Two research journeys: genealogy and positionality
Hilary Walker, Ruskin College, UK
Paper presented at SCUTREA, 31st Annual Conference, 3-5 July 2001, University of East London
THIS paper is an account of two, of many, journeys travelled while working on my doctoral thesis. One concerns the theoretical framework which I developed in order to appreciate the subject matter of the thesis. The other was a journey of the self and explores my positionality and its impact on my research. Each is implicated in the other. For the paper I have separated them but I will indicate where there are links. In my thesis I set out to study the incorporation of issues of equality into the curriculum for social work education and training between the mid-1970s and 1995, particularly between 1989 and 1995, a time of considerable and rapid change in social work education.
The research was therefore a study of curriculum development as policy change within the fields of higher education and social work. My choice of Foucault's notions of discourse and genealogy to theorise my research topic, my exploration of criticisms and limitations of these, my development of these concepts and the implications for the research methods I used, was one of the journeys travelled.
From the outset of my research I took the view that all knowledge and understanding is created, developed and situated within a historical, social, political, cultural context and location and the researcher, is implicated in this (Ribbens, 1989). So I was not the detached chronicler of events, my 'positionality' (Skeggs,1997; Griffiths,1998) was significant to the research and to the creation of knowledge.
Myunderstanding of this is the second journey I will recount.
A theoretical journey
My reading of existing social work literature suggested that research into social work education was limited in its scope and range of theoretical perspectives (Trinder, 1996). In relation to equality in social work education the literature mostly focused, in a moralistic way, on why equality should be part of the practice of social workers and the curriculum for training and education (Banks, 1995; Dominelli, 1988; Dominelli and McLeod, 1982). It did not ask what was meant by equality, take a historical perspective or question how a particular approach to equality became codified within the social work curriculum guidelines. My journey therefore began with an exploration of other theoretical perspectives which I hoped would enable a richer analysis of the topic.
This led me towards post-structural approaches. Here I will focus on one - Foucauldian concepts of discourse and genealogy (Foucault, 1977, 1978, 1984).
Discourse encompasses what can and cannot be known and said about a particular issue -what counts as knowledge and 'truth' in specific social and historical contexts. It incorporates the associated social practices, the subject positions thus created and therefore the inherent power relationships. Foucault saw every society as having a historically specific 'regime of truth' based on the discourses it accepts and makes function (Foucault, 1984).These dominant discourses have their bases in, and are produced and transmitted through, institutions in society such as the media, the family, schools, universities and welfare organisations.
Foucault (1978) theorised the possibility of struggle and change through the emergence of resistant discourses. He saw dominant and resistant discourses operating, not in direct opposition to each other, but in a field of 'force relations', as complex systems of circulating, competing and contradictory discourses (Foucault, 1978). Their relationships change over time as local points of resistance emerge and gain strength. So, power for Foucault (1978; 1980) was understood as a net or web of relationships, as something which 'comes from everywhere' (1978, p.93), productive of truths, and requiring analysis in its local configurations.
Foucault called this historical approach to discourses genealogy. This differs from a traditional view of history (Foucault, 1984a)because a search for origins and the idea of linear, progressive development is rejected. History dominated by metaphysics and totalising assumptions, celebrating great moments and privileging the individual actor, is dismissed (Foucault, 1984a). Rather genealogy is a study of history as 'will to knowledge' (Foucault,1978 p.73) through investigations of the relationships between discourses and resistant discourses, which mean that particular assertions are able to operate as truths and others are marginalised. Foucault's concern was with prisons, asylums and sexuality and disciplinary practices such as the panopticon and the confessional. My hope was to use his approach to analyse a different aspect of the social world.
Having chosen to use Foucault's concepts my journey necessitated considering criticisms, many of which had been made by feminists (Soper,1993; Ramazanoglu,1993; Hartsock,1990). I will highlight the major issues I grappled with and outline how I used developments of Foucault from a range of disciplines to develop my understanding. The first concerns the possibility of agency (or not) within genealogy, raising questions about the relationship between the subject and discourse and the notion of 'key policy makers' (Ball, 1994) or' key policy players' (Phillips, 1998) within social change. This had implications for my choice of methods - whether I should use interviews to appreciate these changes, and whom I should interview. Initially I had planned to interview Virginia Bottomley and directors of organisations to explore their motivation and actions, but this approach was thrown into doubt by my use of Foucault.
From my reading of Hollway (1992) and Brah (1996) I took the concept of 'investment' in discourses to appreciate how individuals might be positioned in and take forward particular discourses. Hollway (1992), Jefferson (1994) and Walkerdine(1997), incorporating psychodynamic processes, suggest that for an individual to 'invest' in a discourse a subject position must be available to them, it must be valued and convey power. Rather than conceptualising the role of individuals as 'key' I theorised them as 'significant discursive subjects' conveying the notion of subjectivity within a discourse. I chose not to interview policymakers who had been nationally prominent but rather a selection of people each of whom I identified as having been 'significant discursive subjects ' within particular equality discourses.
