W2 Reinvent SW - Lecture notes 2 PDF

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Power, Politics and Social Work Silvana Martínez’s Reinvent Social Work Worldwide - Contributions From Latin American Thought https://www.ifsw.org/power-politics-and-social-work-the-need-to-reinvent-social-workworldwide-contributions-from-latin-american-thought/

The Construction of Social Order ● Social workers have history, and it can’t be denied or ignored because we are historical subjects who have memory. ● This memory also allows us to observe that, for multiple reasons: ○ Not always able to question the status quo, the established order. ■ However this is a paradox, because social work is used to transform reality to change the social order. Social Order ● Waldo Ansaldi’s Social Order Definition: ○ Historic, collective, political and controversial construction ○ Involves complex web processes in where power, exploitation, and domination are constitutive of these processes. ○ Construction of order always involves the building of an instructional matrix; which regulates the mode of exercising that power. ● If social order is a historical construction, then it is not natural or attributable; it is a human construction ● There is a possibility for change because they are human constructions, therefore can be modified. ● If we choose to deny they are human constructions, we are denying social work and social change. ● To address social order and the possibility of social change, we should firstly refer to power and how it is exercised ○ Referring to macro factors (large-scale) of power that shape and sustain the the present order that oppresses human beings, societies, countries and people ■ Ex. Capitalism, patriarchy, coloniality of power. Power ● Power was once known as something anyone could take on. ○ “To take power”, “to be empowered” ● However currently power is not a thing but a social relationship registered and located in historical conditions. ● Powerful countries that govern the world invent devices to oppress the rest of the world that they use to justify oppression with discourses and unacceptable political practices. ■ Ex. Genocides ● The mode of power exercised by the more dominant countries in the world was

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historically based on a colonial matrix of power Aníbal Quijano’s Power Definition: ○ A social relationship constituted by the permanent co-presence of domination, exploitation and conflict. ○ Result and expression of the struggle for over basic areas of human existence, resources and available products. ○ Global power consists in relation between: ■ Capitalism a universal pattern of control of nature and work. ■ The patriarchate as a hegemonic control pattern on women around gender and sex. ■ Ruro-centrism as a hegemonic form of control on subjectivity/intersubjectivity. ■ Production of knowledge, and coloniality of power as a foundation of a universal pattern of classification and social domination around race and ethnicity. ● These four devices of power configure the current world order and involved a variety of negative factors. ○ Ex. Slavery, racism, drug trafficking, poverty..etc Since poorer countries and regions do not have the resources and technological capacity necessary to neutralize or reduce the consequences of these environmental changes. For many populations, even migration is not an alternative, as already the anti-migratory policies applied by many governments severely limit this option. However millions are forced to migrate due to political and armed crises in their own country. According to the financial group Credit Suisse, the poorest half of the global adult population has only 1% of global wealth, while the richest 10% has 84% and the richest 1% has 44 % of global wealth Wealth concentration and political power presents limitations on democracy and evidently weakening it.

Social Work, Politics and Social Struggles ● If we fail to tackle these major issues from social work with a political perspective evidently we will fall into the mistake of blaming the social subjects with whom we interact with (i.e. “blaming the victim”). ● There are powerful oppressive structures that support and reproduce this order ● Without generating positive historical conditions that modify these structures it is very difficult for people to escape the situation in which they are in and be able to develop freely as humans. ● Enrique Diussel ○ The problem of social order transformation requires a formation of collective

Power, Politics and Social Work actors who engage with system injustices. ○ Antonio Gramsci understood it as: “a social block for the oppressed, which admits contradictions, but which is central to the struggle for emancipation, in particular when they are constituted as a hegemonic power block ● History teaches us that social achievements have always been products of collective struggles. ● In recent years, mobilizations against this inequity have been growing around the globe, suggesting that another world is possible. ● In the last 2 decades Lati America has been the most active territory in this struggle. ● Mobilizations: ○ Argentina: polluting mining, paper mills, neoliberalism adjustments. ○ Brazil: popular actions in defense of democracy were organized. ○ Peru: resistance against mining corporations was accomplished. ○ Chile: miners struggle for better working conditions, and the struggle of the Mapuches for land tenure and public and quality education continues ○ Arab: political changes (ex. mass popular mobilization during during Arab Spring) Politics ● Because of deep social inequalities there is a strong need to reinvent social work around the world, with the inclusion of political dimensions. ● Hannah Arendt’s Politics Definition: ○ Politics is the organizer of all areas of human life. ○ Origin; “between-men”, thereby making it a social relation ○ It is concerned with arrangements between people; bio-policy (Micheal Foucault). ○ It is something built by, for and among persons, making it a historical construction. ○ “We are born, live and die in conditions that are created by politics”. ● Iris Young’s Politics Definition: ○ Links politics with social justice, it is the main theme of political philosophy. ○ Domination and oppression are more important than distribution, terms that the philosopher uses to conceptualize social injustice. ○ “The concept of justice is coextensive with the concept of politics”. ● Robert Unger’s Politics Definition: ○ “The struggle for resources and agreements that fix the basic terms of our practical and passionate relations”. ● Politics is a matter of participation and power to decide collectives affairs of a society. ● The meaning and value of politics are based on it is the field that decided who engages and acts, for whom, for what purposes and with what resources, evidently meaning it affects our lives as social subjects (constitutive of social life.) ● The more politicized a society is, the more political power its members will have,

Power, Politics and Social Work including much more capacity of resistance and political consciousness.

The Need to Reinvent Social Work Around The World ● Stop reproducing dichotomous thinking: to stop separating professional practice from the production of knowledge and professional training. ● With this dichotomy we are only functional to those who dominate and control us. ● The reinvention also implies having the maturity to criticize our own government, when they only respond to the interests of large transnational corporations. ● These corporations have neither homeland nor nation and take political decisions that harm millions of people, condemning them to life in extreme poverty, to war and conflict, etc. ● Peoples’ rights are not negotiated, they are demanded, they are respected, they are exercised. As social workers we have to put ourselves on the opposite sidewalk of those who oppress, violate, and deny these rights. ● “Another world is possible” : This depends on us, from our own political will of historical consciousness that we have. We can continue co-validating this order or we can question it in order to transform it....