The Context of Radical Practice
(reprinted from A Paradigm for Radical Practice by Peter Leonard)
1. Contradiction - In capitalist society, social work operates as part of a social-welfare system which is located at the centre of the contradictions arising from the dehumanizing consequences of capitalist economic production. Social workers, although situated ina largely oppressive organizational and professional context, have the potential for recognizing these contradictions and, though working at the point of interation between peopleand thier social environment, of helping to increase the control by people over economic and political structures.
2. Dialectic of people and systems - The relationship between people and the various systems which compromise thier social environment is a dialectical one. "It is as transforming and creative beings that men, in their permanent relations with realityproduce not only material goods - tangible objects - but also social institutions, ideas and concepts. Through thier continuing praxis, ment simultaneously create history and become historical-social beings" (Friere, 1972.) Although it is true to say that men both create and are created by thier social world, the concept of social work provides an opportunity for enhancing the creative, determining, potential of people.
3. Systems: oppressive and supportive - The social environment with which people interact and which is the focus of social-work intervention, can be seen as consisiting of a number of systems whichare the source of both oppression and support. In capitalist society these systems - the family, the neighborhood, the trade union, the school, the factory, the hospital, the social-welfare agency and others - all carry to a greater or lesser degree the marks of economic exploitation and the cultural hegemony of the ruling class. The oppression of women in the family, the fatalism of people in a neighborhood when faced with planned cultural elimination, the socialization of children in school to the demands of the labor market, the alienation of factory workers, the elitism and exclusiveness of trade unions, and the bureaucratic, controlling and dehumanizing features of hospitals and social-welfare organizations, are all examples of this oppression. Social work has the potential of enhancing the supportive features of some of the systems in the interests of people.
4. Individual consciousness - The understanding of the interation between people and systems in the social environment musct include a recognition of the individual's own consciousness, of what social institutions mean to them, and of thier pain and suffering, hape and despair. In social work an understanding of the effects of past and current experiences on the consciousness, intentions and behavior of individuals is crucial. Appreciation of these effects on the social worker themselves, as well as on other people, is of vital importance to the development of radical practice. "Discovering himself to be an oppressor may cause considerable anguish, but it does necessarily lead to socildarity with the oppressed. Rationalizing his guilt through paternalistic treatment of the oppressed, all the while holding them fast in a position of dependence, will not do. Solidarity requires that one enter into the situation of those with shome one is identifying:it is a radical posture" (Friere, 1972b, 26.)