A second criticism of discourse and genealogy as a means of theorising social change was that it neglected the possibility of resistance (Ball, 1990; Faith, 1994). However, drawing on developments of Foucault and empirical research, I theorised that resistance occurs through constructing alternative practices and subjectivities. As Brah (1996) pointed out 'if practice is productive of power then practice is also the means of challenging power' (p.125).
These practices include passive dissent, scepticism and cynicism (Clarke and Newman, 1997),disregarding (Edwards and Ribbens, 1998), avoidance of surveillance (Bates and Dutson, 1995) and subversion of the confessional (Fraser, 1989).
This theorising of resistance relies on the significance of discursive practices. My interest in this conceptually was aided by my reading of Butler (1990) and Harding (1998), who were concerned with the discursive production of sexuality through the repetition of practices. Twigg (1997) explored different discourses of the 'social bath' provided by home carers to welfare clients and the associated practices. However the attention I gave to the significance of practices also emerged from my 'positionality within the research process, which I will now discuss.
The researcher within the research - positionality
My stance was that knowledge and understanding is created, developed and situated within a historical, social, political, cultural context and location (Goodson, 1995). The researcher cannot detach themselves and have a 'god's/goddess's' eye view of their research topic. As Sandra Harding (1987) argued the class, race, culture and gender, assumptions, beliefs and behaviour of the researcher must be placed within the picture that they are attempting to paint. Building on Foucault's discourse approach, I framed this as follows.
Individuals are positioned within discourses which create particular subjectivities (ways of being) for them. The discourses within which the researcher is located and the researcher's 'investment' (Hollway, 1992) in them will impact upon the research at all stages.
I will confine this discussion to particular aspects of myself, recognising it will be incomplete. When I started the research I was a senior lecturer in an FE college, having previously worked as in social work. My choice of research topic reflected my interest in equal opportunities and the debates that had taken place around its inclusion in the social work curriculum. During my research I left the college and returned to social work. My positionality changed in relation to social work and shifted from when I had first formulated my research question. I became immensely absorbed by social work professionally, personally and theoretically. My investment in what I have called the social work practitioner discourse became significant. This can be characterised as a belief that only social workers know the reality of what is needed in social work education and training because we are engaged in direct practice and so appreciate what is required to prepare people for the profession. It is sceptical about the ability and willingness of academia and the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work (CCETSW) to grasp the current realities of social work practice. It sees a division of understanding and interests between doers and writers/ thinkers.
The impact on my research
This shift in my positionality impacted on my reading, how I read together with how I experienced my researching and interviewing. It stimulated an interest in the relationship between theory/research and practice, a recurring issue in social work education. My investment in the social work practitioner discourse was, at times, an obstacle to my ability to 'make the familiar strange' (Delamont, 1992) an issue highlighted in discussions with my supervisor who was positioned outside social work.
Visiting institutions
As I collected research data I tried to be reflexive and reflective about the institutions I visited - CCETSW offices and University social work departments. Here I provide a short extract from one such reflection after a visit to CCETSW which I spent reading files and photocopying material.
The time spent at CCETSW was productive ... However I found the experience difficult ... In stark contrast to my current and previous working environment, the offices of CCETSW are spacious, quiet and peaceful. The telephone does not ring persistently, there are few comings and goings, interaction between members of staff seemed to be at a minimum, no joking or laughing and there was not a queue for the photocopier ... the impression gained by this calm, unruffled, subdued and slightly depressing environment was of distance from 'the real world' of social work and of education ... I experienced feelings of incredulity (how can this difference be so great/ this division be so pronounced?); envy (why are the front line, 'coal face' social workers left to work in such stressed conditions while those who regulate and prescribe work in such comparative luxury?);anger (how can people who work in these hallowed surroundings possibly know about the day to
day experience of social work and pronounce on what training and education is required for it ?).
This experience located me even further in the social work practitioner discourse which in turn mediated my approach to reading, to interviews with social work academics and CCETSW staff and my theorising.
Reading documents
I now read myself into documents concerning social work, because they were written about me. I became irritated by bland assertions about social work. For instance the Department of Health guidance for the 1995 review of the social work curriculum specified the need for a qualification that was practical, down to earth and concentrated on direct practice. When reading this I inserted myself more firmly in the practitioner discourse - clearly civil servants don't understand social work . But reflective appreciation of this positionality fed into my developing thinking about the difficulties of linking theory and practice in social work. It alerted me to the possibility of theory being seen as irrelevant by those who oversee social work training. This became significant when tracing discourses of common sense and of competence within the genealogy.
