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© British Association of Social Workers

Social Work As The Privatized Solution of Public Ills*

GEOFFREY PEARSON

The author holds a lectureship in the School of Social Work, University College, Cardiff. Previously he was a lecturer in the Department of Political and Social Studies, Sheffield Polytechnic. He has studied at the universities of Cambridge, Sheffield, and the London School of Economics where he trained as a psychiatric social worker. He is 29 years old

Summary

This paper takes the motivation of the social work recruit as the point of departure for an exploration of some aspects of the low-key politics of social work. Attempting to cut past stereotypical and occupationally agreed conceptions of why social workers enter their occupation, it suggests that the social work recruit's choice is most usefully understood as an attempted solution to central cultural problems in advanced capitalist societies, and it directs attention to the moral-political roots of social work. While the choice of social work as a career represents for some a sort of primitive political rebellion, the implications of this 'rebellion' are not grasped, and it becomes the privatized solution of a privileged minority


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Well Motivated Reformists or Nascent Radicals: How Do Applicants to the Degree in Social Work See Social Problems, their Origins and Solutions?
Br. J. Soc. Work, June 1, 2007; 37(4): 735 - 760.
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