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.
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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- Reviewed:
- 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.