The Future of Critical Social Work in Uncertain Conditions

• Main Author: Peter Leonard
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Windsor 2018-12-01
• Series: Critical Social Work
• Online Access: https://ojs.uwindsor.ca/index.php/csw/article/view/5617

Anyone who talks about the future in the postmodern habitat of late capitalism is taking a risk. The world of globalization, of continuous economic restructuring, of the effects of fear and greed on the international stock market, produce an all-pervading uncertainty further confounded by scepticism about the foundations upon which beliefs in western progress are based. This aura of uncertainty - economic, cultural, epistemological - has its own effects on social work, and the tradition of critical social work is no exception. With the compression of time/space even to think about the future is to experience a sense of vertigo: what can we possibly think?  For critical social work, the problem of the future is quite specific: at one time our talk of the future was associated with emancipatory narratives, with claims about what the future will hold which are now profoundly problematic. To speak of the future as the continuation of a trajectory of progressive movement towards human betterment has been subjected to poststructural deconstruction. This work of prising apart the surface narrative to reveal what lies underneath talk of emancipation has presented us with a number of problems. The emancipatory narrative of western modernity has been shown to be based on claims to universal, objective knowledge, supported by a linear view of history whereby the West assumed the role in bringing development to the rest of the world - the steady march of Civilization. The ethnocentric arrogance of these claims leads to a profound inability to respond creatively to difference, and results in the suppression of the voices of the Other.