This issue of Critical Social Work is devoted to recognizing and celebrating Professor Amy Rossiter, her critical scholarship, and its widespread influence across Canada and internationally. A revered social work theoretician, teacher, colleague and friend, Amy passed away on January 17, 2023. Amy left us too soon and we mourn her loss. She continues to enrich our lives with her timeless, incisive, and brilliant scholarship. Amy completed a Bachelor of Music, an MSW, and PhD from the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto, in 1986. She joined the School of Social Work, at York University, as Associate Professor in 1992, acting as Director of the School from 1999-2002, and retiring in 2014. Amy shaped all aspects of our undergraduate and graduate programs. She developed and taught our foundational communication course, advanced practice, and our doctoral course on Social Justice. A devoted musician, her longtime membership in the Mendelssohn Choir afforded us opportunities to watch her perform outside of the classroom.
This paper seeks to explore the profound and rupturing impact that grief can have as a method to disrupt and analyze social works epistemological foundations. The paper first explores and identifies social works positivist roots and the limitations this has on creating liberatory and progressive inclusion practices. The essay then seeks to establish and identify the need for emotions within social work scholarship. By exploring this need, the paper hopes to identify different ways that emotions, such as grief, can be used as a tool that collectivizes critical frameworks to create and reimagine new and innovative practices to rethink what social work can be within the Canadian context. Ultimately, the essay is a call for social work to rethink how we use grief in our work and invites productive questions of how it can be used as a tool to bring together critical epistemologies that have been othered within scholarship to create new forms of solidarity within the field moving forward.
This study is an inquiry into the role of social work in responding to the vulnerability of poor older adults living in jjokbang-chon, a neighborhood with a high concentration of informal housing in Seoul, South Korea, to extreme weather disasters. The findings presented in this research are derived from a year-long ethnographic study. The fieldwork consisted of living in the community, carrying out participant observations through working with social work-related agencies, and conducting interviews with community members. The findings showed that the government-funded social work agency is mainly rooted in charitable material aid, or what we call disposable social work, and is not only wasteful in terms of the environment but also disposable in the sense that rather than addressing the fundamental problems, it is a short-term reactionary response whose effects quickly fade away. We highlight the work by the local grassroots group as an example of ecosocial work practice, which is more inclusive of the community members by providing opportunities for political participation and decision-making, The findings illuminate the role of ecosocial work in addressing climate change-related disasters in marginalized communities that empower marginalized individuals and communities.
Anti-oppressive social work practice (AOP) has been advanced as a key progressive methodology for some decades. Standing in critical social work, it is founded on clear assumptions and includes several key strategies for implementation. At the same time, however, two factors, namely the alignment of the discourse of good (dominant) social work with social justice, and AOP theorists themselves not consistently distinguishing differences, has led to a blurring of what constitutes good social work versus AOP. In this article we rely on a critical perspective to remind of these essential distinctions. We also establish that this failure to clearly distinguish the essence of AOP has allowed for the disciplining of AOP, thus rendering it largely without any force. We encourage social work educators, students, and practitioners to reclaim the progressive, critical edge of AOP to become effective agents of social change.
In this paper, I draw on the contributions of Amy Rossiter to engage the deeply tragic project and consequences of the proposed implementation of entry to social work practice examinations in the province of Ontario, Canada and beyond. Rossiterian attentions to complicities with historical forms of erasure, erosion and violence, projects of innocence making, and methodologies that obliterate attentions to colonialities offer ongoing insights for how just analyses in social work can and must be defended. Specifically, by means of unwavering opposition to racist, ableist, neoliberal/colonial examination technologies in social work. From a respect for Rossiter’s attentions to the ethics of the encounter, the Gadamerian concept of horizons of interpretation, unsettling social work, the practice of questioning the violence of totalizing methods, and the possibilities that arise from struggle, resistance and solidarity are explored for their infinite potentials for transformation. These analyses contribute from the place of proposed oblivion, to tap into the that which allows for escape and freedom, and a sense of justice beyond the logics of erosive, violent knowledge technologies operating in and through the proposed social work entry-to-practice examinations.
