Antiracism discourse: the ideological circle in a child world.
Yan, Miu Chung
Antiracism is a dominant discourse in contemporary societies. The
understanding of antiracism, however, varies. Government, through its
own textually mediated organization of apparatus, tends to homogenize the discourse. This paper is to demonstrate, by employing institutional
ethnography, how a child's act can ignite the socially organized
textual engine to include the children's world in the ideological
circle of antiracism discourse dominated by the government.
Institutional ethnography, as demonstrated in this paper, is a useful
tool for social workers to deconstruct the textual condition in which
social work practice is embedded. The ideological circle is a powerful
concept to help social workers to understand our social location in the
ruling relations of the society.
Introduction
Antiracism is a dominant social discourse in contemporary
societies. The state with its control apparatus, a powerful player,
tends to homogenize this discourse by containing the politicization of
social discontentment rising from racism within a social administration
paradigm. The intention is to maintain the existing power balance among
different racial groups (Steinberg, 1997). However, as many scholars
have pointed out, the understanding of race, racism and antiracism is
far from homogenous (e.g. Bulmer & Solomos, 1999; Gilroy, 1999). In
fact, different understandings of antiracism are always in competition.
For instance, Payne (1997) notices that the pluralists' and radical
structuralists' understanding of social work anti-racist practice
conflict. Therefore, Gilroy (1999) contends that strategies against
racism need not be homogenized either.
This paper will not discuss the actual meaning of antiracism nor
will it address which strategies are more useful. Instead, the purpose
of this paper is to demonstrate how the governmental discourse of
antiracism trickles down as a bureaucratic response to a racist incident
in the children's world through a textually mediating process, and
ultimately how governmental discourse homogenizes the social
understanding of antiracism within its administrative parameter.
The analytic approach of this paper is based on institutional
ethnography developed by Dorothy Smith, a Canadian feminist sociologist.
O'Neill (1998) has demonstrated how institutional ethnography can
be useful in understanding social work. In O'Neill's (1998)
article, he discusses a few major concepts of institutional ethnography,
such as texts, ideology, social relations and discourse. Yet the concept
of an ideological circle, which is the major analytic tool to be
employed in this study, has not been fully explored. Ideological circle
is largely a textually coordinated circular process, through which
governmental ideology is filtered down to all levels of the society.
Social service practitioners, who are a part of the ensemble of the
governmentality of the state, i.e., means of control (Johnson, 1993;
Popple, 1992), inevitably become actors who (very often unintentionally)
help complete the ideological circle. Indeed, the social control
function of social service practitioners is always intertwined with the
ideological circle embedded in governmental policies.
The Case Study
The ideological circle of antiracism to be studied in this paper
was triggered by an incident in the childcare center (the Center) of a
multi-service community agency (the Agency) in a city of southern
Ontario, Canada. One day, a girl about eleven to twelve years old came
to the center to visit her stepbrother. The girl was black-white
bi-racially mixed. A black child about four years old went to her and
said, "I don't like your face." The incident was seen by
a childcare worker who thought it childish behavior and ignored it.
However, the girl shared the remark with her stepmother at home, who
felt that it was a racist incident. She came to the childcare center and
talked to the workers there. The alarm bell was rung. The center found
themselves caught in a situation that they did not know how to deal
with.
Our society always has an ambivalent but generous attitude towards
children's wrongdoing. Some of the assumptive attitudes of
children's wrongdoing can be summarized as they are a.) so ignorant
that they do not know what they are doing; b.) in a learning process so
everything they do wrong is a result of the inadequacy of their
significant others and of the socialization process; and c.) deserve
more education rather than punishment. Under such assumptions,
wrongdoing in the children's world is forgivable and can be ignored
if it is interpreted as meaningless. Racist behavior is one of those
debatable acts of children, despite the fact that children can also be
racist. When children call each other names, which may be negatively
inferred to issues of color and culture, adults' responses vary,
depending on how they understand the children's world. They may see
it as childish and ignorant behavior and just ignore it, or they may
treat it as a serious mistake and take action to stop it. Generally,
concern with children's inappropriate behaviors is normally treated
as an educational issue.
In this case, racism is a major complaint that may politically be
detrimental to the Center's reputation. Also, the Center must react
responsibly to a formal complaint from a parent; therefore, instead of
taking the issue back to the children's world, the Center is
required to resolve it in a formal way. Nonetheless, the Center has no
policy for appropriate reactions to this incident because the
Agency's policy on anti-racist behaviors is only set to govern the
behaviors of adults, that is, staff and parents. However, a s an
organizational response, the Center decided to develop a set of
policies, procedure and forms to deal with racial incidents among
children. These texts were closely related to a set of criteria imposed
by the municipal Children Service Division and used as a guideline for
funding assessment.
