Social work,ideology,discourse and the limits of post-hegemony

Abstract

• Summary: This article critically examines the problematic status of ideology (and discourse) with regard to social work, and, in relation, questions any contested elevation of sociological theories which suggest we now live in a ‘post-hegemonic’ age. Three types of ideology relating to social work are explored, and it is proposed that such case examples (among others) have, and continue to, maintain a significant influence within state social work. Examples include the role of science, neo-liberalism and professionalism. Each is examined through the work of Althusser, Gramsci and Foucault to underline their significance.

• Findings: Within social work there is evidence to support aspects of the social or political fragmentary trends stressed by advocates of a post-hegemony thesis. However, here it is argued instead that reliance upon hegemony has actually increased rather than disappeared as social work has become less structured, more uncertain and increasingly dependent upon unpredictable markets of social care.

• Applications: Critical yet careful analysis of the relationship between ideology and social work can help us to increase understanding of social work practice and education.

Keywords

Social work ideology post-hegemony poverty power

Introduction

Among other propositions, the theory of post-hegemony suggests that ideology no longer retains its once pivotal role regarding the control and subtle disciplining of modern populations. Indeed for some within cultural studies from where the concept first emerged (notably through the work of Lash, 2007), hegemony – or the complex ways in which the cultural, economic and political power of dominant groups is held over others – has seemingly never really existed, other than as a theoretical construct (see, for example, Beasley-Murray, 2003). Conversely, advocates of post-hegemony propose (within a densely theoretical and convoluted debate) that we now live in much more fragmented, disparate and highly complex societies, which have been profoundly affected by globalization. Consequentially, ever more complex social relationships and forms of production and communication continue to mutate, meaning that hegemony and institutionally generated discourse (maintained through the media, or established practices such as medicine, law, social work, and so on) can no longer sustain and reproduce the established orders of the past.

At the centre of the post-hegemony debate is an emphasis upon cumulative and radical cultural, political and economic change that is helping to dissolve established structures, institutions and the traditions of the past. Such change links also to escalating consumerism, ever distinct types of production and the role of new technologies. Such transformations, among many others, are also leading towards ever more locally pronounced trends and the disappearance of distinctions between previous social formations (such as social class or ethnicity), as well as the gradual ‘withering away of the nation-state’ (Johnston, 2007, p. 102). In sum, it is proposed that we simply cannot continue to over-rely upon the notion that established, dominant and typically distorted hegemonic ideas, beliefs or values are ‘diffused through society and mould peoples’ consciousness’ as they may have in the past (Schwartzmantel, 2004, p. 2).

In contrast to the post-hegemony thesis, this article presents examples which, it is proposed, provide evidence that ideological hegemony is just as, if not more, important today than it has ever been. The paper is in three parts. First, an overview of ideology and discourse are presented with reference to the key works of Althusser, Gramsci and Foucault. Second, state social work (SSW) in the United Kingdom is examined as a case study that provides evidence of the long-term and active role of ideology and discourse as an essential component of its survival and application. It is proposed that within SSW there continue to persist a relatively small number of relatively fluid, competing yet related or symbiotic ideologies that help to educate, motivate, direct, and, in some cases, compel and interpellate subjective agents (practitioners, tutors, service users, managers, carers, and so on) enclosed within a more general social work discourse. The three examples of hegemony at work within social work include those of science, neo-liberalism and professionalism. Finally, in the discussion section it is suggested that in opposition to many of the prevailing views of the handful of post-hegemony advocates, theories of ideology still have much to offer in helping us to critically analyse and understand the ways in which professions such as social work operate.

Ideology, discourse, post-hegemony

Ideology remains a notoriously difficult construct to capture. As McLelland (1986, p. 1) suggests, it still (perhaps) remains ‘the most elusive concept in the whole of social science’. As MacKenzie (1994, p. 1) adds, it is also a word crammed full of a ‘wide range of possible meanings, many of which are contradictory’. A saving grace, however, remains that there are but a ‘few key concepts at its centre’. More negative interpretations tend to prevail, which include the use of ideology to manipulate, distort or generate illusionary thought or feelings or actions that wander from any objective ‘truth’ (Manning, 1980, p. 13). Ideology will also tend to determine parameters through which the beliefs, values and collective interests of dominant minority groups are established, justified and maintained. As Hall (1977, p. 9) concurs, such critical definitions contrast with the more descriptive and politically benign understanding of ideology as ‘meaning simply [a] systematic body of ideas’.

