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Power, Agency, Relationality and Welfare Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2015

RACHAEL DOBSON
RACHAEL DOBSON*
Affiliation:
Department of Criminology and Sociology, Kingston University, London, UK email: R.Dobson@kingston.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article argues that constructions of social phenomena in social policy and welfare scholarship think about the subjects and objects of welfare practice in essentialising ways, with negativistic effects for practitioners working in ‘regulatory’ contexts such as housing and homelessness practice. It builds into debates about power, agency, social policy and welfare by bringing psychosocial and feminist theorisations of relationality to practice research. It claims that relational approaches provide a starting point for the analysis of empirical practice data, by working through the relationship between the individual and the social via an ontological unpicking and revisioning of practitioners' social worlds.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , October 2015 , pp. 687 - 705
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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