Two key players, the childcare center service director (the
Director) of the Agency and the consultant (the Consultant) from the
Children Service Division, were interviewed. The analysis of this case
study is based on these two interviews and all relevant textual
materials, including: the center's own policy, procedure and forms,
the funding criteria, and a set of guidelines developed by the municipal
government in responding to racial incidents in childcare service.
Theoretical Concerns: The Ideological Circle of Antiracism As Smith
observes, "discourse itself is a textually mediated social
organization" (Smith, 1984, p. 65). As O'Neill (1998) points
out in institutional ethnography, texts means "not only documents
such as legislation, organizational policies, and procedures, but also
the social relations which flow from such documents" (p. 132). The
state is one of the major actors of this social organization because
government, through its apparatus in different levels, is expected to
exercise its power to not only endorse anti-racist policies but also
monitor their actual practice. To actualize such practice, a set of
procedures and methods of thinking and reasoning about social relations
and processes in relation to antiracism is needed.
The institutionalized social discourse becomes a type of ideology
as understood in a Marxist framework (Smith, 1990, p. 35). To govern
appropriateness in social relations and processes, the state has to
exercise its monopolized and exclusive power to put its favorable ideology in practice through legislation. A discursive practice is
formed through the creation of various documents, such as acts,
policies, and reports. Very often this discursive practice not only
reifies but also maintains an ideology of the group in power. In Canada,
the anti-racist ideology of the state is expressed in the passage of a
series of policies and legislation which consolidate a discursive
practice of antiracism, such as: Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Human
Rights Act, Multiculturalism Act and many provincial human rights codes.
The inter-relation between these documents creates an encompassing
effect on social relation regarding antiracism. Social relation, instead
of just a set of social relationships, is a step toward understanding
how people in different sites are organized which can be used as a tool
to do the investigation (Smith, 1995). The reason why social relation
can function as a tool for investigation is that, as Smith (1999)
suggests, the organization of social relation is regulated by texts. The
coherence of each of these texts depends not only on its compatibility
with its local context, but also its consistence with other texts used
in different sites for the same ideological purposes. In a hierarchical
social relation, texts formulated at superior levels often have a
governing effect on texts written in the subordinate level.
This process can be coercive. In anti-racist discourse, many
governmental policies and acts have been "trickled down" to
the lower level of non-governmental social organizations such as social
service agencies, which rely on government funding. This can be done
through various channels, such as: mandatory inclusion of the
anti-racist (or equity) spirit in organizational policy, funding
policies such as direct funding or purchase of services from
governments, and workshops and training program to acculturate the
anti-racist mentality. However, the humanistic nature of social service
agencies itself always favors antiracism as well, obscuring the coercive
nature of government policies and making the inclusion of antiracism
policy a must-do of all these organizations. In turn, the hidden
political implications of governmental discourse of antiracism may not
be questioned.
To put policy into practice is problematic. The nature of many
governmental policies and legislation may not be directly applicable in
a real work/service setting due to their standardized focus and legal
rhetoric. Each level of the organizational hierarchy may have its own
interpretation of the social policy set in the legislation (Yan, 1998).
Lower level organizations have to elaborate these formal documents into
their own operational guidelines or organizational policies and
procedures intended to regulate the activities of their members--staff,
volunteers and service recipients. The actualities in which members of
these organizations are living will be framed by these policies and
procedures. However, lived actualities are so complex that not all
details need to be documented. Forms and guidelines are developed to
record/report only those that are relevant.
By applying these forms and standard recording documentation,
people's real life become textual material for various purposes,
one of which is to sustain the original ideological discourse embedded
in these texts. In turn, an inter-textual relation among governmental
and organizational policies, procedures and other documents is
constructed as an ideological circle (Smith, 1990). A full ideological
circle has two phases (Smith, 1990): "an interpretive phase where
events are analyzed as documenting an underlying pattern originating in
a textual discourse" and "where the underlying pattern
operates as part of the procedures for selecting, assembling and
ordering these `facts'" (Smith, 1995, p. 173). In an
organizational context, these two phases represent two simultaneous
processes of the ideological circle (see Diagram 1).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Specification of Ideological Discourse in Context
The first phase indicates the process of Specification of
Ideological Discourse in Context. In this process, the social
ideological and political debate is trickled down as policy documents
organizationally from government legislature to governmental
departments. By employing their funding discretion or licensing power,
bureaucrats filter the policy into documents that govern the acts of
community agencies, which rely on government funding. Community agencies
have to interpret the documents in accordance with their operational
context and mission when they develop their own policy for their own
service's operation, regulating the acts of the frontline staff as
well as the service users. Each of these organizational levels has to
interpret the policy documents within a context that fits their
operation as well as the ideology embedded in their service contracts
with the government.