Within critical analysis, Marx's expansive definition (created with Engels), set out in part one of the German Ideology, established a foundation upon which others have built. Specifically ideologies such as religion or morality can invert our understandings of a materially determined political economy upon which inequitable social relations are established and maintained (Marx & Engels, 1970). Although influential, such a definition is now recognized as incomplete, or as Manning (1980, p. 12) suggests, viewed as a ‘fragmentary’ and ‘rather vague [and] indefinite concept’ that is restricted by the over-simplicities of Marx's key concept ‘historical materialism’. Althusser and Gramsci (among others) have attempted to update the Marxist tradition. Althusser (1971) highlights the ‘relative independence’ of ideology yet still privileges the material basis (including profit or power orientated minority interests) for its formation and application. However, his distinction between a Repressive (police, army, etc.) and Ideological State Apparatus – with priority given to the role of the latter in transmitting dominant ideology through the family, media, schools, and so on – privileged the role of civil society in generating an imaginary or illusionary relationship between people and their conditions of existence. Also significant is ‘interpellation’ in which (through the Ideological State Apparatus) dominant ideology becomes dispersed and implanted within ritual actions, practices and events that ‘transforms… individuals into subjects’ (p. 163). Eagleton (2007) however questions Althusser's elevation of complete ideology and its total impact upon seemingly all too passive citizens as subjects.

Gramsci's (1971) earlier pioneering work again highlights the relative independence of ideology, its material basis and, importantly, the role of core institutions (schools, church, family, media, etc.) held within civil society. To achieve this, Gramsci promotes hegemony and hegemonic processes, which, as Jones (2006, p 10) suggests, challenge any ‘simplistic opposition between domination and subordination or resistance’. Civil subordination instead becomes part of a complex process of ‘transaction, negotiation and compromise’ that takes place between ruling and subaltern groups and assumes the often ‘active role of subordinate people in the operation of power’. Importantly, ideology is much more subtle, fluid and often indirect, coaxing subjects into believing that their interests are being served through ever changing rhetoric and exaggerated claims.

Among other critics, Smart (1986, p. 159) exemplifies post-structural scepticism and stresses ‘persistent slippage’ in Gramsci's work:

Gramsci is far from consistent. . . . In some passages in The Prison Notebooks hegemony (viz. direction/leading) refers to a relationship of consent in civil society achieved through so-called private organizations like the Church, the trade unions, the schools, etc., in contrast to a relationship of domination achieved through the ‘State-as-force’. Elsewhere in the notebooks both civil society and the state are conceived to exercise hegemony, which by implication appears therefore to be an effect of relations of force and consent.

Regarding ideology, Johnston (2007) details how politics and power are now considered much more fragmented. In prioritizing the ideas of Foucault – and especially the more diffuse primacy given to dispersed power, knowledge and language – discourse is recognized as a more nuanced way in which to understand history, politics, forms of civic self-governance, social cohesion, and more. Mills (2004: 6) isolates Foucault's interpretation of discourse as emphasizing ‘the rules and structures which produce particular utterances and statements’, that go on to generate forms of inclusion and exclusion; as well as ‘how language is used to produce versions of knowledge that then gain legitimacy in a political, social, cultural and professional sense’ (D'Cruz & Jones, 2004, p. 156).

Consequently, understandings of ideology have since adapted so as to overcome any prior reductive assumptions that privileged economic determinism or imagined dominant interests as being controlled predictably by a minority of ruling class elites. Indeed, a number of radical social work perspectives exemplified this stance. Instead ideology is now seen as being more fluid and embroiled within professional or everyday discourses, signs and symbols which gradually mould or adapt our subjectivity in ways that support dominant power relations (Eagleton, 2007).

Alongside Althusser's (1971) and Gramsci's (1971) work, of notable interest in helping to question over reductive Marxist stances remained Foucault (1990). He emphasized discourse formation(s) and their capacity to create professional statements, concepts and strategies (within medicine, social work, education, and so on) that situate speakers, and position, subjugate or elevate social actors through codes of language that determine what can and cannot be said, as well as influencing more general perception and understanding. Through discourse Poster (1984) argues that a ‘mode of information’ has replaced the Marxist priority given to any ‘mode of production’. However, Foucault's knowledge-based or local and dispersed view of complex ‘webs’ or ‘capillaries’ of power have been criticized for understating the role of wider structural and symbolic dimensions of power (see, for example, Newman, 2004).

Despite criticism, both ideology and hegemony have at times been re-used or revised. For example, Žižek (1989) suggests that the subject is typically aware of the workings of dominant ideology, yet dismisses any impact as only having influence upon ‘other people’. Ideology also helps to provide a ‘quilt’ that holds together different floating signifiers: meaning for social actors it is then refracted through different discursive elements when tied to a specific ideology. Eagleton (2007, p. 194) also views the links between ideology and discourse as symbiotic, meaning that we can ‘view ideology less as a particular set of discourses, than as a particular set of effects within discourses’.