In her influential paper Innocence Lost, Suspicion Found Rossiter (2001) ponders whether to educate ‘for or against’ social work, teasing out the harms of ‘dividing practices’ that reinscribe class and race-based violations. I am interested in Rossiter’s assertation that ethical practice requires educators and practitioners to maintain a constant vigilance and skepticism about our professional knowledges and practices that often confirm inequality and misrecognition. As a social work educator for almost twenty-five years, I have been significantly influenced by Rossiter’s work. I discuss Rossiter’s theorizing about an ethics that precedes practice, a suspicion of conventional methods of both social work practice and social work pedagogy and listening for the unknown. This paper discusses how these concepts are reflected within the Walls to Bridges program (W2B), a university-based program that teaches classes in correctional facilities, comprised of both campus-based and incarcerated students.
Despite the numerous benefits of formal faculty mentorship, it remains underutilized within the academy. While there is substantial literature on formal faculty mentorship, there is limited research on the use, and importance, of recognizing culture and utilizing inclusive language within these relationships. The current models of formal faculty mentorship do not include inclusive language as part of their relationally based practices. It is critical to evaluate the role language plays in creating and enhancing these relationships. The use of inclusive language in formal mentoring relationships is important when exploring ways institutions can recruit, retain, and support faculty, specifically historically marginalized groups. To bring attention to this topic, this article presents a conceptual framework integrating components of Relational Cultural Theory (RCT), the ecological perspective, and general systems theory as a mechanism to support faculty through mentorship practices focused on being culturally responsive and using inclusive language. Implications for faculty, institutions, higher education, and the social work profession are discussed.
Since the rebel war in Sierra Leone ended in 2002, there has been an extraordinary increase in international non-governmental organizations that aid people. One such area is mental health. However, both the government and NGOs use the medical model for intervening in mental health and mental illness. Therefore, this research was a documentary analysis of the World Health Organization Mental Health Atlas of 2020: Country Profile. The report states that there are no social workers who provide help to people diagnosed with mental illness. So, this research brings to the fore some of the significant roles that clinical and mental health social workers can provide. The research is a move away from the pathological focus on mental health and discusses the sociological and biopsychosocial intervention by social workers.
It was back in 2004, when Amy Rossiter and I first started communicating. We had just published a chapter called ‘Post-Critical Social Work Analytics’ (2004) in which we raised three doubts about the validity of critical social work, with a focus on the analysis of relations of power. I argued that the mixing of Marxism and Critical Theory with Foucault and postmodernism produced a confused state of affairs. Amy was the first to respond to this and urged that critical social work must undertake the important task of analysing actual relations of power. As Amy described it “I am interested in the small, everyday moments of social work practice and education that carry a history marked by conflict between social justice and social control”.
This article examines the implementation of a harm reduction pilot project in a Canadian permanent supportive living facility for older people with experiences of homelessness (OPEH). Nearing the conclusion of the intervention, two nominal group technique (NGT) sessions were facilitated to identify key learnings from the project. The key learnings informed a secondary analysis of qualitative interviews with stakeholders from health and social services as well as with residents and staff at the intervention site. Participants stressed the positive impacts of their participation in co-designing the harm reduction programming throughout the intervention lifecycle, which enhanced the relationship between frontline care providers and OPEH residents. A major identified barrier to implementation of the programming was the underlying organizational accountabilities to funding bodies, which were perceived to be influenced by business decisions that emphasized maximizing efficiency and minimizingCritical Social Work, 2024 Vol. 25, No. 2 institutional liability. The competing priorities of the organization and OPEH care recipients resulted in a breakdown in communication and trust. We situate these tensions within the broader neoliberal policy framework that shapes organizational decision making and priority setting. The findings of this research will be useful for frontline care providers (of both health and social services) and program administrators in harm reduction settings looking to enhance harm reduction service delivery for OPEH. The findings point to a disconnect between the policies currently governing public service provision and the ethics in which harm reduction is grounded, while speaking to opportunities to challenge these conditions in research and practice contexts.