The Agency has already had a set of antiracism policies and
procedures; however, they are never written to guard against the
behavior of children. Hence, alternative resolution is needed to deal
with children's racist behaviors. Any alternative must comply with
several requirements other than the laws of the society-at-large, which
are always controversial concerning the treatment of children. In this
case, both the provincial and municipal governments regulate the
operation of childcare centers. For instance, to obtain a license of
operation from the provincial government, centers have to comply with
the Day Nursery Act, which contains no direct anti-racist clause. Since
childcare centers are funded by the municipal government, they must
follow a set of operational criteria (the Criteria), which have just
been revised. According to the Consultant, two major revisions were
included in the new Criteria.
First, a new five-level scale measurement of childcare center
performance is established as one of the reference to consider the
subsidy status. The third level is the minimum requirement. Although it
is a five-level scale, the Consultant clarifies that there is no
intention to push up centers' performance in accordance with this
scale. Instead, it is a tool to help centers to set goals and develop
policy to go further. However, the Consultant claims that "I would
be concerned if they (centers) didn't want to go to the next step,
but they certainly don't have to." This view is also shared by
the Director who said, "If you are really committed to providing
quality, then you are interested in doing it, right? You get serious
about it. If you don't care, then it becomes one of those where you
check out the number three because that is what you need to have
minimally. Some centers don't care so they would do it that way. We
really care." Apparently, the scale unintentionally performs as a
hidden incentive for centers to improve their quality of services. In
this case, the Director sees the new policies and procedures as an
effort in proving the excellence of the childcare center service of the
Agency.
Second, with the prevalence of Antiracism ideology, four new
articles related to Antiracism were added to the Criteria. In the
meantime, to promote anti-discrimination in daycare centers, a guideline
for daycare service (the Guideline) was developed by the Access and
Equity Branch of the municipality, which is the watchdog of Antiracism
in the municipal government. The Criteria and the Guideline are seen as
supplementary to each other. The Criteria only offers general
principles, while the Guideline provides extensive suggestions of actual
anti-racist practice in daycare centers. According to the consultant,
both the Criteria and the Guideline have major input from the Access and
Equity Branch, which also organized most of the antiracist workshops for
childcare center personnel.
In Canada, antiracism is an ideology embraced by all levels of
government, despite the fact that people constantly criticize governments as not being committed to antiracism. Understandably, the
Guideline endorses all anti-racist legislation and policies of the
federal, provincial and municipal governments. Although the municipality
does not have a bylaw on antiracism, the Guideline states clearly that
"the City's commitment to combating racism and ensuring
ethno-racial equity is outlined in the City's Strategic Plan, the
Social Development Strategy, the Employment Equity Policy and the
Ethno-Racial Access to Municipal Services Policy." Recently, the
city has also incorporated a "Declaration of a Non-Discrimination
Policy" in the contract for any organizations who supply goods and
services to the city.
To formulate an alternative policy on children's racist
behaviors, the Agency decided to develop a new set of policies and
procedures, which also includes a "Racial Incident Intake
Form" and a "Checklist for Dealing with Racial Incident
Form." As the Director explained, this new set of policies,
procedures and forms is based on the Guideline and the Criteria of the
city. Centers are required to report any racial incident to the
municipal Children Services Division within 24 hours. To report an
incident requires a reporting structure because it is the Director who
reports to the Children Service Division, but the Director is not always
on the scene when the incident happens, and therefore a standard
reporting format is needed for accuracy and future reference. The
reporting system should fit well with the organizational structure, as
well as be consistent to what the Criteria and Guideline propose. It can
be systematically linked to the municipal's internal reporting
system. Consequently, standard texts, which can be used in different
sites, are needed. The Racial Incident Intake Form provides the workers
a replicable text to record incidents that have occurred in the lived
actualities of the children in different childcare centers. This Form
can be used in every site of the agency by every staff for every racial
incident.
The Criteria also requires that "centers must have a posted
written procedure in place to handle reports of racist incidents."
