Social Work, Power and Performativity

In recent years, there have been a number of epistemological developments in social work. Further, there have been a number of theoretical approaches that have attempted to ground the concept of ‘power’ to understand organizational practice such as Marxist thought. At the same time, the insights of French social theorist Michel Foucault have been captivating to the disciplinary development of social work in illuminating power relations and subject positioning between helping professions and clients. To move beyond this, and in order to theoretically interrogate the relationship between social theory and professional power, this article draws from the neo Foucauldian-Feminist philosopher Judith Butler – especially regarding Butler's (1990, 1993 and 1998) powerful work on ‘performativity’. This article attempts to generate new theoretical insights to understanding contemporary social work through the conceptual tools of Butler

Personalisation, Participation and Care

Personalisation services are developing in England as a social policy response to user demands for more tailored, effective and flexible forms of health and social care support. Across England and Wales, this process is being implemented under the personalization which is also seen as a vehicle for promoting service user rights through increasing participation, empowerment and control while also promoting self-restraint by having users manage the costs of their health and social care. This paper reviews the existing research evidence for personalization, albeit limited, and identifies themes for future research

Rethinking Trust, Crime Policy and Social Theory,

This article analyses the relationship of ‘trust’ to crime, power and criminal justice policy. The theoretical model employed to analyse this relationship draws from Owen’s (2009a), conceptually driven argument that is based on an ontologically-flexible critique of agency-structure, micro-macro and time-space. This relationship stands at the interface of competing pressures working to produce the increasing complexity of crime and criminal justice policy (Powell 2005). We then move the attention to the conceptual problems of ‘trust’ which is linked with uncertainty and complexity whilst law and order and crime policies rest on the specialist knowledge claimed by a range of professional “experts” and technologists that inhabit powerful spaces through which crime policy and practice is governed and articulated

Reconstructing Social Policy and Ageing

This article draws from the work of Michel Foucault to reconstruct an understanding of social policy and ageing in contemporary Britain. In many ways, policy provides three trajectories for older people; first, as independent self-managing consumers with private means and resources; second, as people in need of some support to enable them to continue to self-manage and third, as dependent and unable to commit to self-management. Governmentality provides the theoretical framework through which to view policy and practice that is largely governed by discourses of personalisation

A sociology of trust

The paper is a critical review of the problems and implications of trust and in managing diversity in the British community care system. It is a system in need of strong diversity management in the light of the world economic downturn in recent years. Despite raft of policies on leadership in social care in the UK, the structural issues for why the needs of diverse groups are not met are difficult to understand at particular levels of analysis. The central problem has been lack of ‘trust’. The paper detangles the implications of different forms of trust in order to understand care relations

Globalization and Modernity

As we move into the global century, several aspects of social and economic life are changing and post-industrial shifts are unparalleled by virtue of the interconnectedness that brings together the corners of the globe. New technologies, new economic relationships, new social processes, and new political developments are all characteristics of globalization (Hudson and Lowe, 2004: 22) in a post-industrial age featured by information, innovation, finance and services. As the world has contracted, people’s quality of life has changed regardless of where they live. In fact, the propagation of free market mindsets in emerging economies has created collective network connections with considerable good but pervasive inequalities as well. A fundamental aim of this book is to argue that these changes are part of a economic transition to post-industrialism associated with risks and inequalities that shape human experience in the midst of a formidable global financial climate. There is an obvious tension with this. On the one hand, life expectancy, health statuses and per capital incomes are at an all-time high and many feudal practices have been relegated to the past (Phillipson, 2006). On the other hand, vast numbers of people struggle with poverty and significant pockets of poverty portend more than lack of income. Those living on the bottom of the socio-economic ladder labor under the burden of avoidable, lifestyle diseases, hunger and related maladies, not to mention myriad social risks (Turner, 2008). Those on the upper reaches of the same ladder garner disproportionate shares of the resources and are able to support comfortable lifestyles

Governing globalization and justice

This article explicates how 21st Century changes in the form of globalization are of historical scale, how they play out in terms of risks and inequalities shaping human experience, and how they have changed social welfare and public policy making worldwide. After presenting facts of inequality and such consequences as planetary poverty and gender stratification, it highlights the reformulation of economic power associated with burgeoning free-market economies and accompanying diffusion of instrumental rationality, standardization and commodification. In contrast with the recent US economic downturn and global softening of labor markets which cry for greater social protection, the welfare state of the last century has been replaced by a competitive state of the 21st century, as a “non-sovereign power” mindful of its global positioning but less powerful in shaping daily life among social forces including the role of NGOs. Indicating a lag between transnational developments and the way analysts think of social policies, the paper asserts that nation-states nonetheless serve important administrative functions in a world dominated by transnational corporate interests. In considering all the challenges to justice and governance, the authors argue that social welfare needs to be redefined and extended while market economy must be guided by moral principles that embody fundamental human values

Foucault, power and culture

This is the published version of article published in International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies and unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction of an article in any medium, provided that the original work is properly citedThis paper explores the powerful works of French philosopher, Michel Foucault and examines its implications for understanding power and cultural relations. Despite this, there has been very little Foucauldian analysis of culture and its relationship to power (Powell 2012). Hence, the article discusses the relationship between Foucault’s conceptual tools of ‘power’, the emergence of ‘the modern subject’, the individual and the important concept of ‘body’ as they apply to a methodological and epistemological understanding of culture in contemporary society

Ageing and China: Towards theory, policy and practice

In the 21st Century, economists and social analysts around the globe are increasingly concerned about the rising numbers of older people in their society. There are genuine concerns about the inadequacy of pension funds, of growing pressures on welfare systems, and on the inability of shrinking numbers of younger people to carry the burden of their elders. This article focuses on such gerontological issues in China, where the older people have become a rapidly expanding proportion of the population. While resources do need to be targeted on the vulnerable older people, the presumption that older people as a whole are an economic and social burden must be questioned. This is an ageist view that needs to be combated by locating how bio-medical views on aging seep into policy spaces in China that position negative perceptions of aging as both individual and populational problems. The article then moves to observe the implications of bio-medicine for older people in China in terms of "vulnerable" aging but deconstruct such "fixed" explanations by juxtaposing active aging as key narrative that epitomizes "declining to decline" as espoused by bio-medical sciences