Lash (2007, p. 56) and others nevertheless advocate a complete break with ideology and hegemonic power. Unlike hegemony which assumes relations of ‘domination, legitimate power, [and] viable institutions’, post-hegemony instead relies upon more diffuse forms of legitimacy. Power is considered more introspective and internal to people; a de-centred generative force that passes through ever more produced and fragmented social relations, which (in opposition to Althusser, Gramsci or Foucault) lead to the gradual undermining of once dominant institutions and nation-states. Post-hegemony is seemingly ontological yet also based on a lack of social stability rather than the external, stable, symbolic or epistemological once prioritized with hegemony. Again Thoburn (2007, p. 80) echoes these themes by questioning the more general and broad assumptions held within hegemony or discourse – instead social formations are now more ‘heterogeneous arrangements of material and material forces – matter, images, desires, languages, technology – that function, against any material/ideal or base/superstructure dichotomies, in the production of particular consistencies and effects’. A heterogeneous and ever transforming capitalist global economy now also relies upon international social arrangements ‘of production of varying scales that operate in the production of life’ (p. 82). Questions remain, however, as to the relevance of this somewhat vague and convoluted academic construct that appears suspiciously conservative in its rejection of a core set of critical ideas and theories which have stood to challenge normative traditions and practices. As Johnston (2007, p. 102) suggests, the events that are presented as representing a new post-hegemonic age can instead be interpreted as signifying not so much the end of hegemony, but rather as helping to create ‘a new hegemonic moment’.

Three examples of ideology within social work

For state social work, a number of trends that could be interpreted as fitting within the post-hegemonic thesis have been evident for sometime. These relate most prominently to extensive fragmentation and production since the 1980s in countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, and include:

the increased role of the private sector in social work and social care provision;

the purchaser/provider split that restructured any prior state monopoly whilst generating quasi-markets of social care;

the emergence of more specialist forms of practice in contrast to a past reliance upon ‘generic’ social work approaches;

the increase in reliance upon casual and contingency staff employed by private companies;

an aggressive push for pragmatic training in the education of new social workers.

Such radical structural and cultural reforms within social work practices have all helped to promote more flexible, varied, yet, paradoxically, highly regulated social work organizations, labour processes and forms of pedagogy (Dominelli, 2002, and Garrett, 2009, provide a useful overview of such reform). Despite significant structural and cultural change, however, beneath the surface what has also been maintained, if not advanced, is reliance upon more ‘traditional’ forms of ideological and hegemonic governance. Institutions may have become less clearly pronounced and stable but they have also re-emerged quickly with a remarkably similar structure and sets of roles, procedures, principles, that echo the not too distant past.

Such related themes of change and preservation have been repeated elsewhere. A cursory glance at social work's relatively brief history suggests that there are groups of persistent ideologies that have emerged at differing points and maintained an influence. Three examples are provided below which include ideological traits that stress science, neo-liberalism and professionalism.

i) Science

Principally, since its inception in Victorian London through the Charitable Organization Society (COS) in 1869, social work has sustained an uncertain yet enduring relationship with forms of scientific discourse. In his detailed account, Humphries (1995) proposes that the COS emerged due to panic on behalf of the middle and ruling classes regarding the potential danger or economic burden that the urban poor threatened. Based on the principles of the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 – and especially its distinction drawn between a deserving and undeserving poor – the Society stood to provide focus and coordination so to:

[Help] stem the widespread moral deterioration resulting from [ever growing and unregulated] traditional charities being hoodwinked by the cunning poor . . . [The COS] were confident that under their influence, scientific investigation, categorization, and co-ordination would soon become hallmarks of a composite relief system in which family values would feature at the core of moral activities.

However, the relatively short-lived COS struggled to apply its ‘scientific’ methods in practice, which persisted in tandem with a set of overzealous prejudices aimed at the poor. Indeed, as Humphries (1995, p. 61) notes, the COS quickly gained a reputation of providing ‘a sharp, suspicious method of enquiry which seemed better suited to a prosecution than a friend in need’. Intense criticism towards the COS and a lack of financial support offered by unsympathetic ruling elites meant that any alms provided to those assessed (positively) were often less than that provided through the Poor Law. Nevertheless, despite formulating largely unworkable scientific methods, many core techniques and beliefs established by the COS have influenced social work's longer-term value base, education services and practices. Such cultural and political practices are now embedded within long-established roles relating to casework, ‘assessment’, ‘evaluation’ or ‘intervention’ (Cruickshank, 1999; Jones, 1983, among others).

