Performing social work : an ethnographic study of talk and text in a metropolitan social services department

White, SJB

Abstract

The central theme of this ethnographic study is captured in the word play in the title. It
is, essentially, an analysis of the social work in social work. With a primary focus on
the collegial discourse taking place between 'child care' social workers and managers in
a social services department in the North West of England, I have undertaken an
analysis of naturally occurring talk, interview data, formal policy and procedure, and
written records of action taken (case files and minutes) and action to be taken (e.g. court
reports, strategic planning documents). My analytic focus has been upon on the routines
and linguistic practices through which `caseness' is accomplished. I argue that, although
professional accounts are artfully produced against certain (situated) background
expectancies, the 'materials' invoked in such accounts are not entirely local phenomena.
That is to say, competent accounts are both locally accomplished and contingent upon
available vocabularies. In a search for analytic adequacy, I have drawn particularly upon
the temporal and rhetorical 'turns' in the human sciences. Using an unashamedly
eclectic approach, I argue that 'imported' materials, such as bureaucratic time, remain
malleable and, thus, may be invoked strategically and artfully by social workers in their
(narrative) constructions of events and 'cases' and, indeed, themselves - allowing them
to reference risk, deviance or normality, for example. However, the possibilities are far
from infinite, and the liturgical nature of many encounters ensures that what is most
remarkable about organizational life is not its instability, but its predictability.

Citation

White, S. Performing social work : an ethnographic study of talk and text in a metropolitan social services department. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Sep 22, 2011
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 22, 2011
• Award Date: Jan 1, 1997