A written procedure should be specific to ensure a proper handling of
the incident. To ensure minimum deviation, a checklist of steps to be
taken is needed. As the Director said, "we can make sure all the
steps are being followed because with racist incident, it can be so
broad. What you do--and not to say those things are wrong--but you could
forget to do something, because you don't think of it. So it just
makes sure that everybody knows these are all the steps." When
asked, the Consultant was also positive to the existence of the
Checklist because it serves the purpose of leading the process in a
correct direction. To follow the proper steps of handling the incident
is as important as the documentation. However, this step is not isolated
from the incident report because it is part of the construction of the
incident that will be reported to the consultant by the director. More
importantly, to develop a standard step is part of the conformity to the
Criteria, which expects centers to "have an established antiracism
protocol."
Diminishing of Actualities
The second process is the process of Diminishing of Actualities.
The notion of public accountability demands a reporting system from the
subordinate level to the superior level within an organizational
hierarchy, i.e., between the government and community agencies, between
levels of operation within a community agency, and between levels of
operation within the bureaucracy. Each level has a different contact
with the service users' lived actualities, which are used as the
primary narrative for future interpretation (Smith, 1990, p. 159). The
primary narrative seldom goes directly to all levels of the
organization. Due to the social and organizational division of labor,
each level has to rely on some standardized measure to report activities
and observations of service users' actualities to the immediate
superior level. The contextual and positional demands imposed on each
level of actors in this process inevitably lead to a simplification of
information as the primary narratives pass from bottom up. However, the
simplification (or summarization) cannot fall out of the originated
ideological discourse. Therefore, the whole textual system, including
policy and procedures and forms, is framed as the ideological discourse
defines it. Standardization of texts for reporting is crucial for
collection of data from one level to the other, particularly when data
collection involves multiple sites.
Consequently, the data and information generated from this
reporting system simplify incidents that actually happened while sustain
the ideological framework that is used for this simplification. The
ideological circle is self-fulfilling, when the lived actualities,
particularly those of everyday activities in the lower strata of the
social organization, are being encoded into explanatory accounts forming
the interpretative schema. The circle is completed when the
interpretative schema is applied back to the system as the frame for
actors in the process to extract the actualities back to the
interpretation process (Smith, 1990). In turn, a taken-for-granted
documentation system is established which reflects an "ordered
world" of organizations, and even the ordered world of the
society-at-large (Zimmerman, 1969).
These two processes not only complete the ideological circle but
also put the unmanaged into a manageable format. With all the activities
of different actors operating together, but mostly, in different sites
at different times, standard texts are essential for coordinating,
concerting and ordering their relationships. An inter-textual
coordination becomes possible. Each stratum develops its own textual
environment according to both the prevalent ideological discourse and
the contextual concern. The intertextual relation of different texts
used to regulate actors from different sites makes ruling relations
possible. The ruling relations are defined as "relations that rule,
and people rule and are ruled through them" (Smith, 1999, p. 82).
"The ruling relations form a complex field of coordinating
activities" and "they are activities in and in relation to
texts, and texts coordinate them as relations" (Smith, 1999, p.
79).
People develop texts to regulate others; the texts in turn regulate
all people including those who develop the texts. Through the texts, the
ruling relations hiding behind the texts exercise the will of the
powerful in terms of pursuing an ideological discourse. Most
inter-textual ruling relations do not start merely as a form of
voluntary participation of participants at different levels of this
organization process, but very often through engineering the reward and
sanction mechanism by the state, which is in most cases funding. The
textually mediated ruling relations actualize the embedded ideological
discourse in people's real life. To achieve an effective
inter-textual coordination, all texts that are developed and used in
different levels have to fulfill two functions. First texts need to
provide information for the immediate superior's own reporting
function; and second, they need to maintain a coherence between the
actualities and the ideological discourse. The first function is
particularly important to satisfy the accountability of the actors in
that particular level, while the second is used to help completing the
ideological circle.
Interpretation is inevitable. People modify the policy when they
interpret the policy (Yan, 1998). Here, the meaning of interpretation is
problematic. Different interpretations are possible in the process but
two are particularly important. Firstly, interpretations framed within
the ideological discourse initiate and then maintain the development of
this process. The texts developed and used in the process are measures
to ensure compliance of all interpretations with the ideology. Secondly,
interpretations are positional-situated. People in different positions
have different responsibilities, which demand a certain kind of
perspective of seeing things. Also, the use of information is also
different. As a result, people in different positions may see things
differently, however slightly it may be. Nevertheless, the positional
differences are manageable because of the commonalities of the ideology
they share. This is particularly important in the investigation of
organization of knowledge. The position that people take gives meaning
to the action of the people in the inter-textual process and also
confines but not necessarily determines the interpretation that people
can make. Situating in different positions and levels, people encounter
different actualities, the results of which may affect the specification
and summarization processes. All actualities will eventually become part
of the process of the ideological circle.
