Transcript On the Work of Social Work - Fakulteta za socialno delo
On the Work of Social Work
The social work a machinic science.
What are the components of social work?
Doing and working
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Producing – deeds, going on, moving Producing changes Machinic – wanting, wishing, desiring, needing
Transversality
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The social work is not only interdisciplinary, but it also connects many different planes of existence. Therefore it cannot reduce the variety of meanings, functions to one and only dimension, to the homogenous space of a reductionist profession.
The meaning is to be sought on yet another plane, connecting to otherness and amplifying resonance.
Freire dialog: talking through (the matter). Enounciating what is to become.
Pragmatics
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Rather then a grammar the “language” of social work rely of the actual utterances, that are ruled by the context and imminent “meanings”. It is not interested in what is right or wrong but what works or doesn't. Harm reduction is a leading concept – not the guilt, the mistake, the lack.
Language
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People first Verb not nouns – what one does or is happening to him not what one is
• • •
Avoid labels Concepts not abstractions No professional jargon – simple descriptions and ordinary language
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Not only word but deeds
Dancing with the guardian and advocate
Guardian Advocate Interests Knowledge Virtual Beforehand, prior Actual After, situation based Mandate Deficiency Figure the user of From society the general Inside the individual From the individual, concrete group In the social order Stranger, child Absent Prince pauper individual, and the
Partisan and bias
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No politically neutral or value free science Is there a point in going native?
Can one become the other?
Probabilistic
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Certainties turning out of hand Reconstruction of the ordinary
– – – –
Real guaranties Safe (ordinary settings) Rearranging situations Dedramatising – linking to social Avoiding the paranoia of quasi-causality.
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Law: 10 innocent rather than one guilty free.
Medicine: 10 healthy rather than one sick cured.
Social work: Diminish the likelihood. Expand the possibilities.
Possibilities rather than certainties.
Experimental
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Doing thing rather than explaining them.
Innovations, projects, evaluation.
Evidence is not only sought but also produced.
Reflective and reflexive
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Points back to immanence of interaction.
The everyday, ordinary, banal.
Bound to the context.
Rather comic – than tragic.
Narrative
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Escaping the biographies.
Novellas vs. novels.
Comic
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Allowing to move on, to see but not to be engulfed, encysted in a drama.
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Resonance in the laughter.
Ethico-esthetic
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Social work enables us to hear, feel, see, experience what is beyond encrusted normality To move between the different planes of existence.
To go beyond transcendentalism of rational paradigm but still render ratio as useful.
To construct the consistencies (with humanist project).
“anything goes” post modernism is a GIP elephant crap – i.e. selling slogan to death.