Reading CCETSW documents I felt irritated for it seemed to me that the organisation wasted time on bureaucracy at the expense of taking forward change. However this alerted me to the discourse of bureaucracy within which the equality discourse was located and shifted my thinking about the inter-relationship between discourses. These brief examples suggest how my positionality affected how I read books and papers and the theoretical implications for my research.
Theorising
As I carried out my research, using Foucauldian concepts, the significance of the practices of discourses, and their possible role in enabling discourses to become dominant or marginal, interested me. On reflection I think that three factors enabled this theoretical development. First was my reading about the 'radical' social work of the 1970s and its failure to develop much beyond a set of ideas. I theorised that this was because there were no social work practices associated with the radical stance. This linked with the second factor, my positionality within the social worker practitioner discourse, which focused my attention on practices, what social workers actually do. As recounted earlier, this investment became was strengthened by my research experiences. Thirdly I was assisted by Judith Butler's (1992)theory that discourses gain in significance through repetition of the associated practices. So, because the marginal discourse of radical social work had not developed associated practices which were repeated, its significance as a discourse did not grow and develop, it never achieved dominance. I theorised, tentatively that insufficient attention has been paid to the significance of the practices of discourses and that any study of genealogy should give this greater consideration. This contributed to my understanding of the development or not of different discourses in my genealogy.
The genealogy
In conclusion I will briefly outline the genealogy constructed.
My contention is that from the 1970s onwards there emerged, resistant to the dominant 'helping through individual casework' discourse of social work, a radical discourse concerned with issues of equality. This resistant discourse challenged the subjectivity of the social worker as a moral professional, utilising their personal qualities to assist social work clients and the practice of that discourse, individual casework. Within the resistant radical discourse social work was understood as part of the repressive apparatus of the state. A different subjectivity was offered to social workers, that of political activist. However the proposed practices, concerned mostly with trade union matters, tended not to be connected to social work with clients, although the politicisation of social work clients was advocated. A related discourse of feminism, resistant to the dominant social work discourse, also emerged. Its knowledge was about the oppression of women by social workers and its practices included raising the consciousness of social work clients by the social worker as liberator.
Neither discourse became dominant but they left residual traces, which became incorporated into late discourses of equality.
It was a racialised discourse of equality which became dominant in social work education. Linked to earlier resistant discourses, it too challenged, in a fundamental way, social work's own belief in itself as a benevolent, helping profession. It understood social work practices in relation to the black family as damaging and social work education as a source of discrimination towards black social work students. When revised national requirements for qualifying social workers were produced, from 1988 onwards, equality discourses were represented within them. From 1988 to 1991, the dominant equality discourse was racialised and other aspects of inequality were marginal. The subjectivity of the social worker was as a combatant, primarily against racism although other inequalities were recognised as needing attention. The practices of the discourse included identifying, challenging and working against racism both institutional and personal. Curriculum guidance documents, produced from 1991 onwards, took a 'black perspective' and recommended practices based on the identification of racism and the development of alternative anti-racist approaches to social work.
However from 1991 onwards a discourse of 'common sense social work' emerged from within powerful sites such as the Department of Health, the national press and Parliament. Resistant to the racialised equality discourse and linked to discourses of the family, it became increasingly dominant and provided the 'truth' of criticisms of social work and social work education and the backdrop to a review of curriculum requirements. In 1995 revised requirements for qualifying social workers were published. Within these the discourse of equality was still racialised, but had shifted and diminished in strength.
Another significant discourse was that of competence, within which revised DipSW requirements, including those concerning equality, were situated. Connected to broader trends in vocational and professional education and training, this discourse was enabled to grow because of specific conditions within social work. These were the strength of the common sense social work discourse, the troubled relationship between theory and practice and a crisis of incompetence within social work. The discourse of competence promised to resolve all these difficulties. Closely
related to the discourse of competence was that of education for employment which became an established truth in social work.
At any one point, these discourses inter-connected in different sets of relationships producing a discursive context within social work and social work education which meant particular ways of thinking, knowing, being and acting were possible while others were not.
In this paper I have briefly outlined two of the journeys undertaken during my thesis research - a conceptual journey and a journey of the self. I hope to have shown how their paths were interconnected and indicated how these journeys led me to the genealogy outlined above.
References
Balen, Rachel, Brown Kathy and Taylor, Carolyn (1993) 'It Seems So Much Is Expected of Us: the Diploma in Social Work and Anti-Discriminatory Practice' in Social Work Education Vol.12, No. 3 pp. 17-39
Ball, Stephen J. (1990) Politics and Policy Makin gin Education : Explorations in Policy - Sociology London, Routledge