Giorgio Agamben : sovereign power, bio-politics and the totalitarian tendencies within societies
- Authors: Ottmann, Goetz , Brito, Iris
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: The Routledge Handbook of Critical Pedagogies for Social Work p. 223-232
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- Description: This chapter focuses on Giorgio Agamben’s work on power, sovereignty, bare life, and bio-politics. Agamben argues that the state of exception (where the state no longer orders forms of life, creating a kind of no-man’s-land where rules are made by those in charge) is the original political relation that continues to define the workings of the modern state. An example of this state of exception is the concentration camp, a place where human beings whose political rights are for some reason forfeited (e.g. ethnic or religious minorities, refugees, militant Islamists) are being stored and often destroyed. The structure of the camp, Agamben states, exists and endures in many other forms. He urges us that ‘it is this structure of the camp that we must learn to recognise in all its metamorphoses’. How Agamben’s work is relevant to social work and how his analysis is valuable in critical social work education and practice is explored in this chapter. © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Christine Morley, Phillip Ablett, Carolyn Noble, and Stephen Cowden.
Surveillance, sanctions, and behaviour modification in the name of far-right nationalism : the rise of authoritarian ‘welfare’ in Australia
- Authors: Ottmann, Goetz
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: The Challenge of Right-wing Nationalist Populism for Social Work : a Human Rights Approach p. 135-150
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Right-wing nationalist populism and social work : some definitions and features
- Authors: Noble, Carolyn , Ottmann, Goetz
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: The Challenge of Right-wing Nationalist Populism for Social Work : a Human Rights Approach p. 1-14
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- Description: The rise of right-wing nationalist populism in our increasingly uncertain world poses serious threats to already marginalised groups such as women, migrants, asylum seekers, Indigenous people, and members of ethnic and minority communities. This chapter explores some definitions of right-wing nationalist populism and describes many of its features. We argue that the rise of right-wing populism poses a major challenge to social work’s practice foundations and professional stake in promoting human and democratic rights for all. If unaddressed, populist nationalism has the potential to erode even further the humanist fabric of our societies, making welfare contingent upon ethnicity, social status and level of economic ‘activation’. The challenge for social work is to oppose right-wing populist policies and practices wherever they manifest, and to promote effective, non-violent alternatives that can capture the popular political imaginary. While the threat to human rights-based social work is serious, it also harbours the possibility that the ensuing confrontations will renew and strengthen the profession’s commitment to non-violent, inclusive, socially just practice.
Alain Touraine : the politics of collective action
- Authors: Ottmann, Goetz , Noble, Carolyn
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: The Routledge Handbook of Critical Pedagogies for Social Work p. 465-476
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- Description: This chapter takes as its starting point Touraine’s work on new social movements that explains how social change occurs. Touraine’s work focuses on how people come together to challenge and alter cultural and socio-political boundaries of a social, institutional or political system deemed to be discriminatory or oppressive. Becoming involved in social action against social disadvantage and injustice, and struggling for changes in law, public policy and the political culture can empower people to take control of their lives. Linking community development and social action with social movements theory and practice is, we argue, the most effective and salient method for the advancement of a more progressive social work practice. How this analysis influences the teaching and practice of community development and social action to advance a more progressive, transformative social work practice is explored. © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Christine Morley, Phillip Ablett, Carolyn Noble, and Stephen Cowden.
