Power and Social Work in the United Kingdom
Power and Social Work in the United Kingdom
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英国的权力和社会工作
DOI：
10.1177/1468017309347237
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发表时间：
2010
影响因子：
1.6
通讯作者：
J. Powell
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
T. Gilbert;J. Powell
·总结：这篇文章使用法国哲学家米歇尔·福柯的著作中的批判性“工具包”中的见解，探讨了社会工作中的权力关系。本文探讨了福柯的“知识与权力”概念工具、“现代主体”的出现与“治理心态”概念之间的关系。尽管面临持续的压力，专业知识仍然是新自由主义政府在人口管理方面的核心要素。我们使用福柯的观点来探讨当代实践的两个核心问题：监督和自由裁量权，这是权力关系二元论的缩影。一方面，监督带来了一个潜在的问题过程，特别是在自上而下的管理权力的背景下；但另一方面，自由裁量权更多地关注福柯(1977)所说的“权力的微观物理学”，有机会自下而上地进行“抵抗”。·调查结果：专业知识制造了一种悖论，监督和自由裁量权在类似的社会空间中运作，就像表达包括使用者、照顾者和社会工作者在内的权力关系一样。然而，一方面，监督制约了实践；另一方面，复杂性为抵制和权力关系的新表述打开了空间。·应用：将社会工作活动置于批判性立场下，有助于探索权力关系，确定赋权和反压迫实践等承诺如何脱离最初的激进和人道主义停泊，现在成为它们曾经可能挑战的压迫话语的组成部分。
• Summary: This article explores relations of power in social work using insights drawn from the critical ‘toolkit’ emanating from work of French philosopher, Michel Foucault. The article discusses the relationship between Foucault’s conceptual tools of ‘knowledge and power’, the emergence of ‘the modern subject’ and the concept of ‘governmentality’. Despite ongoing pressures, professional expertise persists as a core element of neo-liberal government in the management of the population. We use a Foucauldian perspective to explore two issues central to contemporary practice: surveillance and discretion that epitomise dualism of power relations. On the one hand, surveillance brings with it a potentially problematic process especially in context of top down managerial power; yet, on the other hand, discretion is much more focused on what Foucault (1977) calls ‘the microphysics of power’ with opportunities for ‘resistance’ from the bottom up. • Findings: Professional expertise creates a paradox where surveillance and discretion operate within similar social space as the expression of power relations that encompass the matrix of users, carers and social workers. On one hand, surveillance restricts practice however; on the other, complexity opens the space for resistance and new formulations of power relations. • Applications : Exposing social work activity to a critical stance enables the exploration of relations of power identifying how commitments such as empowerment and anti-oppressive practice become detached from their original radical and humanitarian moorings to feature now as components of oppressive discourses they might once have challenged.