The use of science as part of social work training or practice has included attempts to draw from disciplines such as psychology, social policy and sociology, among others. Notable influences have included the use of Freudian psychology alongside more ‘therapeutic’ interventions and the influence of aspects of scientific Marxism applied to social problems within the ‘radical’ social work movement of the 1970s and early 1980s (for example, Gough, 1979). A more recent widespread debate – held amidst cordial acceptance – regards the benefits or otherwise of evidence-based practice within health and social care services. Notably, Webb (2001) argues that this particular ‘theory’ draws significantly from both positivism and behavioural psychology, and has also tended to utilize scientific methods to promote a rigid managerial agenda. There is also a case to be made that crude behaviourist techniques – most notably a practice-based distinction drawn between reward and punishment so to encourage good or compliant behaviour from the ‘service user’ as resident – have long since been applied in residential care for children and older or disabled people. Such often crude, simplistic, and dehumanizing ‘binary’ methods have also persisted within many of the core strategies and techniques used and applied by social workers as part of child protection, and some adult services (see, for example, Basset & Stickley, 2010; Coleman, 1998). Indeed there is perhaps a case to be made that, despite comprising an at best peripheral element of social work education, behaviourism – rather than systems theory, anti-discriminatory practice, or whatever else – has provided a pragmatic and ‘common sense’ foundation upon which so much social work practice has been consistently applied.

More formally, but in relation (and very much within the core spirit of the COS), Goppner and Hämäläinen (2007) insist that social work as a professional discipline should denounce its reliance upon so many disparate social theories and instead try to define a clearly focused ‘scientific’ approach to mould its training, assessments and types of intervention. Numerous other examples to focus interventions and sustain legitimacy through science have included systems theory or cognitive therapies. What such examples indicate is the complex, heterogeneous and fluid ways by which ideology and discourse can permeate our thoughts, values, prejudices and actions in practice.

Jones (1983, pp. 89–92) argues that social work's ideological attempts to wrap its training and practice in ‘the cloak of science’ serves three purposes. These include a means by which to reduce entrants into social work education and practice via ‘social closure’ techniques, a way to conceal an underlying ‘class based morality’ and a means by which to legitimize various self-serving ‘professional’ practices. Indeed, in a formal report on social work, Younghusband (1947) underlines the benefits of using quasi-scientific language to achieve traditional ends:

Social science and research make it respectable to talk about ‘factors in social pathology’ instead of the undeserving poor; ‘community stimulation’ instead of getting lonely people to the Settlement . . . ‘psychopathic personalities’ instead of hopeless scroungers; rehabilitating the socially maladjusted instead of trying to reform anyone or anything. The essential rose remains unchanged by this change in names but, if anyone is helped thereby to see more clearly, to think more deeply, to diagnose more truly, and to treat more effectively, then this change and all others that succeed it are all to the good. (cited in Jones, 1983, p. 91)

In recognizing some beneficial components of ideology, Althusser (2003) stresses that ‘human sciences’ can represent a potential utility for broadening our understanding of the ways in which societies develop and function. Yet Althusser also insists that discourses or ‘regional sciences’ such as social work can represent ‘one of the most dangerous forms of bourgeois ideology’ also held within the various ideological state apparatuses (the media, school, family, and so on). There is a tendency for such sciences to succumb to the ‘temptations and traps’ of bourgeois humanism: an articulate masking device that conceals other interests, such as the destructive nature of advanced capitalism or quests for power or profit by professional groups. We may interpret examples of this with the extensive proliferation in recent decades of humanist theories such as anti-discriminatory practice, feminism or person-centred approaches within social work. If we assume that Althusser is right then such theories often help conceal the punitive interventions that are targeted at women or minority groups through major forms of social work practice. Such humanist ideological vehicles can also motivate what might otherwise be disillusioned students or practitioners to re-engage with their otherwise difficult roles.

Althusser is also keen to stress that critical aspects of the human sciences (and Freud's original understanding of the ‘unconscious’ is offered as an example) can help us to adapt Marx's more organic later work so as to cultivate his ideas, including aspects of theory not developed in his philosophical accounts. Three points are of interest here. First, Althusser (as with Marx) is indicating that much ideology is plural and will tend to accommodate competing beliefs. Second, Althusser indicates that ideologies are often independent from economic factors (as is now widely accepted). Accordingly, occupations such as social work can be seen as capable of producing their own self-determining ideologies that can compete with others (and potentially challenge more normative theories developed within an established ideological state apparatus). Such ideologies can also adapt, change or even disappear over time. Finally, ideology is recognized as always being with us in some form and usually to maintain and reproduce exploitative relations. Cowden and Singh (2007) provide an example of the diversity and partial independence of differing ideologies, as well as their implicit use for exploitation, when they draw from Althusser to question New Labour's highly rhetorical engagement with consumer-led ‘user involvement’. They claim that various types of user-involvement offer a convenient two-pronged ideological device which conceal the sustained power base held by professionals, government and welfare bureaucracies over ever more objectified and ‘commodified’ service users. First, through rhetoric, the ideology of involvement tells an imaginary story in which ‘clients’ were previously denied engagement by welfare professionals within anachronistic state bureaucracies and institutions of the 1970s and 1980s; now through ‘participation’ they are offered many more choices and are also included in decision-making processes. Second, there is a materialist consequence to any ‘involvement hegemony’ in that it moulds (or in Althusser's understanding ‘interpellates’) the opinions and actions of ‘service users’ through their engagement with hegemonic institutions and rituals that determine (and restrict) their needs, actions and attitudes.