The incident and the follow-up activities are all about the lived
actualities of people. However, it is difficult and unnecessary for the
Agency to report the whole incident to the Consultant in full detail.
Only part of the information will be selected for reporting. This
information serves not only for the sake of reporting but also other
purposes, such as to justify: a.) the compliance of the center with the
Criteria requirement; b.) the actualization of the antiracism policy
upheld by the municipal government; and c.) the quality of service that
the agency is pursuing. The three texts developed by the agency are
interrelated. The Intake Form tells what happened and who have been
involved, which in turn, defines who should be followed up. As one of
the questions of the form, the worker is to recall, "to your
knowledge, has the child who received the mistreatment been subjected to
similar mistreatment before? By the same children?" This kind of
question also brings up historical facts that may be related to this
incident. It coordinates not only the activities of the current event,
but also any past events.
According to the Checklist, the Director will call the program
consultant (duty officer) taking serious occurrence report in the
Children Service Division who takes down all information and
disseminates it to the responsible Consultant. The preliminary report is
always verbal. The incident will be classified into a type of incident
and will be punched into the database of the Division. A brief report
will be written. The Consultant, upon receiving the information, will
contact the agency to further understand the incident. In the meantime,
the preliminary report from the duty officer will be sent to responsible
consultant and unit director for comments. Through this process, the
living incident that took place in the center has already been
simplified firstly by the worker who wrote the incident report;
secondly, by the director who verbally reported to the intake officer;
lastly, by the duty officer who wrote the preliminary report. However,
no matter how simply they wrote, the story must be in line with the
antiracist theme. Otherwise, the incident will never get to the top of
the command and be recorded statistically.
The incident will be classified as a type of activity and a numeric meaning will be given for statistic purposes. It is not the nature of
the incident but the number of incidents that matter in a governmental
bureaucracy. Once a certain type of incident is shown numerically
significant enough, action will be taken. However, action normally is
mild. The Consultant emphasizes her role as an advisor rather than a
sanction/reward giver. She also mentions that in previous history, the
Division always took a supportive role to deal with this type of
incident that is statistically significant. Workshops will be given to
enhance the capability of agencies and staff in handling these
incidents. Her responsibility is to help centers resolve the incident
that they report and to upgrade their administrative capability for
future incidents. The Consultant feels reluctant to imagine any negative
sanction such as funding cuts.
Supposedly, the Consultant will be informed if any racist incident
happens. However, the report to the Consultant should be selective.
There is a hierarchy of incidents. Although the Consultant would like to
be made aware of all incidents at the centre, only issues involving
adults will actually be reported. The incidents reported are ones that
may be seen as social issues that need to be dealt with in a social
domain. An incident involving only children may be treated as local
issue and therefore, dealt with in a local context. The children's
world and the adult world are never separate but, unlike children,
adults have more roles to play in the social world, for instance, in
this case, by bringing a "children's incident" to the
public domain. The stepmother took the incident to the Center and might
therefore generate a broader political debate from the local community
to society-at-large if the incident was not handled well and brought to
the attention of other community advocacy organizations. The consequence
can embarrass both the Agency and the government and the impact can be
disastrous to them.
However, it is exactly through the adults' involvement of
bringing these issues to the social domain that the ideological circle
of antiracism is reinforced. For instance, to this particular Agency,
this incident not only demonstrates their commitment but also
strengthens its mandate and stand on antiracism. As a result, the Agency
tightens its own control on racist behaviors among its staff and service
users. The same logic can be applied to the government engine. In order
to protect the interest of the agencies and the governments,
documentation is required in a format consistent with ideological
discourse and organizational demands. The ideological circle is a form
of self-protection for social organizations, from community agencies to
the state. In turn, the inter-textual organization not only creates but
also sustains a ruling relation of a particular ideology.
Although standardization has been promoted and institutionally
built in, how to interpret racist behaviors can be problematic because
no definition of racial incident can be absolute. According to the
Criteria, a racial incident is defined as "prejudice or
discrimination against people of different races and cultures manifested
in the following ways: banter, racist jokes, name-calling, discourteous
treatment, graffiti, threats, insults or physical violence. Racist
attitudes can be subtle, covert, overt, and sometimes even
unconscious." With all the policies and procedures and definitions,
both the Consultant and the Director agreed that the interpretation of
racist incident is difficult.
