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Free Magazine of The International Association of Schools of Social Work

#18 Jan 18

ISSN 2221-352X

www.socialdialogue.online

Theoretical approaches of social work intervention in Latin America

The necessary Marxist reading of the fiundamental principles of pragmatism in Social Work

The influence of neoliberalism and the “new spirit of capitalism”

Social Work Education in Latin America

Social Dialogue Issue 18Social Dialogue is published by The International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW). It is the copyright of IASSW and published three times a year and distributed worldwide.

Website: www.socialdialogue.onlineISSN: ISSN 2221-352X

Cover image: By Jamez42 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Management Committee

Angelina YuenPast President of International Association of Schools of Social Work, Vice-President of The HongKong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

Tatsuru AkimotoPast President of Asian Association of School of Social Work; Director & Professor of Asian Centerfor Welfare Society in Japan College of Social Work, JapanAkua BenjaminPast President of North American/ Caribbean Association of Schools of Social Work, Professor and Director of School of Social Work, Ryerson University, Canada

Helle Ingrid StraussAssociate Professor & International Coordinator of Metropolitan University College, School of Social Work, Denmark

Julia Mary WatkinsPast Treasurer of International Association of Schools of Social Work, Former Executive Director of Council on Social Work Education, USA

Vimla.V. Nadkarni Immediate Past President of International Association of Schools of School Work, retired Professorand Founder Dean of School of Social Work, TataInstitute of Social Sciences, India

Editorial Board

Publisher: Annamaria CampaniniImmediate Past President: Vimla.V. NadkarniEditor in Chief: Carolyn NobleGuest editors: Helle Strauss and Carolina Muñoz-Guzmán Production Manager: Rashmi PandyExecutive Editor: Timothy SimRegional Representatives: Violeta Gevorginiene, Gidraph WairineDesign/illustration: Graeme Bland (gbda.co.uk)IT officer: Preshit Deorukhkar Translated Spanish into English: Paula Salazar

NoteAll articles contained in Social Dialogue, including letters and emails to the editor, reviews, and editorials, represent the opinions of the authors, not those of the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW), or any organizations with which the authors may be affiliated. The editors and management of IASSW do not assume responsibility for opinion expressed by the authors or individuals quoted in the magazine, for the accuracy of material submitted by the authors, or for any injury to persons or property resulting from reference to ideas or products mentioned in the editorial copy or the advertisements.

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For the references of articles, please access the online edition at http://socialdialogue.online

Management Committee (from left to right):Helle Strauss, Vimla Vithal Nadkarni, Angelina Yuen Tsang Woon Ki, Tatsuru Akimoto, Akua Lorna Claudetta Pamela Benjamin, Julia Watkins

Producer: IASSWRashmi Pandy

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.iassw-aiets.org

Published by:

The International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW)Website: www.iassw-aiets.org

Issue 18

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FEATURE

REPORT

Editor in Chief - Carolyn Noble 02

Guest Editors - Helle Strauss and Carolina Muñoz-Guzmán

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From the President’s desk - Prof Annamaria Campanini

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Social Work Education: Some Historical Notes on Latin America

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Marxism and its contribution to Latin American Social Work

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The necessary Marxist reading of the fundamental principles of pragmatism in Social Work

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Latin American Social Work, revisiting liberation movements to resist current hegemonies in the region.

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José Paulo Netto, an indispensable author for Latin American Social Work

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Contemporary Dilemmas in the Education of Social Workers

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The influence of neoliberalism and the “new spirit of capitalism” in social work education in Mexico

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The State, Social Policies and Social Work in Latin America

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A static innovation: The dimension of the new in Latin American Social Work

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Social work and subjectivity: Reflections from professional training

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Speaking, Looking and Listening during the Professional Education Process. The Interview as a Meeting Place in Social Work Intervention

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Social Dimensions of Climate Change Disasters: Gender, Marginalisation and Empowerment.

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Editor in chief

Carolyn Noble

Guest Editor

Guest Editor

Carolyn Noble

Helle Strauss

Carolina Muñoz-Guzmán

Helle Strauss Professor, Professionshøjskolen Metropol, Direkte, Denmark

Collaborating in this issue has been a full adventure, not only because it brought together very interesting and common social work’s subjects for the whole region, but also because it gave me the opportunity to be in contact with several prominent thinkers of Latin American Social Work.

These authors are those who build social work literature for Latin American students, and those who try to keep critical thinking among professionals and students. Their fights are shown in the common issues emerging in these articles, such as the historical association of the profession with ideology and politics, usually Marxism, to promote social change; and at the same time, deploring the strict alignment of Latin American Social Work to research and teaching only the pragmatic version of Marxism.

Another recurrent subject is the relevant influence of the Roman Catholic Church, embodied in the movements of Liberation Theology, initiated by the Second Vatican Council (1961-1965), and the meeting of the Latin American bishops in Medellin in 1968.

Lastly, the role of social workers promoting social movements to represent the interests of disempowered people, like indigenous peoples, farmers, women, children, workers; not as individuals but as movements. The current neoliberal colonization makes it difficult to keep these movements alive, resistance to status quo is a strategy social workers should embrace.

I am sure this issue is not only a bridge between Latin America Social Work and the world, but also a new bridge for collaboration among these Latin American thinkers of social work.

I am very happy finally to have this issue on Social Work Education finally ready. My interest in Latin American social work began with my visit in Brazil more than 20 years ago, when my daughter was an exchange student. I had the opportunity to talk to social workers with my daughter as an interpreter. I met social workers and visited a new local community in Ribeirau Preto with impressive modern childcare institutions and good social and health facilities. I also visited a poor family living in a favela, and a residential care institution for homeless children with limited resources. Since then I have been interested to learn more about social work traditions and

development in Latin America.

When the Global Social Work Conference took place in Santiago de Chile, I met again social workers and educators from the region. Conference delegates were also invited to do field visits. One of those took place in the memorial for thousands of victims of the Pinochet regime. This visit made a lifetime impression on me.

We also visited people in a local community who during the military regime had lost many people. The survivors celebrated their lost family members through artistic creations, symbolic of the special interests of their loved

Carolina Muñoz-Guzmán Professor Pontifica Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago

and lost ones. These works documented a salute as well as a healing process. In the association for social workers in Santiago de Chile, I have seen many pictures of social workers, who “disappeared” during the dictatorship. I have learned how this regime has left scars between groups of social workers, who felt they had to leave Chile or lose their lives, and the others, who stayed in order to fight the regime. All those social workers have fought for social justice at a very high risk. Also today attention to politics is probably more linked to the social work profession in Latin America than most other places.

Later on I have had the privilege of attending important regional social work conferences in Santiago de Chile and in Ecuador with hundreds of attendances. However, each time, I have visited this region I have faced the language barrier, as I do not speak Spanish. I thought that not only I, but social work education in general, was deprived of a large and very important source of knowledge.

Although Spanish is an official language of IASSW and efforts are made in order to have as much translation as economically possible, there is still a language barrier. This may also

make it more difficult for the schools from Latin America to become members of IASSW and for social work educators to attend the Global Social Work Conferences, where the dominating language is still English.

Social Dialogue turned out to be an opportunity to share knowledge from this region in both Spanish and English, and it has been very interesting for me to read the many interesting and different contributions from Latin American social work educators.

After my readings I realize that along with the different history and development social work educators also share many thoughts and challenges. The neoliberal wave and populistic approaches are challenging social work and social work education all over the world to stand up against the return to xenophobia and sexism. At the same time there is a wide awareness to an anti-oppressive approach, empowerment, indigenous knowledge, feminist approaches, and intersectional models for intervention.

It is hoped that this issue can become a step towards more and fruitful contact and exchange of knowledge between social work education in the Latin American Region and the rest of the social work world.

