Kampen om det sociale arbejde

ABSTRACT
For the last 20 years, we have been facing a change in the discourse of individuals and their relationship to society. Today we see the individual as primarily selfish, from a perspective of rational choice, and society as an association of such rational participants joining only for the sake of their own benefit. This is considered an ideological discourse. This paper investigates how social workers construct their profession between this discourse and unemployed youngsters.
Method
The analysis is conducted from two complementary perspectives: critical discourse analysis by Norman Fairclough and profession sociology by Thomas Brante – both social constructivists who consider reality as only partly social constructed. The analysis is focused in two steps:
•How the ideological discourse of the selfish and rational individual is reflected in the legislation, which frames the assignment for social workers, as it is formulated in the agreement paper on the cash benefit reform from 2014
•How this is reflected in the discursive practice of the social workers working with unemployed youngsters
Six qualitative semi-structural interviews with social workers having different educational backgrounds and working in two different social efforts have been conducted to produce a text containing what Fairclough identifies as discursive practice. His concept of inter-discourse and modality has been used to localize the extent of and the attitude to the ideological discourse.
Findings
Three discourses that all reflect the ideological discourse are identified in the legislation:
•A discourse of instrumentalization where the value of individuals is equivalent to their contribution to society
•A discourse of behaviourism where the individual is reduced to what it has learned and is controlled only by stimuli and response
•An economic rational discourse where individuals are considered to primarily orientate to economic incentives.
The second part of the analysis unfolds, with help from Brante, a struggle both in and for social work:
•It seems that there is struggle going on between two different attitudes to what treatment is and who must provide it when it comes to social work – they are represented by two different educational traditions; socialrådgivere and pædagoger.
•There is an indication of a struggle between professional knowledge described as mediation between object and ontological models and common sense based on the ideological discourse as a basis for social work.
•Finally, a struggle can be located between types of professions where a new type seems to intrude. The fundamental difference lies in whether the individual is considered the main target for social workers or the means to fulfill the law and get success.
These three struggles indicate a threat to professional knowledge in social work.