This article examines how stereotypes of Black males and Black masculinity operate in the construction of the Black male of African descent in the Canadian educational context. Specifically, the study discussed here examined how this archetypal frame informed the lived experience of second-generation Ethiopian males in relation to race, academic performance, ambition to achieve their desired goals, and integration into Canadian society. From qualitative interviews conducted with 11 second-generation Ethiopian males, the study found that stereotypes of African cultural identity and its cumulative effects in their developmental years, along with culturally specific protective factors by way of family, nurturing relationships, and robust social support systems equipped them with the ability to nurture their potential and build on their abilities and skills, to enable them to realize their ambitions. The findings have implications for how social workers/counsellors in educational or clinical contexts can better advocate for a more expansive curriculum and support Black male students of African descent in their pursuit of educational success to enable a healthier pathway to integration.
Amy Rossiter has long called our attention to the governing effects of social work knowledge (i.e., how it directs both discursive thinking and the daily actions of people). For her, knowledge itself is neither neutral nor true but is produced and maintained by discourse that defines what is considered acceptable and true. The production of knowledge is a relation of power; therefore, social work knowledge itself should be a topic of scrutiny. Taking her argument to heart, we seek to show how the governing effects of knowledge discursively operates in a practice setting, using a pilot program training manual designed to help East Asian Canadian immigrants to build self-esteem as a case example. Instead of viewing the training manual as having discovered some truths regarding the nature of self-esteem, we take it as knowledge that reflects the dominant discourse of self-esteem that is constituted historically, materially, and discursively. In so doing, we attempt to show how the concept of self-esteem is produced and how it organizes and governs social work practice.
Over the last two decades, there has been a growing movement in social work education calling for the centering of anti-oppressive and critical approaches. As field education is considered social work’s “signature pedagogy,” it must central to any program of critical social work education. This study explores a type field education site that explicitly engages in the activism and resistance work inherent in critical practice – holistic family defense. Ten social work field instructors from nine different family defense practices were interviewed about the structure, goals, and perceived outcomes of their internship programs and recommendations for expanding social work practica in family defense and related contexts. Results illustrate how field placements in family defense practices allow students to increase their awareness of how racism, classism, and misogyny are enacted and reproduced through government systems, learn to question the dominant discourses around ideas of “protecting children,” re-examine social work’s participation and collusion in systems of control, and engage in the direct work of challenging systems of oppression and injustice. Recommendations are made for expanding social work practica in family defense and developing additional sites for critical field education.
Amy’s intellectual work will live long in her many writings and publications. I do salute her work as an inspiration for many of my own endeavours. In this piece I want to pay particular tribute to my more personal encounters with her.
Amy Rossiter’s body of work has had profound pedagogical and theoretical impacts on the lives and work of the authors of this paper. Using a relational methodology with letters as a starting point, we interview each other about Rossiter’s impact on each of us, and continue this engagement with letters throughout the article. With particular focus on despair in the classroom, we extend Rossiter’s contributions in conversation with Cvetkovich, Ahmed, and other queer and critical affect theorists to think through how to encounter that despair with the use of “melting pedagogies.” We illustrate some of the ways that we try to facilitate this melting, knowing that this work is always partial, contingent, and located in our own practices in the context of despair and hope. We finally consider what scholars and educators can learn and who they can become through ongoing and deliberate engagement with Rossiter’s deep and incisive contributions to ethics and a commitment to social justice.