Welcome to our latest edition of IASSW’s open access, online social issue magazine. This edition, an initiative of our colleagues Helle Strauss (Denmark) and Carolina Muñoz-Guzmán (Chile), has both an English and Spanish version. Given the rich history of social work in Latin America and the difficulties language barriers create in sharing knowledge across this barrier we undertook the task of seeking contributions from this region and with the help of Paula Salazar all the articles submitted were translated from Spanish to English. We think this initiative will open our access to a broader community of scholars and we will be pleased to receive your response.This issue makes our eighteenth (18th) edition of this magazine and if you go to our link (and last page in this edition) you can see the many issues already canvassed. Each issue has a specific and contemporary topic and by inviting an international scholar to gather articles, photos, practice examples and research outcomes we get contributions from colleagues across the globe who are thinking, researching and working in that specific field. As you can see from our efforts so far, social workers are global in their impact and reach.

We have a rich line up of articles in preparation for 2018 and I hope to see some of you at the IASSW 2018 Global conference in Dublin in July. Enjoy!

Editor-in-Chief’s noteWhile we check all our articles and images for copyright we note that one article in our last issue missed a vital acknowledgment. The following correction will be made to current online edition..

ErratumThe Social Dialogue editor’s note that the article by Peter Westoby published in our September 2017 issue –“A Community Development responses to ‘Sham-Right-wing populism” should have included the statement: "First published by the RSW Collective (2017, 21 September) http://www.reimaginingsocialwork.nz/2017/09/a-community-development-response-to-sham-right-wing-populism/" In addition we should also have included an image credit to Darwin Yamamoto https://flic.kr/p/auaqQ6

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Social Dialogue Magazine | January 2018

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It is really a great pleasure to present this issue on social work education in Latin America.

I’ve had the opportunity to visit Brazil, Mexico and Chile participating in

conferences and meeting colleagues from different schools and I’ve always found these visits to be very interesting and rewarding experiences.

For IASSW to be a truly international association of schools of social work implies a huge effort to give voice to every region of the world. To do this properly requires us to recognized the many obstacles due to language barriers. We have lot to share and to learn from each other and for this reason we need to develop an intercultural attitude.

The traditional power imbalance between the North and South as well as the dominance of Western world-views over diverse local and indigenous cultural perspectives, need to be redressed through international dialogue and partnership based on principles of equality, mutual

respect, cultural relevance and reflexivity.

We can genuinely learn and benefit from each other, despite or moreover thanks to our differences, especially if our approach is grounded in an awareness, respect and sensitivity to the cultural context of the other.

Critical reflection is also an important aspect that has to be practiced in these exchanges to reach a good balance between the creation of an international vision and understanding of social work and the need to respond with a locally based practice respectful of the specific history, culture, knowledge and demands.

We are committed to enhance this dialogue and to use all the means that we have to foster a continuously active platform for realise our mission to promote excellence in social work education around the world. Enjoy this English and Spanish edition of our latest social dialogue Magazine.

From the IASSW President’s Desk

Prof. Annamaria CampaniniPresident, International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW)

Maricela Gonzalez. Directora Escuela de Trabajo Social Universidad Santo Tomás

Social Work Education: Some Historical Notes on Latin America

IntroductionThe origin of professional social work in Latin America is linked to three historical and concurrent processes towards the second decade of the 20th century: first, the social and political crisis caused by a marginalised integration of Latin American countries into the global economic system from the mid-1850s, that led to the impoverishment of the proletariat and a social upheaval strongly suppressed by oligarchs, populists or the elite. The second is the appearance of an intellectual movement, essentially of the emerging middle class, consisting of new politicians, writers, artists, doctors and other professionals who denounced the living conditions and —in some cases through protest movements — they raised reformist demands and proposed social legislation to protect the vulnerable groups of society (such as children, women and the sick) and workers. Third, the influence of global social work developed in the United States and Europe in the last decades of the 19th century, various forms of social assistance, sponsoring aid organisations to help the poor and improving professional training, at various educational centres and universities, in order to intervene in these social problems

Latin American Social WorkThe first School of Social Work in Latin America was started in Chile in 1925 and it was owned by the Junta de Beneficencia, a secular organisation that governed all the hospitals and other health centres. Over the next few years, schools were opened across the Region, in some cases under the auspices of philanthropic or state institutions similar to the Chilean organisation — for example, in Argentina, its first School was related to

the Social Museum — or closely linked to the Catholic Church, as in Bolivia or Brazil.

The Chilean School was an education and training centre, which expanded over the next few decades to other Latin American countries, and was responsible for, as direct advisor, the foundation of social service schools, such as in Bolivia, Paraguay, Guatemala and El Salvador. These first schools were health orientated, i.e., they understood the social problems entrenched in the social-health conditions in which people lived. Progress was based

El maestro zapatero 1900 by santiagonostalgico CC BY-N

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IASSW GLOBAL CONFERENCE

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Jioji RavuloSenior Lecturer (Social Work)School of Social Sciences and Psychology Western Sydney University

on better urban planning, taking into account priority issues, such as health and preservation of life to integrate individuals and families into the social system. In most cases, education was initially influenced by social service schools in Belgium, Germany and France, but from the mid-1930s, as a result of the “Good Neighbour” policy of Franklin D. Roosevelt towards Latin America, the United States grew closer and its presence became manifest in the education of social workers who furthered their studies abroad, in study programmes and in the emphasis on intervention practices. Traditional methods of “case”, “group” and “community” date from this period, when they penetrated, in successive waves, the education system at the various Schools.

Particularly, community work became very important in the 1950s, when the United Nations began providing development guidelines for Latin America and the U.S. dominance became increasingly evident after World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. The Pan American Sanitary Bureau — where social workers had a very significant presence in the 1960s — and subsequently with the Alliance for Progress created by John F. Kennedy, promoted development plans to prevent revolutionary outbreaks and supported various community development programmes, providing technical aid to improve urbanisation, literacy and eradicate extreme poverty in Latin American rural and urban areas. Advisors, such as Caroline Ware or Jan F. de Jongh, travelled around Latin American schools and education in the 1960s took on a developmental view, incorporating subjects such as rural development, community intervention, programming and planning.

During this decade, the Reconceptualisation of social work in Latin America was also organised, a movement that criticised and questioned the epistemological, theoretical and methodological basis of this profession, congregating professionals, academics and students to analyse and rethink its tradition. The movement proposed a social work profession committed to social change and transformation of unjust structures, underdevelopment and inequality. Reconceptualisation resulted in different work methodologies with shantytown dwellers, workers and peasants, searching for fewer directives and more democratic proposals, with new social actors and focused on raising public awareness, public education and even political education. The schools were only able to partially incorporate these new guidelines into their study programmes, whether it was because the institutional conditions were not appropriate or because some academics were unwilling to accept the conceptual and programmatic changes affecting the profession. However, social workers did learn about ethical, instrumental and theoretical elements “in the field,” influenced by the teachings of Paulo Freire, Herman Kruse and other intellectuals who were exiled and travelled to other countries or who participated in various Latin American Seminars, that became real schools of thought for young social workers. The work carried out in shantytowns, industries and rural areas was also a “school of life”, where different types of participatory methodologies were applied to families

and their own organisations. Miscellaneous and scientific publications helped to train social workers; a symbolic case was the collective group ECRO and its magazine Hoy en el Servicio Social, which had in-depth discussions about disciplinary topics, subsequently supported by Editorial Humanitas. The latter and other editorial spaces helped to spread and translate the emblematic work of western thought and the ideas of local authors.

In most countries, the reconceptualisation process was aborted the following decade due to the wave of military dictatorships that hit the region from the mid-1960s. For a while, exiled intellectuals sought refuge in neighbouring countries and hence they were able to exchange experiences and theoretical proposals, but the conservative change in the region and, in general, the unease of the western left wing about the real possibilities for a revolutionary change made social work withdraw its ideas and actions. Many professionals were exiled from their country of origin, schools and reflection spaces were closed and education became more technological, scientific. “Value neutrality” was a slogan for academics who continued to work in universities and sought in a sterile approach to social work a way of surviving in a dangerous political environment.

The neoliberal transformation of the socioeconomic system was not absent in social work education. It had an impact on the social conditions of the poorest sectors, when state welfare policies took a backward step, it also affected university education, the number of schools increased in nearly all the countries, the social work labour market was saturated and, consequently, work conditions became precarious and unemployment increased.