Gramsci's use of hegemony isolates the magnitude of both consent and coercion within civil society, especially relating to forms of social and political governance. Although inconsistent in parts of the Prison notebooks, Gramsci's (1971) understanding of hegemony still prioritizes a desire to achieve consent from, rather than direct control over, subaltern classes. Just as significant remains the provision of moral and intellectual leadership by ruling elites. As we saw earlier the scientific methods advocated by the COS offered an uncouth and clumsy form of ideology which lacked the restraint and dynamism of typical forms of hegemony. The application of rational science also reflected the culture of a specific time and was concerned with offering a coherent strategy to direct volunteers, upon which a nascent profession could promote its survival and legitimacy. In retrospect the crude application of the COS's techniques and relatively primitive ideals included the incapacity to build any form of coherent professional hegemony. This example illustrates just how difficult it is for institutions, policies, aspiring professionals, and so on, to gain legitimacy or preserve their function without the support of more coherent ideological strategies. It also supports Althusser's assumption that science as discourse remains unable to convince by itself; not least because, as Ricoeur (1994, p. 56) suggests, ‘people want ideologies because science [alone] does not give their lives meaning’. Again such points are supported by the related scepticism felt towards science-based behaviourist or evidence-based approaches within social work education or practice, and support of more ‘meaningful’ humanist movements such as service-user participation, anti-discriminatory or anti-oppressive practice.

Cruickshank (1999) draws significantly from Foucault and notes the use of social science to promote state governance, and (along with Althusser) subjectivity and self-discipline within civil society. For example, Cruickshank details how seemingly ‘emancipatory’ initiatives such as those that link empowerment or participation to social care have been utilized to encourage citizens as subjects to be more reflexive and raise their (apparently low) self-esteem. This is so that they can integrate, engage socially and be ‘empowered’ or re-educated, skilled and normalized to control and self-govern themselves. The author stresses the pioneering impact of social work around the time of the COS in attempting to achieve the ideal of ‘the self-governing citizen’. In a similar vein to Gramsci's fluid understanding of ‘common sense’ or hegemony, Foucault's later work on ‘governmentality’ also highlights the later more developed, subtle and disparate welfare programmes which are seemingly designed to ‘pacify citizens’. Powell (2009, pp. 673–676) again draws heavily upon this tradition to stress the ‘continually changing technologies that function to mediate relations between older people and care professionals’. Pivotal remain medical power and increasingly management-centred technologies such as the social work assessment which are geared towards surveillance through ‘probing techniques’ from which ‘an individual is established as a “case” and may be judged, measured, compared with others’ and then ‘trained, classified, normalized, and excluded’. This point also echoes Jacques Ellul's (1965) critique of the impact of technology within wider society, including its capacity to erode more ‘natural’ moral values in exchange for a cultural and political push for efficiency and standardization. Here ‘la technique’ strives for the ‘mechanization of everything it encounters’, not least the human soul, through which ‘technique transforms everything it touches into a machine’. Consequentially, largely uncontrolled forces such as rationalization and calculability pervade all aspects of organizational life, including a dangerous common sense assumption that technology, reason and efficiency remain good for us all. Examples of such themes are not difficult to locate: such as with the rise in social work of acute managerialism, the application of ever more procedures that determine formal relations with service users, cordial or more empathetic support for evidence-based practice, among many more examples (see also Burton & van den Broek, 2009; Coleman & Harris, 2008; Garrett, 2005).

ii) Neo-liberalism

Over the past three decades extensive academic material has scrutinized and critically dissected the effect of neo-liberalism upon social work practice (for example, Alcock, 1989; Clarke, Cochrane, & Smart, 1987, among many more). Briefly this literature is dominated by accounts especially apparent within social policy that, among much else, stress:

the impact of the privatization and de-centralization of prior state dominated social work services;

the gradual transfer of collective state provision to individual and family-centred responsibility and greater provision through voluntary and private sector support systems;

the elevation of private sector managerial styles within the public sector;

the disintegration of prior social-democratic forms of social work practitioner discretion;

the extension of organizational and employee control by output measures and performance indicators;

the overhaul of social work education with pedagogical services making way to ‘reductionist’ skills and vocational work-based training.