Refractory interventions : the incubation of Rival epistemologies in the margins of Brazilian social work
- Authors: Brito, Iris , Ottmann, Goetz
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Disrupting Whiteness in Social Work p. 139-155
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- Description: In Epistemologies of the South, Boaventura Sousa Santos argues that the most important struggle of our time is the struggle against ‘epistemicide’ and to break free from the epistemological poverty resulting from the dominance of neoliberal ideology that has become the hallmark of the early 21st century. In this chapter, we are arguing that social imaginaries are shaped and reshaped in the margins of the direct sphere of influence of the state, giving rise to ground-breaking experiments that can challenge the epistemological closure that often takes place within institutional spaces. Drawing on three Brazilian case studies, we illustrate the following: how Indigenous people appropriate a segment of the tourist industry commodifying a part of their culture in order to translate the economic capital derived from it into new Indigenous cultural capital to be used in a larger struggle against colonisation how Afro-Brazilian activists built community organisations in order to generate a pathway for disenfranchised Black Brazilians into higher education and how a Black Brazilian pastor managed to survive in a staunchly conservative and often racist Pentecostal church to ensure access to quality education and welfare for slum dwellers. In this chapter, we argue that this informal activist social work is central to the struggle for social alternatives and for social justice. This chapter focuses on some examples of how social work practice is being re-defined from the margins of the profession. The case studies exemplify how community initiatives are often decolonising key aspects of Brazilian society by approaching social issues from a grassroots perspective. The chapter provides inspiring and rich examples of localised action which reposition and reinvigorate epistemologies of the ‘south’, illustrating the liberating potential sourced in the margins. It presents a brief summary of emergent epistemological alternatives in everyday life in the southern Bahia, a state in the northeast of Brazil. Brazilian social work emerged during the first decades of the 20th century at the interstice of two powers that sought to extend their sphere of influence: the post-colonial state and the Catholic church. The underpinning epistemicide of global-scale coloniality is a compelling reason why social work in the margins should be more wholly embraced.
COVID-19 and the welfare state : social work’s practice and policy
- Authors: Noble, Carolyn , Ottmann, Goetz
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Post-Pandemic Welfare and Social Work: Re-imagining the New Normal Chapter 19 p. 220-227
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- Description: This chapter attempts to situate social work within the wider social and political context of the post-pandemic
Post-pandemic social work and the death of neoliberalism
- Authors: Ottmann, Goetz
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Post-Pandemic Welfare and Social Work: Re-imagining the New Normal Chapter 4 p. 39-50
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- Description: The COVID-19 pandemic in conjunction with ecological, financial and political crises foregrounds the inadequacies and failures of neoliberal modes of governance that have become the bedrock of polities around the globe. The pandemic highlighted that most governments were not able to protect the health and wellbeing of their citizens bringing into full public view an astonishing discrepancy between governmental claims and experienced events. As a result, political leaders were scrambling to re-define the role of the state as guarantor of social welfare, to re-create a sense of humanitarian solidarity, and to re-invent the commons amidst threadbare, marketised health and social care. Ultimately, a sizeable segment of vulnerable ‘consumers’ was left without a protective safety net. And while communities rallied, providing much-needed social support to vulnerable citizens, national governments appeared to be ‘missing in action’. This chapter traces the tension between the neoliberal administration of health and welfare and the social imaginary of safety that underpins public opinion outlining socio-political currents that are transforming neoliberalism. The chapter argues that this tension translates into a new challenge for social work to ‘re-cognise’ that the neoliberal dogma, albeit incrementally changing, still permeates current human services approaches and our own thinking and to become aware of new possibilities. © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Goetz Ottmann and Carolyn Noble; individual chapters, the contributors.
Post-pandemic social work and the welfare state
- Authors: Noble, Carolyn , Ottmann, Goetz
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Post-Pandemic Welfare and Social Work: Re-imagining the New Normal Chapter 1 p. 1-14
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- Description: This edited book offers a critical commentary to the social, political and cultural shifts that underpin the post-pandemic ʼnew normal’. At the time of completing this edited book, most pandemic containment measures have been lifted ushering in a new socio-political landscape. Contributors to this book agree that the pandemic revealed the cracks in welfare systems resulting from decades of underfunding and posited a rethink of its value and function. COVID-19 has reminded us of our vulnerability and dependence on others. It has debunked the myth of the ideal of the self-contained, self-sufficient and independent subject at the core of liberal political and moral philosophy that is also manifest in pre-COVID-19 interpretations of welfare and visions of care. The chapter argues that post-pandemic welfare must be expanded to include relational aspects that link all beings in their inter-dependence with the planetary ecosystem. We affirm that Critical social work is a strategic activity where social workers are taking on a networked leadership role promoting grassroots activism and more democratic decision-making towards a more sustainable and equitable future. © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Goetz Ottmann and Carolyn Noble; individual chapters, the contributors.