Furthermore, during the 1970s, Latin American social work became more varied and developed unevenly in different countries. In some countries, it became stagnated due to the intellectual narrowness at the time (Chile, Argentina, Uruguay), while in other countries, such as Brazil, it led to the improvement of education, with the discipline developing through postgraduate specialisation, research and high-quality scientific publications. This diversity also implies more complex societies, with less definitive discourses and that acknowledge the differences between each country and sub-region. Its strength lies in the fact that today it has generated an exchange between professionals and academics from different countries, who regularly meet at different academic and professional events to discuss relevant topics: migration, displacement, political and social crises, poverty and exclusion. The challenges for social work education will be to include these and other local topics in their curriculum for the future of a discipline that updates its commitment by overcoming injustice and by creating a more humane and dignified society for all Latin American citizens.

Latin American Social Work Social work as a profession in the region was born in 1925 underpinned by a biomedical approach and the participation of European social work educators. In Latin America, the biomedical approach merged with the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition in conjunction with diverse interpretations of Marxism –from analytic Marxism to perspectives related to hermeneutics and Latin American philosophy. These different, and even contradictory theoretical perspectives intertwined resulting in a rhetoric rich in conceptual elements that are more or less explicit and more or less consistent. We

can therefore say that “Latin American social work” is not underpinned by a sole theoretical framework, rather a variety of overlapping, historically shaped approaches underlie social workers’ interventions in the region.

The wave of dictatorships that devastated the Latin American region in the 1970s and the 1980s generated a relevant rupture in the profession’s theoretical development. During this repressive period intellectual production was censored, schools of social work suffered closure and the profession lost its university status, producing a trauma still present in many social workers’ memories. All of these changes took place


Giannina Muñoz Arce

School of Social Work, Universidad Alberto Hurtado Chile

Diverse theoretical perspectives co-exist, interact and clash in Latin American social work. The multiplicity of perspectives that have shaped social work throughout its nearly hundred years, and the discussion of such an approaches’ ethical and political implications, characterise and distinguish Latin American social work on an international scale.

Integración de América Latina (Integration of Latin America) by Jorge González Camarena, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5330898

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in a neoliberal context marked by a reduction of the state’s role as well as the privatisation, targeting and outsourcing of social services. These changes led to significant impacts in the profession’s theoretical frameworks. Due to the new focalization of social services, many social workers’ practices were reduced to the application of techniques aiming at prioritising service users. This phenomenon, which was identified as a technocratic and anti-intellectual period in social work, continues to pervade in some social work sectors which is in the underestimation of theory and research’s contributions to social intervention.

Once democratic regimes were recovered in the region in the 1980s and 1990s, social work faced a new crossroad. Theoretical frameworks provided by supranational organisations, especially by the World Bank, started to be disseminated throughout the region as the new hegemonic approaches of intervention. The risk management framework, cognitive-behavioural models of intervention and the rhetoric of rights’ approach that underlie the new social protection systems, conceptualize interventions towards individuals´ overcoming of risks. Thus, the neoliberal rationale has co-opted critical theoretical frameworks, reducing interventions to actions oriented towards families living in extreme poverty and more specifically, to each individual family member.

In recent years, conditional cash transfer programmes that have proliferated in the Latin American region, have reinforced this individual-based approach by rewarding personal effort, empowerment and the entrepreneur ability of the poor. In addition, social protection systems have promoted new evaluation indicators that focus particularly on the self-management of poverty and leave little room for professional reflection.

Despite the current dominant theoretical framework focused on individual risk management, “alternative” perspectives, which attempt to contest hegemonic approaches, have also emerged. These alternative perspectives have emerged silently and are found in areas of professional discretion. These perspectives re-edit Latin American's critical tradition in social work, returning to aboriginal traditions as source of useful knowledge and defending the struggles of social movements and subaltern groups. One example of the return to indigenous knowledge for social work include the efforts developed by Ecuadorian social workers to construct a social work theoretical framework based on the Buen

Vivir principle or Sumak Kawsay –derived from the Andes indigenous people's philosophy. In a similar vein, during the last decade, feminist approaches have also gained acceptance, seeking intersectional models of intervention in order to provide more integral and social justice based interventions. Decolonial proposals have also emerged as acts of resistance against conventional social work theoretical frameworks, contesting the epistemicide experienced by Latin American indigenous people.

The approaches described above, among others, have refreshed the theoretical discussion in social work in the region. They are the result of wider intellectual forces that go beyond social work and have been possible thanks to the fruitful exchange with other disciplines as well as with the communities in which social work intervenes. In this scenario, the profession faces challenges regarding strengthening the epistemic vigilance of social work, reinforcing theoretical restlessness as well as the active reflection in order to maintain and question the theoretical perspectives that guide social work interventions.

Social Work: A New Profession and its Relationship to the Social SciencesThe Social Work profession emerged from and is based within the context of monopoly capitalism, at a time when the manifestations of “social issues” began to be institutionally dealt with by the State through social policies (see Iamamoto, 1997; Netto, 1997 and Montaño, 1998), during the 19th and 20th century, consolidating under Keynesianism. It is based on the philosophical theory of positivism, on its dual segmentation:

a) segmentation of reality by areas or fields (the “social event,” economic production/marketing, political activity, cultural dimension, etc.), whose objective is a specific social discipline (sociology, economics, political science, anthropology, etc.) (see Lukács, 1986);

b) segmentation between theory and practice, between knowledge and action, compartmentalising between scientific disciplines and technical disciplines.

The “official culture” is consolidated in this dual positivist segmentation, dominant, that tends to conceal phenomena (isolated, withdrawn from social totality; therefore, from the fundamental principles that explain it) and to naturalise reality (seen as natural processes, always present, not as historical outcomes as poverty is symbolically viewed: as something natural and the responsibility of individual behaviours).

In this field of positivism, Social Work established a technical discipline of social and psychosocial studies. This is how it was created, and how it moved forward for a long period of time, as a profession focused on intervention in the everyday life of people, in order to take action against “social issues” through Social Policies.

Social Work education and practice are directed at “problem/treatment,” based on operating techniques and methods. Therefore, it is focused on applying preconceived techniques and methods, prior and independent from specific realities; without incorporating theoretical and scientific knowledge about reality and the phenomena faced.

Since the 1950s and, more categorically, during the “Reconceptualisation” of Social Work in Latin America, between the mid-1960s and the 1970s, this theoretical knowledge became part of social work education and practice.

The Reconceptualisation and the Incipient Entrance of Marxism into Social Work: “Marxism without Marx”The “Reconceptualisation Movement in Latin America” (1965-1975) aimed to supersede traditional Social Work and its positivist roots, by attempting to break away from the merely intervention, technical, non-scientific characteristics of the profession, by incorporating the development of knowledge into the methodological process, by

Carlos Montaño. PhD in Social Work Prof. At Universidad Federal de Rio de Janeiro

Marxism and its contribution to Latin American Social Work

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FEATURE

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considering the professional practice a “specific theory” of Social Work directed towards an “applied theory” (about the criticism of the specificity theory of Social Work, see Montaño, 1998, p. 106 et seq.)

This attempt to supersede positivism, does not replace this rationality, instead it conceals it. From the segmentation between “science” and “technique” specific to positivism, we now have the segmentation between “pure science” and “applied science.” Furthermore, the notion of a “specific theory” in Social Work, results in the exclusion of all knowledge that does not arise out of practical experience (disregarding accumulated theoretical knowledge) and all the theoretical knowledge that is not applicable to the professional practice (disregarding universal theories, especially critical theory). Furthermore, it is a theory that at its origin is undoubtedly limited. A theory that is:

a) undifferentiated, it does not distinguish between Marxist theory and the social sciences;

b) uncritical, it does not contrast between theoretical formulation and objective reality;

c) eclectic, it does not differentiate between values, perspective and fundamental principles of each school of thought and of each theoretical formulation, organising them all under “complementary” knowledge;

e) endogenous, an approach that develops an alleged “specific theory in Social Work,” derived from and focused on the “professional practice,” in a pragmatic and immediate relationship between theory and practice.

d) reductionist, based on general literature and manuals, and on short essays and papers, and not on seminal authors or basic literature (such as Marx, Weber and Durkheim).