Clarke et al. (1987, pp. 189–196) argue that market initiatives draw directly from the principles of the Poor Law ‘not only in relation to [their] strong ideological commitment to a minimal state [and a] reintroduction of distinct elements of charity… [but also regarding] a new attempt to pathologize and stigmatize the poor by treating them as inadequate’. Although offering vital critical insights into extensive market-led reforms, some such accounts tend to neglect or ignore the, at least, moderate acceptance or even support that persists for supply-led modes of organization within the social work quasi-profession itself. For example, in drawing from a study of 25 English local authorities in 1993, Wistow et al. (1996, p. 5) detail how attitudes within social work senior management toward then recent and radical privatization policies were beginning to change:

[This study] provides evidence of changing attitudes towards social care markets on the part of social services Directors and Chairs, including [in contrast to earlier scepticism in 1991] a growing tendency to see such markets as mechanisms with potential for achieving social goals.

Jones (1999, p. 42) is more forthright within his analysis of social work education and practice when he notes that:

. . . even the most cursory reading of some of the key texts that have been used on social work courses over the past century reveals a most extraordinary tradition and contempt for large segments of social work’s client population. . . . For all the language of compassion and empathy there is running alongside it another language of hate and contempt – a principal paradox of social work under capitalism.

Such findings might be construed as offering some support to Althusser's (1971) interpretation of ideology as interpellation; whereby subjectivity is expressed through the values and norms articulated through an ideological state apparatus: that is, subjects recognize and identify themselves through imposed ideological constructs. In this instance market-led concepts such as partnership, competition, a purchaser/provider split, the quasi-market and choice or empowerment emerge within a dominant discourse in which individuals are identified as ‘self-interested, rational actors’ (Healey, 2005, p. 28).

Such assumptions are often implicit within much of the ‘new managerial’ literature relating to social work that stress interpellation and the imposed enforcement of dominant ideals. Žižek (1991), however, draws from psychoanalytical theory (specifically Lacan) when he questions the impact of Althusser's theory of interpellation as all conquering political process. Instead, types of interpellation are viewed as existing alongside forms of ‘subjective coping’ or compliance in which social actors generate or weave fantasies or imaginary dreams to replace ‘real world’ antagonisms or discord with sources of harmony. In this context subjects effectively self-interpellate themselves through at least partial fantasy, ignorance and/or denial in order to cope with difficult truths or a dystopian world that lacks the concrete meaning previously offered by religion. For example, coping strategies for social workers might include prejudice felt towards service users as ‘incompetent parents’ or ‘benefit cheats’ in order to help make a difficult punitive role within child or adult protection more acceptable.

More emphatically, however, Marcuse's (1964) analysis of a mass ‘non-oppositional’ or ‘one-dimensional’ society suggests more extensive compliance at a conscious level for the modern-day citizen. Here a large majority of ‘post-industrial’ consumers (across social classes) see no point in rebelling against forms of authority as their primary needs (food, shelter, emotional needs, access to consumer durables, etc.) are identified as being adequately met. This, Marcuse argued (drawing especially from Freud), had led to the emergence of a form of ‘repressive desublimation’ in which personal liberties or principles (within the workplace as elsewhere) are given up or significantly compromised in exchange for access to material and sensory pleasures, such as those enjoyed within an expanding and hedonistic consumer society. Critical themes such as the intense regulation or deskilling of the social work labour process are therefore (consciously or unconsciously) perceived as acceptable in exchange for material rewards such as those enjoyed during times of leisure. From such theoretical observations we can surmise that ideological interpellation can include acceptance of uncomfortable concepts and activities alongside those that convince or offer harmony.

In relation, Hall (1977, p. 49) suggests that Gramsci remains the first Marxist ‘to seriously examine ideology at its “lower levels” as the accumulation of popular “knowledges” and the means of dealing with everyday life’. Hegemony may therefore draw from a variety of sources including traditional beliefs, advertisements, the media, education services, family values, trade unions, textbooks, peer pressure or a complex web of traditional values and practices that reflect ‘common sense’ expressions. Garrett (2008, pp. 239–240, p. 247), however, points out some of the problems attached to Gramsci's work. These include core writing and ideas that may seem fixed in their historical time or location, including, not least, some conservative views on ‘morality, women or the family’. Gramsci's writing can also at times ‘appear fragmentary, even lacking coherence’. However, potentially, aspects of his core ideas can be adapted or fused with other critical thinkers to help us better understand (and more importantly resist) many of the applied underlying tenets of a corrosive neo-liberal discourse applied within social work education and practice.

