Breaching private life with authority: finding a necessary feature of social work

Authors:
MAY-CHAHAL Corinne, HAR Man Kwong
Journal article citation:
Qualitative Social Work, 10(4), December 2011, pp.520-536.
Publisher:
Sage

This article describes how, in the context of debate about social work's knowledge base, core social work activity might be identified. Based on a conversation between a social worker and two service users, two claims are made. First, that despite concerns with uncertainty in late modernity, some features of interaction remain inherently certain. These include: ‘materiality’, or the setting and its participants are taken as real; ‘identity’, or that participants engage on the basis that they are who they say they are; ‘taken for granted aspects of social organisation’, or all participants can hold a conversation until shown otherwise; and ‘historicity’, referring to a pre-existing set of accounts, justifications, reasons and communicative orderings. The authors concluded that these expectations provide the resource for topic seeking and practices that may be necessary to social work such as ‘authorized breaching of the domestic sphere and private life’.

Subject terms:
privacy, social work, social workers, social worker-service user relationships;
Link:
Journal home page
ISSN online:
1741-3117
ISSN print:
1473-3250

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