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British Journal of Social Work (2004) 34, 297-312
British Journal of Social Work 34/3 © BASW Trading Ltd 2004 all rights reserved
Beyond Power Discourse: Alienation and Social Work
Iain Ferguson teaches Social Work at the University of Stirling. He writes on issues of mental health, asylum and Marxist theory and social welfare. With Michael Lavalette and Gerry Mooney he has recently published a book Rethinking Welfare: A critical approach (Sage, 2002) which develops a classical Marxist understanding of social welfare. With Michael Lavalette and Elizabeth Whitmore he is currently editing a text on Globalisation, Social Work and Social Justice (forthcoming).
Michael Lavalette teaches Social Policy and Social Work at the University of Liverpool. He writes on issues associated with child labour and childhood, popular protest and Marxist theorization of social policy and social work. With Iain Ferguson and Gerry Mooney he has recently published Rethinking Welfare: A critical perspective (Sage, 2002), with Barry Goldson and Jim McKechnie he has recently written Children, Welfare and the State (Sage, 2002) and with Stephen Cunningham he has just completed a book Child Labour, Globalisation and Anti-capitalism (Pluto, forthcoming). He is currently editing a text on Globalisation, Social Work and Social Justice with Iain Ferguson and Elizabeth Whitmore (forthcoming).
Correspondence to Michael Lavalette, Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work Studies, University of Liverpool, Eleanor Rathbone Building, Bedford Street South, Liverpool. E-mail: M.Lavalette{at}Liverpool.ac.uk
Summary
This paper argues for the relevance of the Marxist concept of alienation to the development of an emancipatory social work practice. As the concept has often been misinterpreted within the social work literature to refer primarily to a psychological state, the first part of the paper seeks to establish the material basis of the theory as developed by Marx, and identifies four key aspects of alienation—from the product of labour, from the labour process, from our ‘human nature’ and from our fellow human beings. Alienation theory is then applied to the experience of both social workers and service users and it is argued that the notions of loss of control (in the case of social workers) and powerlessness (in the case of service users) have greater explanatory power, and provide a firmer basis for a radical practice, than currently fashionable power discourses, derived from postructuralism, which often mirror the individualism of the New Right approaches they seek to challenge. Finally, examples are given of the ways in which the concept of alienation might contribute towards the development of a new, emancipatory social work, central to which is likely to be the development of more collective approaches.
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