As we have seen, Foucault locates and positions the citizen as subject within broader discursive formations and statements that help to position and determine their status, actions, role and normative beliefs and values. For example, it can limit what a service user is allowed to say and do within professional boundaries; indeed sometimes more prominently as part of seemingly more ‘empowering’ participation rituals or processes (Hodge, 2005). Althusser's ideologically enforced ‘imaginary relationships’ (created by an ideological state apparatus) and Foucault's discursive subject (generated through a legal, economic, political or professional discourse) are not simply created from isolated points of axis – such as a manager's practice or beliefs, legal guidance or policy reforms – but remain held within a broader social and political terrain that encompasses a variety of discursive practices or non-discursive entities such as the rules and traditions of institutions or external economic processes. These frameworks reconstitute through symbols, signs, rhetoric, accepted practices, professional norms, etc., the social work practitioner/service user as subjects with specific roles within a neo-liberal discourse that promotes competition, choice, efficiency, and equal opportunities through the market. For example, Powell (2006) again draws from Foucault to argue that power relations in health and welfare institutions contribute towards a market-led ‘discursive device’ that empowers professionals, not as promoters of needs or advocates of anti-oppression, but instead as eligibility or risk assessors (with new powers of surveillance) whilst also placing new responsibilities upon older people as self-regulating ‘service users’.

However, not everyone agrees that interpellation processes, market-led discourse or more generally practitioner compliance is a relatively predictable or inevitable outcome. For example, Thomas and Davies (2005, pp. 729–730) question the new managerial assumption that in hostile social work environments resisters are quickly identified by supervisors and ‘pathologized, viewed as deviant or defective members of the organization’ and subsequently dismissed as ‘making up a minority of ‘awkward types’ to be dealt with by either re-education or removal. Instead, in drawing from interviews with both social work practitioners and managers, they discovered that resistance appears as a relatively common response to policy and other external market-led pressures, and opposition does at times include the imposition of practitioners’ own ‘non-market-led’ values, beliefs and practices. As is well documented, Foucault (1990) was keen to stress the inevitability of resistance within discursive arenas, yet he also pointed out that such defiance does not necessarily endure or lead to positive change.

iii) Professionalism

Since its inception, social work has persevered to attain full professional status. Initially this was motivated by a pragmatic desire for specialist training, education and internal control, as well as providing a means to distinguish the social work role as a skilled activity that was distinct from more haphazard, and randomly applied, forms of philanthropy. Jones (1983, p. 84), however, adds that professionalism also developed as a ‘way of keeping out those ideas and theories that challenge [any conservative] idealist perspectives on the problems of clients and poverty in general’. Also drawing heavily from traditional Marxism, Bailey and Brake (1975) stress the self-promoting aspects of professionalism for social work. They claim that professionalism stands alongside an altruistic ideological veneer that gives additional precedence to the use of knowledge (and casework) to objectify, pathologize and maintain power over service users. Such techniques that draw significantly from a scientific knowledge-base also help to articulately mask or dismiss the structural causes of disadvantage, exclusion and poverty. Despite such criticism, professionalism has remained a popular objective within social work education and practice, including among ‘critical’ authors (see for example, Healey & Meagre, 2004). This largely reaffirms Macdonald's (1995) assertion of professionalism as offering a variety of purposes, including the provision of a collective identity, especially when an occupation lacks legitimacy or feels under threat. Other core traits held within a professional labour process include:

the use of adept skills based on theoretical knowledge;

the formation of a professional association and establishment of a code of conduct;

the assessment and evaluation of professionals’ competence through specialist training and examinations;

the provision of a service that is recognized as providing for the public good;

the maintenance of exclusionary strategies (through recruitment and education) to ensure privilege and power. (Adapted from Macdonald, 1995; Millerson, 1964; Parkin, 1979.)

If professionalism represents an ideology it is one that is smaller in scale and ambition. For example, Freeden (2003, p. 97) identifies professionalism as a ‘thin’ or ‘micro-ideology’. Professionalism may also persist as part of a broader bio-medical or legal discourse (see Healey, 2005). Potentially micro-ideologies can also offer a divisive threat to the lifespan or stability of some macro-ideologies. For example, Watson (1982) draws from Weber and argues that some groups of staff in a workplace can mould and shape their own ideologies that bring together shared beliefs, values and interests. Such smaller ideologies may resist and undermine wider organizational ideologies: they may also encourage ‘deviant’ sentiment or practices. In relation to social work, however, Davies (2003) draws from post-structural theory to claim that professional identities tend to be ‘flexible, complex and socially constructed’. They tend to also be built upon a ‘binary reasoning process’ that pits the ‘privileged expert’ against the ‘devalued other’. Here the client as ‘devalued other’ is not usually disregarded as being either ‘incompetent, invisible or unnecessary’.

Professionalism confirms Gramsci's (1971) recognition of hegemony as emerging from multiple sites (historic, personal, group, and so on) and as offering an enticing, popular yet flexible belief system that is not entirely (and rationally) imposed from power sources above. As well as preserve a personal or group identity, professionalism may provide stability or even survival within an otherwise uncertain, strenuous or difficult role. For example, against the regulation and deskilling of state social work, professionalism may provide a focal point for forms of collective or individual resistance, such as in attempts to prioritize practitioner knowledge, skills, or discretion (see Carey, 2008).