It is in this context of “Reconceptualisation” that Social Work also began to be influenced by Marxist theory. However, it also had profound limitations and deficiencies:

a) a reductionist and an impoverished Marxism, based on general literature and manuals, such as Marta Harnecker, Mao Tse-Tung, etc.;

b) a dogmatic Marxism, focused on the official doctrine of the “Third International,” referred to as “Marxism-Leninism”;

c) an economistic Marxism , eliminating the perspective of social totality;

d) a highly structural Marxism, approach influenced by different authors, such as Luis Althuser, etc.)

e) a Marxism invaded by positivism and non-dialectic (see Quiroga, in Borgianni & Montaño, orgs., 2000A, p. 121); essentially

f) Marxism without Marx.

It is this “Marxism” (without Marx, structural, economistic, dogmatic), that marked and characterised its entrance into Social Work during

the Reconceptualisation process, referred to as THE Marxism, and it was to be be strongly rejected by the Social Work ranks after the military dictatorships devastated and persecuted Social Work schools, professionals and students in Latin America.

Revitalising “Orthodox” and “Dialectical Marxism” and its Contribution to Social Work However, in the context of the restoration of democracy in Latin America, and basically in the mid-1980s and in the following decades, particularly in Brazil, Marxism suffered a significant transformation. The Marxist debate (in professional education and in knowledge production) caused the incorporation of Marx’s seminal work (displacing “Marxism without Marx”), as well as the work by dialectical thinking authors, such as Gramsci and Lukács (displacing the “positivist invasion,” and incorporating dialectical thinking; authors who discussed contemporary capitalism: Lenin, Mandel, Kosik, Sanchez Vazquez, Lefebvre, Heller, Mészáros, Hobsbawm, Adorno, Horkheimer, etc. (displacing the reductionist, economistic, dogmatic approaches; and other authors of the theory of independence (Prado Jr., Marini, Fernandes, Cueva, etc.).

A dialectic and orthodox Marxism (loyal to Marx’s method, as per Lukács, 1970) with a perspective of totality, and developing radical criticism of contemporary reality, directed towards social transformation.

It is this “revitalised” Marxism, loyal to Marx’s dialectic method, but deeply critical and aware of the new determinations of contemporary capitalism and the peripheral and dependent condition of Latin America that will drive the production of knowledge in this theoretical-methodological approach. Without the defects and limitations of this “Marxism without Marx,” of structuralism, etc., in the orthodox, dialectical perspective of Marxism, the debate of Social Work, particularly in Brazil, will create some quality leaps and inflections in the analysis of certain essential topics related to the profession.

Critical understanding of the profession’s nature, fundamental principals and social roles. Based on the seminal paper written by Iamamoto, originally published in 1982 (included in Iamamoto, 1997), and then various contributions, for example, by Netto (1997), Montaño (1998), as well as Faleiros (1972), based on Marx’s understanding of history, where the phenomenon is not isolated from the totality, but included based on historic determinations, a completely new interpretation is developed about the fundamental principles of Social Work. The main theses here may be summarised as shown below:

a) Social Work – emerges and develops from its inclusion (in the “sociotechnical division of labour”) in the implementation of government social policies,

“when it decides to intervene in the refractions of ‘social issues’ – it establishes a mechanism in the reproduction of social relationships and of the dominant system;

b) notwithstanding the foregoing, Social Work develops its intervention in spaces of tension and contradiction between its function of reproducing the system (based on the dominant capital interest) and the defence of social rights and needs (based on subordinate and working class demands and struggles), transforming social work practice into an essentially political practice. Finally,

c) Social Work, without eliminating the foregoing determinations, may have a prominent role and a relative margin to manoeuvre by guiding its professional action, directed towards a practice that, without eliminating the systemic conditions, prefers to guarantee social rights.

Critical assessment about the methodological debate in Social Work. Based on the inflections involved in the critical understanding of the fundamental principles and nature of Social Work, a critical reflection process was applied to overcome the a priori methodology that guided the discussion between the 1960s and the 1980s. Leila Lima’s work was probably the turning point, in the self-critical paper “Methodology, the Upheaval of an Era,” that incorporates other critical contribution by, for example, Marilda Iamamoto, José Paulo Netto, Vicente Faleiros, Nobuco Kameyama and Franci Gomes Cardoso (see Borgianni & Montaño, orgs., 2000a). This debate can be summarised as follows:

a) displacing the identification and/or derivation between the knowledge method and the intervention method;

b) displacing the identity between social practice and professional practice;

c) displacing the assumption that a “scientific” intervention method, considered correct, would be enough to produce an “efficient” and “transforming” practice;

d) the understanding that theory cannot be understood as a mere “reflection on experiences” or “rationalising practices”; and

e) the clear differentiation of the Social Work instrumentality, of its “operating instruments” (see Guerra, 2007).

Critical understanding of the capitalist social system, the role of the State and of social policies. This approach includes the works of different authors, such as Faleiros, Yazbek, Pereira, Behring (see Borgianni & Montaño, orgs., 2000), Iamamoto, Netto, Spozati, Mota, Menezes and Boschetti. The main hypotheses, related to the State and Social Policies, may be

summarised as follows:

a) the real key to understanding Social Policies is basically studying the unequal relationships in the production sphere, and it is unacceptable to just connect Social Policies to the distribution, consumption, circulation sphere;

b) similarly, it is wrong to only focus social policy studies on the analysis of the State, as a (relatively) autonomous authority, and also having to learn about the relationships in civil society, class struggles, social movements. Social Policies are not logical-formal mechanisms of a “welfare” State irrespective of class, or of a State only just functional to capital, but to a tense, contradictory outcome of these struggles;

c) in this sense, social policies serve at least three types of functions: (1) Social Function: answers to certain specific needs, existing in the population; (2) Economic Function: workforce production, reduction of workforce reproduction costs for capital, and consumer market expansion; and (3) Political Function: the fragmentation of class struggles, the transfer of struggles from the production sphere to the state sphere, from an economic contradiction to a merely political confrontation, from capital/labour contradiction to State requirements, legitimising the current social system. Hence, Social Policies are an instrument that is essentially focused on controlling the population and expanding capitalist accumulation, as a contradictory mechanism that incorporates certain working class demands and conquests.

Critical understanding of the capitalist crisis and its neoliberal restructuring. Based on the foundations of bourgeois society, it was possible to clearly and critically understand the crisis in the capitalist world and the response of capital (financial) in the neoliberal project. These analyses were inspired on Marxist studies, such as, the fundamental principles of the capitalist crisis (Trotsky, Mandel, Mészáros), restructuring production (Antunes, Harveyel), neoliberalism (Harvey, Anderson, Borón), financial globalisation of capital (Chesnais), and ontological foundations of work (Lukács).

Conclusion It is the contribution of Marxist thinking to Social Work, very recent from a historic perspective, that represents a nonlinear process, starting from Marxism “without Marx,” invaded by a structural and dogmatic positivism, but more recently, displaced by a rich dialectical approach of orthodox Marxism, to a certain extent loyal to Marx’s method, radically critical. In this approach, and in this perspective, Marxism’s contributions to Social Work are profound, varied and fundamental for critical knowledge of reality, its structural fundamental principles, its dynamics and phenomena, the fundamental principles of the profession, as well as the critical position of the profession against this reality.


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Introduction An analysis of the history of Social Work and its relationship with “theories” proves that pragmatism is a trend and its theoretical perspective is much more significant than we assume, affecting not just professionals in academia but also those involved in social policies, influencing social workers on how to use social theories, especially Marxism that is often confused with pragmatism.

