Description:
When a student experienced a personally challenging situation during field placement, she and her field supervisor worked through the scenario together, using a process of critical reflection. Many ideas and assumptions were unsettled for both, and aspects of the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) Code of Ethics were questioned. Using critical reflection as a pedagogical tool, we reflect on how discourses affect our practice. We demonstrate this by undertaking a political reading of the AASW Code of Ethics. Our analysis exposes tensions between the core social work value of ‘respect for persons’ and the practice responsibility of social workers to undertake culturally competent, safe and sensitive practice. We suggest that the Code of Ethics is predominantly embedded in Kantian philosophy and limits our ability to practise in culturally sensitive ways, as it denies the impact that knowledge and power have on our work with Indigenous communities specifically, and all non-Western peoples more broadly.
Description:
Literature on media representations of Islamic terrorism predominantly employs discourse analysis as a methodological tool to unpack concepts of power in texts. There is scant literature focused on the operation of silence as a discursive practice in the public sphere. This paper employs Huckin's (2002) notion of manipulative silences to demonstrate how textual media representations of Australians Joining the Fight in Syria are dominated by identity debates, particularly evident in the media's act of defining Muslims who engage in the Syrian conflict as bad Australians. We use Joining the Fight on Insight, an Australian opinion-based television program on Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), as the centrepiece of our argument to demonstrate how media representations use manipulative silences. These silences skew dialogue in the public sphere away from the core issue, the role of ISIS in the Syrian conflict, and towards internal politics and nationalistic concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Social Alternatives is the property of Social Alternatives and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)