The aim of this paper is to unsettle dominant discourses about the state and forensic social work though “dehistoricization” through two historical case studies from Canada: the eugenics movement and the Indian Act. This critical and structural analysis will demonstrate how the state historically and contemporarily disproportionately disadvantages disabled and Indigenous peoples independently and intersectionally through social control tactics. Using a conceptual framework from Foucault’s History of the Present approach, I problematize how historical practices manifest in present-day technologies of the state. I also utilized Blackstock’s Touchstones of Hope, a model for reconciliation in children’s services through four phases: Truth Telling, Acknowledging, Restoring, and Relating. After situating myself in the work, I will then articulate the key concepts including forensic social work, the state, intersectionality, and settler colonialism followed by the dominant historical discourses in forensic social work. Next, I dehistoricize the eugenics movement and the Indian Act as case studies to demonstrate how the state used and uses social control tactics of surveillance, categorization, segregation, and containment of disabled and Indigenous peoples. Contemporary forensic social work practices with disabled and Indigenous peoples will demonstrate that the historical practices continue in the present. I conclude with a call for reconciliation and transformative change.
Current progressive and radical approaches to social work tend to reflect Marxist views of social problems and their solution. A critique of classical and other non-autonomous Marxist views of authority and structure leads the reader to consider moving beyond hierarchies to considering anti-authoritarian perspectives for social work. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the reader to the history and theory of anarchist thought. I make it clear that I am not speaking from a position of expertise nor claim authority here but encourage further dialogue. This is explicitly articulated as this paper intends to inform and promote discussion and thought on an anarchist approach to social work.
Despite increasing acknowledgement within and beyond the social work profession of our role in enacting violence against people we claim to care for and serve, discursive strategies that rationalize and naturalize violence are endemic within social work discourse. In this article, I use critical discourse-historical analysis to examine one interview I conducted with a practicing social worker in Alberta, Canada. Grounded in an intersectional critical approach to inquiry, I elucidate how rationalization strategies for professional violence emerge in ordinary social work talk and situate one social worker’s description of her practice within a historical context of the fabrication of social work in Canada. I focus on this social worker’s reports of threatening clients with a “virtual wooden spoon” to identify linguistic and discursive patterns at play and their semiotic significance as means to rationalize and normalize professional power and control. I specifically situate the analysis within the context of social work as a story of racist, classist, and ableist violence often committed by morally exalted, wealthy, white women. I conclude by reflecting on the importance of examining discursive strategies to rationalize, dismiss or diminish violence in our everyday social work talk.
Understanding the effects of White femininity on social work practice is a worthy endeavour provided the disproportionate numbers of White women that have built and occupied the professional role of social worker from the origins of colonization to present. Mainstream accounts of social work history narrate the profession to be a pursuit of well-intentioned middle- and upper-class White women, concealing the colonial operations that underpin the formation of social work as a White feminine project. While Whiteness and its effects within social work have been a subject of study, the intersection of gender and Whiteness has been minimally addressed, disregarding significant nuances that inform the relationship between the project of colonization and social work. This paper provides a detailed analysis of semi-structured interviews with eight White, woman-identified social workers who have practiced community-based social work for a minimum of two years in Alberta, Canada. Foucauldian discourse analysis is used to trace the ways the participants perform the dominant discourse of White femininity. The findings illuminate the social work profession's ongoing complicity with its colonial origins, which collude with White femininity and ultimately foster practices steeped in racism. A vital need to disentangle social work from its colonial and racist scripts is emphasized.
Max Stirner (1806-1856) is an iconoclastic 19th-century philosopher who, despite a period of obscurity, has remained somewhat influential – particularly within segments of the anarchist milieu. This conceptual article maintains Stirner’s writing has something to offer social work thinking and practice. Using Stirner’s most influential work, The Ego and Its Own, I will present three of Stirner’s terms: Specters, The Creative Nothing, and Ownness. I conclude with a presentation of three “unique” prospects for social work that draws from Stirner’s anti-teleological and anti-foundationalist approach to liberation.