The Director relies on the frontline staff to scrutinize the
actualities of the incidents and make a professional judgement on the
nature of the incident. From the incident, we learn that such
professional judgement is not easy. Any racist act depends not only on
the manifested act but also on how people who involve in it perceive the
incident. However, perception is not only positional but also personal.
It is difficult to predict where personal perception will lead to the
development of the event. With the policies and procedures in place as
in this case, we may be sure that once someone, for instance a parent,
activates the organizational process, all actors have to react
correspondingly to their own organizational position. In turn, the
textual engine of the social organization of antiracism will be ignited and run on its own course.
Discussion and Conclusion
To apply antiracism discourse to the children's world is not a
moral issue of good or bad. The need to uphold antiracism is
unquestionable in contemporary society; yet, the understanding of
antiracism can be varied. Apparently, the state tends to dominate the
discourse and frames it within its administrative parameter. Through the
intertextual process, the incident becomes not only a childish racial
incident but also a social incident. The "racist" behaviors of
children are dealt with no longer as a business of the children but of
the adults, who then control, monitor and respond to children's
behaviors. Ultimately, through the textually mediated process, the
ruling relation that governs antiracism in the adult world is diffused to all members of the society, including the children. The ideological
discourse of antiracism is realized in the children's world through
the connective power of these texts. Through the new policies and
guidelines, the children's behaviors can no longer be ignored or
forgiven without a systematic scrutiny by the adults who are responsible
to take actions intervening in the children's world. Each of the
actors in this case, i.e., the parent, the worker, the Director, the
Consultant and some other adults, activates this textual process with an
intention of stopping some evils (in this case racism) from happening.
Consequently, the children's world becomes problematic in view of
the ideological discourse of antiracism. The actualities of
children's interaction become a subject of surveillance under the
gaze of the state's antiracist lens.
Three implications of this study emerge. First, it is easy to
problematize the children's world and impose a social control on
it. The way to see the children's world can always be problematic
if we see it through the adults' ideological lens. However, to
decide what is to be problematized, we cannot ignore the fact that
children may have a different world that needs to be respected. It is,
therefore, important to engage the children in the process; their motive
and understanding of racist acts should be understood from their own
perspective. Education is the key for preventing racist behaviors and
attitude.
Second, social workers and other social service practitioners all
intend to do good, especially in relationship to our clients. As a
profession with a mandate of social justice, it will be inconceivable
for any social work practitioners to object to our role in combating
racism. Nonetheless, if there is no homogenous understanding of
antiracism, it is essential that we critically question the political
implications of government policies that we are bounded by and
implementing. The hegemonic nature of the state-controlled discourse of
antiracism requires a critical mind to detect. The "liberal
retreat" nature of the governmental discourse of antiracism is
problematic (Gilroy, 1999; Steinberg, 1997). It ignores the power
imbalance status quo and tends to conflate multiculturalism and
antiracism. As Margolin (1997) reminds us, under the cover of kindness,
with our inherent controlling nature, social work may turn good will
into the opposite.
Third, to deconstruct has become a powerful analytic paradigm in
postmodern welfare (Leonard, 1997). There are many ways to deconstruct
the taken-for-granted conditions in which social work is practiced.
Institutional ethnography offers a sociological tool for us to
deconstruct one of the major unquestioned conditions of social work
practice, i.e., textually mediated social organization. Policies,
procedures, forms, and recordings are important to social work practice
particularly in an era that so emphasizes legal accountability. To be
accountable, it is important for social workers to follow policies and
guidelines and to document our work. Zimmerman (1969), in his classic
study, however, demonstrates how social workers reinforce a
stigmatization process embedded in the intake process through
documentation. Therefore, while being accountable, social workers need
to beware of their institutional role in the formulation of governmental
ideological circle, which is tightly knit into the textual process. To
break the circle, we need to understand it. As demonstrated in this
study, with its emphasis on understanding textually mediated social
relations, institutional ethnography is an effective tool for social
workers to understand, evaluate and emancipate from the web of
ideological control. As Yan (1998) argues, as autonomous professionals,
social workers always have institutional space in the social policy
process to modify policies to benefit our clients. Such optimistic view
is possible only if social workers can critically understand where they
are located in the ideological circle dominated by governmental
discourse.
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MIU CHUNG YIN
Assistant Professor
San Francisco State University