Such occupational or even group or self-generated beliefs again bring into question Althusser's interpretation of aspects of ideology as omnipresent and largely forced upon passive subjects. Rather Gramsci's (1971) understanding of hegemony as more symbiotic and fluid perhaps offers a more appropriate model of interpretation: here the complex symbiotic combination of external (neo-liberal, managerialist, risk-centred, etc.) and internal or de-centred (participation, empowerment, anti-discriminatory, etc.) types of hegemony can play their part in restricting and/or promoting professional power. Foucault (1977) identified welfare professionalism as a complex means to express power through knowledge production and self-governance but also as a way to generate a network of surveillance: especially through a capacity to collect and process information whilst disseminating normative principles (mostly through an elaborate combination of punitive or pedagogical practices). The majority of social work roles (assessment, evaluation, review, casework, and so on) would seem to confirm many of these assumptions.

Althusser's (1971) distinction between an Ideological and Repressive State Apparatus is nevertheless helpful since state social work as aspiring profession has for some time seen its function pivot between both state roles, especially with the rise of risk-based approaches and techniques, and the now increasingly dominant (and perhaps eventually exclusive) part played within child and adult protection. However, as well as being smaller in scale, professionalism is perhaps even more contested and nuanced than some other forms of ideology. For example, Parkin (1979), drawing from Weber, notes that state ‘welfare’ professionalism is often ambivalent and paradoxical since it positions the professional between the often contested interests of the state/organization and client/patient.

Conclusion

The three case examples presented suggest that there are abundant questions to be asked regarding more recent sociological assumptions that propose we now live in a new ‘post-hegemonic’ age. That we exist in a more fluid and indeterminate world in which communication is more pronounced and heterogeneous sites of production and politicization persist (Thoburn, 2007) is not so much open to question. Such themes and trends have impacted upon social work through its fragmentation of role, education and services. Also its greater reliance upon more specialist practices, new information and ‘data-based’ technologies and now intense assortment of statutory and non-statutory services. There has also occurred ever increasing varieties of ‘risk-centred’ assessments, alongside much other bureaucracy. Newer types of social work continue to flourish, such as the rise in ‘call centre’ or employment ‘agency’ based social care, and proposals to create independent ‘GP surgery’ type practices, among other examples (see, for example, Coleman & Harris, 2008; Healey, 2005; Postle, 2001, among others).

However, as with every other aspect of political-economy, it is surely inevitable that social work should alter or experience periods of dramatic reform. Extensive changes have occurred throughout social work relatively brief history, including since the days when the volunteering Almoner sought to refer pre-assessed cases to the Poor Law Commission over a century ago (Timms, 1964). At the same time, however, social work has also become much more regulated, rationalized, procedure orientated, deskilled, and enshrined in ever more didactic policy initiatives, legislation and forms of managerialism and surveillance. In other words, the trends that may appear at first glance to provide evidence of a new ‘post-hegemonic’ age have, on closer inspection, run alongside the intensification of traditional themes and trends. This includes not least the greater reliance upon forms of market-led or professional hegemony and discourse. Just as social work has become more dispersed or fragmented, so its reliance upon more coherent ‘traditional’ ideological foundations have become greater rather than disappeared. In sum, and as Althusser and Gramsci among others recognized, the intensification of the market into all spheres of social, economic and political life will tend to demand more from ideologies rather than less.

Post-hegemony as a theory merely repeats and privileges the magnitude of disparity and fragmentation without always providing any real means by which to identify and resist sources of oppression. Indeed, as other commentators have noted (for example, Ackroyd & Thompson, 1999; Eagleton, 2007; among many others), resistance largely appears as a pointless or foolhardy activity as part of such analysis since, as with post-structuralism, power is seemingly everywhere, ever changing and just as likely to be strengthened by any types of resistance rather than challenged. In contrast, a more nuanced and critical analysis of ideology within social work might seek to:

identify and question the differing ideological forms and interests that are active within types of social work practice and education;

distinguish between negative (to conceal forms of domination, control and the objectives of elites) and progressive (enlightening, emancipatory or anti-oppressive) forms of ideology;

attempt to reveal the motives and symbols utilized within negative techniques of ideological distortion;

recognize that dominant ideology can influence personal beliefs as well as pedagogical or practice-based techniques or processes;

understand the complex relationship between negative ideology and discourse and seek to recognize the subsequent interests that are served through both. (Adapted from Eagleton, 2007; Habermas, 1968/1981; Healey, 2005; Ricoeur, 1994.)

Such strategies, among others, may offer some way forward towards more constructive forms of critical analysis than those offered by the at times pretentious, conservative and opportunistic neo-functionalist posturing provided by some advocates of a post-hegemony and/or post-ideology thesis.

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