Social work and ideology

The role of the contemporary social worker is broad and varied. Practitioners work with a whole spectrum of different people including adults, children and their families, people with mental or physical health issues and those with learning disabilities, to name just a few. Many people may have a complex combination of different issues impacting on their lives. Social workers also support people at times of crisis, for example following life-changing injuries, bereavement or when arriving in the UK to seek asylum. Alongside their varied roles, social workers and their colleagues in the social care field are employed by a range of different organisations. Most people may think about social workers as working for a local authority, carrying out statutory tasks (those required by law), but increasingly, practitioners have been positioned in charitable or voluntary organisations, working with an even wider section of society. This book explores the relationship between social work, in its broadest sense, and the ideological shifts within society. Social work practice does not occur in a vacuum, it is influenced by the context, both political and social, and, simultaneously, social work can influence this context too.

Heywood describes an ideology as ‘a perspective, or “lens”, through which the world is understood and explained’ (Heywood, 2012, p 1). Although simple, this definition allows us to understand that our experience of the world can be seen not as an objective reality, with us as passive observers, but as filtered through a series of perspectives. This approach to understanding the world is referred to as social construction. Social constructionists believe that there is little external, objective ‘reality’, and that all aspects of our lives are constructed through our interactions. Burr (2003, pp 3–5) identifies four central features of social construction:

• 1. ‘A critical stance towards taken for granted knowledge’; here Burr encourages us to think about the divisions in society, for example, the stereotypes and expectations we have of certain individuals or groups, and to reflect on where these have come from and why we believe them to be true.

• 2. ‘Historical and cultural specificity’; if something is recognised as true only in certain places or at certain times, Burr suggests that this means it is socially constructed.