Pragmatism exploredPragmatism is responsible for the profound empiricism that feeds the profession and for defining ways to conceive a theoretical and practical relationship. In both cases, practice is overrated, it has been identified as pure experience and since theory is restricted to habits and customs, which will be true and successful if they helped to immediately solve problems. Pragmatism is also responsible for the profound disdain, in general, some professionals feel towards critical theory, not just any knowledge, nor practical-instrumental knowledge, but knowledge that effectively seeks the fundamental principles and, hence, it will not always become an immediate response.

Ideological – Theoretical Pragmatism in Social Work Seminal authors that deal with the broad universe of what in social sciences is known as pragmatism 1 are very different and they have not reached a consensus about the nature of pragmatism. For some authors, pragmatism is a theory of meaning (Peirce); for others, a method or a theory of truth (James and Dewey); and even for others, a philosophy; there are also those who perceive it as a way of life. However, the extent of this

trend is such that it covers not only different, but also opposed conceptions. Its importance goes beyond the fact that, at the beginning of the 20th century, pragmatism became the predominant trend in North America. It became known as the “American way of life.” 2 From that period onwards, pragmatism and neo-pragmatism became dominant trends in specific moments and situations. Important pragmatists, such as Dewey (and his instrumentalism greatly influenced the social sciences, especially education, psychology and social work.)

However, pragmatism, as a way of being in the immediacy of the bourgeois world and of its ideal representation, based on experience, operates with such subtlety making it difficult to perceive that it is merely a way of understanding what is apparently real and not the basis of what is actually real. Pragmatism operates by understanding praxis, through its insertion and its immediate understanding of reality, the common man’s attitude towards everyday life. Pragmatic attitudes and thinking about everyday life become naturalised and are naturalised by the predominant bourgeois rationality: instrumental reasoning. 3

Pragmatic thinking and attitudes, by allowing social workers to integrate reality, ratify in the profession a naïve type of realism in contrast to critical realism. Hence, this “immediate and naïve attitude of common consciousness” (Sanchez Vázquez, p.28), is limited to immediacy as an option or as a lack thereof, since the bourgeois man has “a consciousness of praxis forged spontaneously and non-reflexively, although it does not lack (...) because it is consciousness, certain ideological and theoretical elements in a degraded, rude or simple manner” (Sanchez Vázquez, 2007. p.35).

In this conception, the usefulness and efficacy characteristic of knowledge is the criterion for acting

The necessary Marxist reading of the fundamental principles of pragmatism in Social Work

Yolanda GuerraAssociate Professor at the School of Social Service, Universidad Federal de Rio de Janeiro, Studies and Research Coordinator on Social Service Fundamental Principals PRAGMATISM

in analogous situations, with temporary/a priori judgements resulting in prejudice, as marks of pragmatism, caused by a consciousness that does not reflect reality as a whole. It barely expresses the repetitive practice of every day life, 4 where we often act trusting these temporary judgements, and although they may be denied by social reality, they are not addressed because of experience-based habits. However, they are limited and limit the type of intervention in the social context.

There is no place for trust, if a professional does not recognise the theory that guides his/her practice. A professional’s error is to believe that professional practice can be conducted without a theory. A social worker who is unaware of the social theory that guides his/her practice becomes a manipulation tool of such theory.

Only by means of a materialist, ontological analysis, the professional may reveal the social meaning of the profession as an activity that, inserted in the social and technical divisions of work, it becomes a particular manifestation of social work. 5

Final Considerations Based on these reflections, we acknowledge that the bourgeois order, despite the coexistence of various rationalities, suffers a predominant type of rationality unique to western capitalist civilization. Therefore, by being perceived as the dominant form of current rationality, it crosses the different spheres of social life that are organised based on its pragmatic, utilitarian, instrumental components, creating bourgeois sociability itself across all social classes, class segments, institutions and social and professional practices.

This rationality has been present throughout the profession’s history, in the social-occupational space where intervention occurs, in its requirement to solve problems; in the assessment of results through quantitative goals; as well as in the political, ideological and theoretical references that guide professional interventions. In this field, the influence of pragmatism has left its mark on: the concept of this profession as an instrument that serves the capital project, the concept of the psychosocial support practice, its focus on the subject, its educational role in adapting and adjusting, its disinterest in techniques, action instruments and methodologies, the profound eclecticism of its theoretical approaches, the disregard for fundamental principles.

At present these influences are found, for example, in increasingly pragmatic professional training criteria, in the adopted rationality reduced to the logic of skills and

manipulative behaviours, in streamlined professional training processes, in reality analysis categories reduced to instrumental categories, in agnostic thinking, as well as negating the possibility to have access to knowledge that constitutes the logic behind processes and practices (social, political and professional), all in all, to reach the fundamental principles of social life. In consequence, research has been reduced to a mere gathering of empirical data.

This rationality does not only invade Marxism but it also becomes confused with it .

For these reasons, inspired by the appropriate term used by Quiroga (1991) who considered there had been a pragmatist “invasion” in Marxism, as a result of the instrumental appropriation of Marxism, expressed in the Marxist demands that solve the immediate problems of the professional practice. This pragmatic appropriation of Marxism by the profession, caused by instrumental reason, based on a view that the truth of a theory is directly related to the outcomes its produces, (re)establishes challenges. The influence of instrumental reason and the tendency to transform all knowledge into intervention models and methodologies; the constant demand for theories that contribute intervention guidelines (a true compulsion for outcome theories); the extreme concern for technical-instrumental procedures, express a social work perspective as a social technique (to provide help, manage conflicts, solve problems, manage poverty).

Because we live under the influence of instrumental reason, Marx’s social theory has to evade its attacks and rid itself of its contamination.

In contemporary capitalism, pragmatic logic increasingly finds more space to position itself. Individualism and subjectivism, centred on the subject and not on the social being; the utilitarian view that merely considers its reproductive value and not its social usefulness aimed at transformation, are its determinant and recurrently re-signified marks.

The demands we make of Marxism to provide immediate answers to immediate situations cancel its practical-critical content. Pragmatic Marxism derived from the influence of pragmatism on Marxism, has became an instrumental Marxism, sterile, positivised, completely detached from the perspective of becoming a social being, separated from an imperative need for revolution. Only ontological criticism can expose the logic of pragmatism and its influence on the contemporary world, hence the need for Marxist criticism of the fundamental principles of pragmatism and its consequences as a way of being and of reproducing the social being of a bourgeois society.

1 the late 19th century. In 1871, in Cambridge, U.S., a group of intellectuals were concerned with releasing philosophy from the excesses of metaphysics and from the formalism of the Cartesian theory of knowledge, they held meetings of the Metaphysical Club. Subsequently, in 1872, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), philosopher, scientist and mathematician, presented a set of ideas concerning a method he called pragmatism for his colleagues to criticise. Since then, it became an intellectual movement, a school of thought.

2 It should be pointed out that pragmatism appears precisely when competitive capitalism was changing to monopoly capitalism (from 19th century to 20th century) in the United States, immediately after the U.S. civil war. This period was also marked by the separation between the Church and the State and by the strong development of science and technology.

3 For criticism of instrumental reason in Social Work, see Guerra, 2007.

4 Cf. Vázquez, op.cit.

5 Based on Marx’s theory.

6 Vázquez said: Pragmatism identifies truth and usefulness. This thesis of usefulness may confuse some people ifit they consider that Marxism does not see knowledge as an end in itself, but as a human activity related to a person’s practical needs for which it more or less serves directly and in respect of which it develops incessantly (2007, p. 241).


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Social work in Latin AmericaSocial Work in the 1960’s questioned its professional practice as one profoundly influenced by society’s economic and political forces, and marked by apathy in response to inequities caused by structural sources of oppression over excluded groups in society.

Many movements appeared at that time, in Canada Structural Social Work was developed; in Britain began Radical Social Work which brought social workers in close proximity to service users through action-research and attempts to form alliances with them and to develop new forms of practice.

Structural social work, like radical social work and its successors, as anti-oppressive social work, were

conceived of social work within a critical tradition concerned with the broad socio-economic and political dimensions of society that disrupted egalitarian relations among individuals and communities, and aimed to promote the emancipation of oppressed populations, and fight structural barriers that affected the living conditions of service users.

