More recently the writings of Italian political philosophers such as Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito, especially their theorizing about community and governance have come to the fore in critical social work.Ī new journal published by Policy Press called Critical and Radical Social Work: An international journal promotes debate and scholarship around a range of engaged social work themes and issues. These include the ideas of Michel Foucault, Jacques Donzelot, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler, Pierre Bourdieu and Jürgen Habermas. Webb, Iain Ferguson, Susan White, Lena Dominelli, Paul Michael-Garrett, and Stan Houston have further developed the paradigm by incorporating inter-disciplinary ideas from contemporary political philosophy, anthropology and social theory. They were building on the views expounded by earlier social workers such as Octavia Hill, Jane Addams & Bertha Reynolds, who had at various points over the previous 200 years sought to make social work & charity more focused on structural forces. Several writers helped codify radical social work, such as Jeffry Galper (1975), Mike Brake (1975) and Harold Throssell (1975). Critical social work evolved from this to oppose all forms of oppression. (Corrigan & Leonard, Phillipson, 1979, Bolger, 1981) Ĭritical social work is heavily influenced by Marxism, the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory and by the earlier approach of Radical social work, which was focused on class oppression. While it acts as an instrument of class control it can simultaneously create the conditions for the overthrow of capitalist social relations. Social work can undermine capitalism and class society. Social workers are the ‘soft cops’ of the capitalist state machine. Its function is to produce and maintain the capitalist state machine and to ensure working class subordination.
Social work is seen as an indispensable tool of the capitalist social order.
Social workers work with the oppressed and marginalized and so are in a good position to harness class resistance to capitalism and transform society into a more social democracy or socialist state. Social work is seen as a catalyst for social change. Social work theories have three possible strategies of analysis, as identified by Rojek et al. However, they work in institutional contexts which paradoxically implicates them in maintaining capitalist functions. Mullaly & Keating (1991) suggest three schools of radical thought corresponding to three versions of socialist analysis social democracy, eurocommunist, and revolutionary Marxism. For radical social workers, this implies working towards the transformation of capitalist society towards building social arrangements which are more compatible with these commitments. Social workers have an ethical commitment to working to overcome inequality and oppression. 5 Structural and Dialectic critiques of human agency.
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