evident throughout this text.
The book is a collective enterprise emerging from discussion and debate among its authors, who wrote and re-wrote our particular chapters as part of an effort to respond to the crises and contradictions that we experienced in social work education, research and practice. The Social Theory Study Group of the School of Social Work, McGill University, has been central to the process of writing the book. This group that consists of the Canadian authors has met over a period of several years. In 2001, a symposium was held at McGill University, which brought the Social Theory Study Group together with academic colleagues from Australia and Britain. At that meeting we decided to collectively publish our contributions. In October 2003, the authors came together again so that we could further reflect on the implications of the positions taken in our individual chapters. The result is a text that is able to draw upon experiences from four countries, three of them clearly complicit in the dynamics of global exploitation.