Latin American social work was not indifferent to these reflections, assuming a critical perspective of capitalist societies, impelled by the movement involving the re-conceptualization of social work (Faleiros, 2011; Netto, 1976), based on a Marxist analysis about capitalism, searching for transformations of social structures, critically analyzing social work’s daily practices, and questioning its servile disposition towards dominant social structures.

Latin American Social Work, revisiting liberation movements to resist current hegemonies in the region.1

Carolina Muñoz-Guzmán

Director School of Social Work, Universidad Católica de Chile

This article argues the need of revisiting historical ruptures in Latin American social work, to challenge current hegemonies in the region, therefore moving between the present and past, we can build a transformed future.

By James N. Wallace [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Allende_supporters.jpg#/media/File:Allende_supporters.jpg

This process was a common outcome of both liberation theology and anti-oppressive social work and provided an important element in models for practice. These liberating movements became rooted in Latin America, during the decade of 1960s and represented a challenge for traditional practices within the Catholic Church in the first case, and within the social work practice in the second. Both models have had an enduring legacy in developing forms of social involvement and political engagement.

Liberation theology and Latin American reconceptualization of social work, brought together a rupture with institutional traditions: the poor was understood as an oppressed group, not any more as a receiver / beneficiary but as a protagonist; people become political agents to transform structures not any more just to adapt to the structures; vertical scheme of approach to reality of people were discharged to adapt notions such as popular education.

The contribution that these perspectives give to the discipline is the notion of empowerment as a deliberated process whose protagonist is the person gaining power and taking over control in his/her life. This new role allows people greater access to social resources that not only favor their personal goals, but also their collective aims. Anti-oppressive practice seeks to raise critical awareness and for oppressed communities to understand structural inequalities and obstacles, and contribute in the development of their capacities and social capital to increase their control and influence in society, improve their access to social resources and their participation in social decision making.

Unfortunately, since the seventies Latin America became the center of the neoliberal “revolution.” The neoliberal orthodoxy was promoted by governments,

international organizations (WB, IMF), intellectual economists, and regions’ oligarchies, all of them united in a consent to neoliberalism, “which was to dominate most countries for more than a generation” (Kellog 2017). Main achievement of this movement has been channeling wealth from poorest groups to the oligarchies “dismantling of institutions and narratives that promoted more egalitarian distributive measures in the preceding era” (Harvey 2007).

One could argue that de emergency of counterhegemony in Americas, seen in Brazil, Bolivia, and Venezuela, as well as the current relevance of China in the region, and the emergency of left or centre-left states in Latin American may threatened the traditional hegemony. However, a simple review of political economic practices show us that counter-hegemonic change is still very much a work in progress.

There is a need, then, of revisiting the spirit of Latin American social work reconceptualization, the spirit of liberation theology, and also the spirit of later contributions of critical pedagogy, to bring back to discussion issues concerning social difference, social justice and social transformation promoted by a praxis of resistance. In Latin America, the infusion of liberation theology, processes of reconceptualization, and critical pedagogy in social and community work, were a crucial focus in the very essence of people’s lives, and to question the interface of liberation and domination.

This article is an invitation, to discuss the influences of these perspectives in social work, and the dilemmas the region faces today, to make decisions about perpetuating the status quo or creating the context to question. Resistance seems hard in the middle of the natural hegemony of neoliberalism. We need to recall old practices and its fundaments, moving between the present and past, to build a transformed future.

1 This article is based in Muñoz-Guzmán, C., 2015. Liberation Theology in Social Work. In: James D. Wright (editor-in-chief), International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Vol 14. Oxford: Elsevier. pp. 32–38.

By Guillaume Paumier (Own work) [CC BY 3.0

(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via

Wikimedia Commons


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José Paulo NettoNetto graduated in Social Work (1969) and Literature (1974) at Juiz de Fora University, and possesses a Literary Theory Master’s degree at São Paulo University (1981) and a Social Work Doctor’s degree at Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP) (1990). He works as Social Work professor at Universidade Federal do Río de Janeiro (UFRJ) and at PUC (SP), both in graduate and postgraduate degrees. His trajectory also includes diverse Latin American countries, being postgraduate professor in Argentina, Honduras, and Uruguay. He defines himself as a “chalk worker”.

All over universities where he performed as professor, he developed groups for the studies and investigation of Marxist 1 tradition; sharing his intellectual trajectory with important and capable thinkers such as Carlos Nelson Coutinho and Leandro Konder. In Argentina, since 1995, through a Social Work Master’s degree

at Universidad Nacional de la Plata, he shared an unmatched space of academic education, which was enriched with courses at other National Universities such as Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (UNICEN), settled in Tandil, and Universidad del Comahue, settled in Neuquén. In 2010 he was recognized with Honoris Causa degree (UNICEN) 2, for the first time in Argentina.

He coordinated thesis in different Latin American countries and contributed through articles published in Argentinian editorials such as Humanitas 3 and Grupo Ecro’s magazines 4, in the 60’ and 70’. After this, he also collaborated with Latin American Library of Social Work which belonged to Cortez Editorial. Because of these experiences, he affirms: “... As an interlocutor related to Social Work, I was first known in Latin America, and then in Brazil (…)” (Praia Vermelha magazine v 20 Nº 2)

Despite his great trajectory in Social Work, his detractors affirm that Netto is not a social worker and assert

José Paulo Netto, an indispensable author for Latin American Social Work.“Those who kept glowing

With tenacity, with loveliness,

Ideas that today we all stand up for. (…)

Beautiful dreamers,

Undefiled brothers of light,

Young, forever young,

Dear old communists” (Roberto Fernández Retamar)

Marina Capella

Ornelas Adriana

Profesoras e investigadoras de la Facultad de Trabajo Social de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata (FTS-UNLP), Argentina

José Paulo Netto’s political and academic trajectory is inseparable from various social and political events which took place not only in Brazil but also in Latin America in the last 40 years. These events allowed him to experience an intellectual and militant life. Therefore, he became a reference for our professional collective, developing a big and indispensable written production for social workers’ theoretical and political education.

image by m

acem ufrj reproduced in this publication via Creative

comm

ons licence https://pcb.org.br/fdr/index.php?option=com_

content&view

=article&id=292:

that his analyses are sociological, misapprehending that the author has a rigorous perspective of totality in his investigations, and that his concerns are far away from particularisms, seeking universal aspects, determinations, and mediations. This led people to accusing him of being an determinist.

As Freddy Esquivel Corella affirms (2001):

“He stands against sociologism and positivist scientificism, highlighting that knowledge about the complexes of complexes that form social reality claims indeed a systematical analysis but not a system, not a model and not a ‘methodological shape’ built from a simple ‘investigation of phenomena regularities or reiterations’. He also stands against every way of expression of irrationalism.”

Although his theories were criticized, it is difficult to tarnish an intellectual with such honesty who has always voiced his theoretical and political belonging, introducing himself to people as a “convinced Marxist”. He is a PCB 5 militant affected by communist trouble throughout the last and current century. A professor who has always encouraged not only critical and autonomous thought but also debates of ideas, which led to a pluralism, but not to an eclecticism. He also contributes with mediations to our professional collective, which allow us to investigate, intervene and transform reality.

Consequently, Paulo Netto has transcended the professional area by contributing to intellectual debate from Social Theory. He is a prolific translator and promoter of Marxists thinker’s oeuvres, especially translating G. Lukács to Portuguese. As Netto is, primarily, a thinker worried about the present, he is fully committed to different social struggles. His contributions to militants’ political education are still in force at Escuela Florestán Fernández, the headquarters of Movimiento Sin Tierra de Brasil, a catalyst and educative place for social and political movements of Latin America. Netto’s current contributions are insuperable, running diverse courses in Portugal and

Brazil and writing to investigate and revalue anti-capitalist literature authors who were forgotten. 6

Along with Marilda Lamamoto and other colleagues, he is a part of a generation that established the base of critical Social Work by highlighting the political dimension of this profession. They were part of the richest Social Work history, being protagonists of the reconceptualization movement. Early, in the 80’s, his writings were already part of the CELATS 7 heritage and pedagogical function, while South American dictatorships persecution imposed jail, exile and disappearance for revolutionary generations.

With their fundamental oeuvres both authors contributed to situate the origin of the profession as an historical consequence of monopolist capitalism, when it tried to incorporate demands which were social placed by the working class, in the context of a specialization in the socio-technique labour division. Thus, investigating the origins and manifestations of the “Social Questions” they overcame other positions which situated the profession as a continuity of philanthropy and charity.

Netto’s texts propound central and indispensable categories for our professional intervention. As he presents it in Monopolist Capitalism and Social Work, “syncretism constitutes the frame of the affirmation and development of Social Work as a profession, its organizational core and its action rules. It is expressed in every professional praxis manifestation and it is revealed in all professional agents’ manifestations. Syncretism was a constitutive Social Work principle” (Netto, 1992: 89)

Among other categories he highlights the importance of addressing the nature of the everyday world to face alienation in social relations, the dialectical critical method to research; understand the reality clearing methodologists debates in the profession; the relationship between Marxist tradition and social work under the constraints of a “contaminated approach”; and the fundamental elements of the neoliberal offensive and the crisis of socialism.

Paulo Netto refers to Gyòrgy Lukács as a “nonstop warrior” who has deeply inspired him. Thence, Netto resists and persists with conviction, without capitulations, looking for the always difficult ways of building emancipatory horizons which present an alternative to contemporary barbarism. We conclude, without hesitation, that José Paulo Netto is among those indispensable people to Social Work and to everyone who aim to change the status quo, those who Bertold Brecht called “indispensable”, because they are who struggle all their lives…

1 See Investigators Centre “Marxist investigation and Studies Centre” (NEPEM-UFRJ), and NEAM “Marxist Studying and Deepening Studies Centre” (PUS-SP), initially with Evaldo Vieira and Dilsea Bonnetti.

2 Superior Council ordinance number 1914 (10/28/2011)

3 Humanitas Editorial, created by professors Aníbal Villaverde and Sela Sierra de Villaverde, started working in the 50’. It was initially dedicated to the publication of books related to the education and pedagogy area.

He began his own editorial dedicated to Social Work in 1963, with a series of Social Work books under the supervision of Sela Sierra.

4 “Hoy en el Trabajo Social” magazine, first called “Hoy en el Servicio Social” (Argentina), directed by ECRO group of Social Work Investigation and teaching, and published by ECRO editorial (Conceptual, Referential, and Operative Scheme), established, since 1965, as the diffusion organ of the rising “Reconceptualization Movement of Latin

America Social Work” which, at the begging (until 1968 approximately) was almost synonym of “65’ Generation”.

5 He joined Brazilian Communist Party in 1963, accomplishing diverse and significative practical and intellectual contributions.

6 We suggest visiting Editorial Boitempo’s blog, where he writes a monthly column called “Biblioteca do Zé Paulo: achados do pensamento crítico”

7 CELATS: Social Work Latin American Centre, which used to edit Revista

Acción Crítica, an important magazine for social work in Latin America. ALAETS (Latin American Association of Social Work Schools); suggested the necessity of developing an academic arm which spread the projection of the institution. Therefore, in 1975 was created CELAT, an institution which emerged with the status of International Organism of Technical Cooperation, having as main purpose to contribute from social workers activity to the tasks of development and popular promotion.


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Social Work KnowledgeHistorically, social workers have received multidisciplinary education, but this positive characteristic becomes a weakness because social work is seen as a profession based in fragmented knowledge coming from other disciplines instead of having its own disciplinary knowledge. Although numerous efforts have been made to build specific knowledge in the field of social work, the truth is that universities discuss the dilemma between education based on universal or specific knowledge. Therefore, the two options appear to apply general social science theories or education based on the construction of complex knowledge units that help to develop a comprehensive understanding of reality, from a social work perspective where the specific professional intervention is designed.

Another dilemma in social work education is based on recognised and approved knowledge because it is “scientific”; or academic studies based on knowledge gradually developed by the discipline, even though this knowledge has not been recognised because it does not form part of the dominant social science paradigms, but it is completely in line with the profession’s practical requirements.

There is also a methodological dilemma that leaves us between the use of methodological constructions created by other social sciences that are only applied in social work; therefore, they lead to the development of non-specific and partial interventions, or the construction of theoretical-methodological proposals

based on a strategic view of social work, created by the recovery and conceptualisation of methods and techniques developed through professional experience, aimed at comprehensive intervention.

A dilemma interwoven with this is the division created between investigation and intervention, a dilemma expressed in developing research based on problems put forward by other social science disciplines or questioning and building research units about social work practice. This also leaves us between educating social work students for research or for intervention; the dominant tendency has been to assume these moments as “separated” and prioritise research under the supposition that it is more important and it has greater scientific status than intervention; despite the fact that in social work, intervention guides its research.

The enthusiasm to consolidate the scientificity of social work and, hence, the education of its professionals has occasionally resulted in “academicism,” which decisively influenced the division between academic studies and professional practice. This is closely connected to the dilemma between practical training and theory: in the former we find a tendency to think that practice does not require theory and that, in this case, theory is only used to “coat” or “cover” social work practice, i.e., it is viewed in a fragmented manner, which would suggest a fundamental problem, the separation between theory and practice, when in fact social work practice should be assumed to be a unit where they both are interwoven, but not as two superimposed dimensions, as González Casanova explained “the challenge of social sciences

Contemporary Dilemmas in the Education of Social Workers

Adriana Ornelas y Nelia Tello

Profesoras Escuela Nacional de Trabajo Social.

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Social Work is a social science discipline recognised as a profession and, sometimes, as a mere technical support. Its history is associated with the poor, people in need, the vulnerable, assistance institutions, women; as part of the social imaginary that associates it with charity, aid, good will and positive feelings, more than with knowledge (Montaño, 2010). However, the fundamental principle of social work since its origin as a profession has been knowledge built upon academic education. Throughout its development, social work has had to face several dilemmas, i.e., uncertain situations that have led to a debate between two options; below we shall refer to the dilemmas we believe to be more significant in the education and training of future social workers.

is to join critical thinking and technical analyses and scientific research with a clear discourse and political will” (1991, p. 23).

In terms of social work education in intervention, historically the strategies proposed to solve social problems have been designed according to existing social problems that affect society at a specific moment in time, epistemologically creating two lines of action: one that contributes to the operation of the dominant social order and another that searches for an alternative to that imposed order.

Currently, social factors have become displaced, blurred and weakened in a world where economic factors are at the centre, technology dictates the rules of everyday life, the human being is a merchandise; individualism and instant gratification guide, from this fragmentation, the dominant social commitments and this decisively influences professional training. As described by Bauman (2015, p.162): “Changes in education are increasingly related to the discourse of efficiency, competitiveness, profitability and accountability and their professed goal is to link the virtues of flexibility and mobility, as well as ”.

A Dilemma would be to train social workers who intervene from the fragmentation, the immediateness and the technique in institutional operational processes that strengthen socioeconomic policies emanating from neoliberal and antidemocratic governments or train social workers who, from this complexity, transdiscipline and criticism develop intervention processes to strengthen social factors, by developing comprehensive intervention strategies that create participatory social changes.

Hence, we are faced with the dilemma to provide training for fragmented interventions that, despite providing answers, they are not professional interventions; or provide training for comprehensive interventions that are not limited to the application of techniques, but refer to the creation and development of social work intervention strategies. T

This will make a difference between social workers acting as operators who implement strategies designed by other professionals, providing answers to problem-situations, from their perspective and knowledge. Thus “we are faced with a fundamental epistemological requirement, which is to define if we are capable of building a relationship based on specific knowledge that avoids being trapped in prevailing logics and that faces the challenges of building alternative discourses” (Gómez, 2002, p. 172), breaking away from the tendency to repeat knowledge in order to create social work’s own theoretical, methodological and practical knowledge.

Developing intervention strategies in social work requires being independent from the currently dominant theoretical construction of social sciences; it has to be seen as a unit, and it should be understood that social work activities are limited to comprehensive theoretical processes, but not as complementary stages, based on the development of intervention

objects specific to social work. Therefore, we seek to provide social work education based on complex, transdisciplinary knowledge, enabling the social worker to have a comprehensive understanding of reality and also to intervene in it; this understanding assumes a multi-referential analysis, as Zemelman asserted (2002, p.86) “complexity arises from a context that implies reading a problem in an undetermined number of relationships, in an open number of ramified relationships that will fulfil the role of determining or over-determining it.”

For this reason contemporary social work education requires knowledge about the current context (social, political and economic system) in order to have a comprehensive understanding of reality; furthermore, it must have theoretical elements, both to analyse the social reality and to trigger social change (sociological, anthropological, psychological and communication theories), taking into account methodological elements that support their professional interventions and are completed with processes that build the individual and collective social subjects, based on knowledge, to design proposals to irritate the dominant social processes of reality and trigger processes to change the problem-situation, in the social organisation and/or in the social processes or interrelationships.

This should not be viewed as an accumulation of knowledge, but as the development of the critical and reflective capability of our professionals, i.e., under an educational concept that,

“it is not just the content of specific disciplinary information, how correctly or incorrectly it is being communicated in a good or bad way to a person undergoing a learning process, but it also refers to the logic of reasoning.” (Zemelman, 2002, p.26).The education of our professionals will have to be based on the clear conceptualisation of contemporary social work; we believe, hence, that “a prime objective is to provoke an extensive discussion about discipline and profession, educational objectives, recovering the theoretical-methodological production specific to Social Work” (Ornelas &Tello, 2013, p.131). Therefore, it is essential to define the specificity of social work and learn to discuss the different perspectives; however, no concessions should be made to unstructured, inconsistent and incoherent social work discourses. This requires having a critical vision to analyse the paradigms of social work education, to propose alternative outlooks and to build, today, a desirable future for our discipline/profession.


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In Mexico, the “new spirit of capitalism” ideology seems to be expanding. This ideology makes reference to a “set of beliefs associated with the capitalist order that helps to justify this order and, by legitimating them, to sustain the forms of action and predisposition compatible with it” (Boltansky and Chiapello, 2007: 10). It is important to point out that “the new spirit of capitalism” does not only show in the subjectivity of the individual, but into material form. This is the reason for the establishment of a distance from the mentioned authors. Due to this, I am referring to the “new spirit of capitalism” as the ideology which reproduces the capitalist order, embraces both subjectivity and changes in the wealth accumulation regime, that includes the labor world transformation (particularly in the production model), from the State to the Market in the neoliberal context.

Inside Social Work, the “new spirit of capitalism” is represented in courses that incorporate knowledge that comes from pocket psychology and its respective literature in their contents. It has become more frequent to find out courses for personal development, coaching and others in the educational curricular plans. The objective of this is to expose the social-political project behind, and the negative effects in social work, have as a result of the appropriation and reproduction of the mentioned ideology.

Neoliberalism and “the new spirit of capitalism”In the world’s work transformations, the pressure exerted from it, occurs in a parallel way to the material and subjective sphere by establishing a dialectic relationship among both dimensions. The toyotist accumulation model needs to coopt the working class thinking to integrate their initiatives, imagination and

creativity to the objectives of production (Escobar, 2004:68). The workers have to be flexible and competent, cooperatives and implied (Marzano, 2011). In fact, the integration of subjectivity (emotionality included) to the production, is converted in a material development work condition.

The cooption of subjectivity in the labor environment has reached such levels in which the income and permanence processes for the labor market are explained as individual determinations and are predominantly volitional. This position eliminates, as Marzano (2011) states, the analysis around the influence in which structural components and market fluctuations or the elastic management to the wage bill have on unemployment.

The subject produced in the toyotism, in its most dramatic version, alludes to a person who succeeds with the time flexibility and emotional disposal criteria that guarantees without any major problem the accumulation of the super profits. We might say that today, the alienation mechanisms do not appeal to the gross violence, but to subtle machinations which operate to the wage earner “consent”. To Marzano (2011) the nowadays wage earner, with its consent:

[…] it is found, 24 hours a day, in disposal of their employer, by e-mail or mobile. The old fordist chain has been substituted by a psychological violence. The business management discourse is there to try to make them forget this cunning from history and to convince the workers from the act for their welfare belief, when they are actually integrating at full the most relentless market constraints. They endure the consequences, at the time they are forced to believe that it is for their happiness (Marzano, 2011).

The influence of neoliberalism and the “new spirit of capitalism” in social work education in Mexico

Sandra E. Mancinas Espinoza

Professor of Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, México

Facultad de Trabajo Social y Desarrollo Humano

In Mexico, the trend to include knowledge that comes from pocket psychology in the curricular plans has to be questioned and problematized. The use of the best sellers of self-help, motivation, self-esteem, coaching, personal development is reflected of this trend. In this article, I argue that the knowledge assumption from pocket psychology is settled in the “new spirit of capitalism” as a strategy of neoliberalism to guarantee the wealth hoarding. The participation in this project, in an uncritical way, gets to be a self-defeating point to the ethical principles of the social work profession.

To sustain the needed conditions for the toyotism person to reproduce the flexible accumulation model requires a neoliberal project. In other words, a series of political and economic practices are needed to asseverate that: “human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within and institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade” (Harvey, 2005: 2).

By the previous context, the values and type of sociability spread, promote the idea about the subject being responsible of their own actions and their own welfare in terms of education, health assistance, pensions, etc. and has to answer for it:

Individual success or failure are interpreted in terms of entrepreneurial virtues or personal failings (such as not investing significantly enough in one’s own human capital through education), rather than being attributed to any systemic property (such as the class exclusions usually attributed to capitalism) (Harvey, 2005: 65).

In such a way, the neoliberal project forms a subject whose citizenship can be disaggregated into two types: “the consumer citizen (a “free concurrent actor” in the Market, so, it is free to get any services wanted and that can be afforded) and a user citizen (the individuals, who have failed in the market, rely on social precarious policies, from the civil society, charity or the business “social responsibility)” (Montaño, 2014: 36). In both types of citizenship, the State assumes a flimsy position, by promoting actions that take to the individual the management of their social provision, by making them responsible for their own social security expenses or by offering poor social services, which will further discourage the State to offer social services which would then lead them into the search for their own solutions.

By all the previous statements, to disregard the neoliberalism influence in the constitution of the subjective and material areas of the life in society, contributes to the reproduction of the individualization for the social and into the responsibility of the subject from their own welfare in terms of education, health assistance, pensions, etc., by erasing any reflection around the economic system influence in the generation of social problems and the financial cut of the social politics.

The impact of the neoliberalism in the social work educationThe previously discussed leads us to question ourselves: How does the neoliberalism and the “new spirit of capitalism” influence education of social workers? To Harvey, the neoliberalism has become hegemonic as a manner of discourse thanks to the penetration that it has had in our thoughts which, many of us, have incorporated to the way we perform and live in

the world (Harvey, 2005). Such hegemony is taking a form in the curricular plans of social work. In Mexico, there is a tendency that is being shaped so it can include knowledge and literature coming from pocket psychology, and it is becoming more frequent to find courses which integrate in their basic bibliography, best sellers from national or international known motivational writers, whose contents embrace topics such as self-esteem, personal development, coaching, self-help, etc.

To Montaño, the instauration of neoliberal rationality is made through a triple movement: a) the subject self-responsibility, through self-esteem promotion, “empowerment”, training, autonomy in the entrepreneurship searching, and the autonomous sources of income; b) the disappearence of the state social action, ostensibly as a measure to end with the paternalism, through the development of a privatization or denationalization; and c) the capital relief, which stimulates the promotion of solidary and voluntary action of the civil society and the enterprises that are guided to help those individuals who f

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