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WARNING: VERY ACADEMIC. Read at your own risk. ;-)
So I'm starting to gear up for my comprehensive exam in May. It's the theory exam. I love and hate theory. I love ideas. I get lost in my own head sometimes, finding new ways to view and/or understand the world. But it's different when you have to apply theory to research. Then it's, well, WORK! I've decided on Marxist theory and postmodernism, with an eye towards feminist critical theory as a back-up depending on what they throw at me.
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ubiq31 asked me what I was reading vis-a-vis Foucault. I picked up a book called "Reading Foucault for Social Work" from the library that I might just need to buy. Alas, a lot of social work-y type books focus on clinical interventions. But I'm not a therapist. I'm interested in policy and oppression and social justice. How can postmodern theory be useful in policy research and policy advocacy?
Here's my embryonic thought process. Problems exist in a place and time only if we label and acknowledge them. But even how, when and why we label them becomes a factor. Policy is an intervention devised to fix a problem. But what solution is suggested is dependent upon who is defining the problem and how, and one must always ask who benefits by the policy solution proposed.
Homelessness is a good example of this. Definitions of homelessness have varied historically. But the very word "homeless" didn't exist until the Reagen era. Once we had that word, and that word functioned as a noun and not an adjective, we created a "homeless identity" and could study "them" in ways that replaced "pauper" or "vagrant" or "drunk" or "crazy person" or "street arab" or "beggar" etc etc etc. Policies fluctuate between treating individuals for individual deficits (substance abuse, psychiatric services, teaching people how to budget their money, etc), and structural solutions such as creating affordable housing, increasing the minimum wage, "housing first" that provides a roof and then clinical services, funding to make accommodations and alterations to homes for older adults, etc. Foucault spent a lot of time looking at institutionalization. I need to read more of that. From what I know, he looked at language. He looked at prison manifests. He looked at laws. He looked at inmate chronicles. He created a big picture by pulling together all the smaller parts. I find researchers in homelessness spend a lot of time "bean counting." If we know the composition of a population, does it stand that we can figure out what to do about it? The answer is . . . sometimes. Or maybe. But often we create solutions based on societal expectation rather than actual need. I believe that's how we wound up with programs that require people to take psychotropic medications in order to qualify for housing. Maybe a person's mental illness and how they choose to treat it is not related to keeping a roof over their head. Millions of people live with mental illness (treated and untreated) but are not homeless. Still, we cannot deny that some people become homeless because they cannot manage their affairs and have alienated the people around them who are overwhelmed by how mental illness flares up and affects interpersonal relationships. And then, of course, homelessness and mental illness are not synonymous. It's just that homeless mentally ill people are the most visible and worrisome to so many. Rarely out of compassion, usually out of personal fear, disgust, annoyance or depersonalized objectification that enables victim blaming. Never mind, even, the notion of housing as a human right and notions collective responsibility, as homelessness is often framed in other parts of the world.
I'm most familiar with his "History of Sexuality" and the creation and positioning of homosexuality. Same-sex sexual practices have existed since forever. But "homosexuals" didn't exist until we had a word for it. Particularly in regards to men, this is the case and it has always amused me to consider there were no laws in the UK under Queen Victoria to punish lesbians because she could not fathom what two women would do together. :snert:
Proposition 8 in California passed, in a Focaultian lens, precisely because the debate was over how to label "family". Family was positioned within a norm of society that is a collective subjective defining of a particular relationship pattern. Homophobic people try to place "the family" within historical context and assume that their idea of "the norm" has always been when in fact it has not. But we exist within a place and time and must remember that who and where and when we are determines much of our perspective. Also, at this historical juncture we as a society have been actively questioning family and gender roles within it for years, and the conflict of ideas and identities that ensue has become too threatening for too many. Does that mean the LGBT community should give up because a bunch of asshats cling in fear to their own safety zone? Hell no. It means we forge ahead from other angles to change the collective understanding of the meaning and functions of family. But we are still stuck with the classic problem of labeling and the fact that we function in a society wherein policy is dependent upon labeling.
So, how does one use these ideas to conduct social work research? I'm thinking constructivist grounded theory and client-based ethnography. Or surveys on perceptions (like opinion polls that ask annoying banal questions like "Do you approve of same-sex marriage?" vs. "Do you think the government should define marriage?" etc).
My challenge, for the exam, is to articulate two theories, their history and development, and how one would use them to conduct research. I do not know what subject they will throw at me so I must be prepared to deconstruct anything from public schooling to HIV infected mothers to human trafficking to public assistance and social security. Marxism is dry but lends itself easily to quantitative research in areas such as exploitation and disparities. I just have to train myself to write it. Foucault, on the other hand, is vastly more interesting to me but also a lot woollier.
Unfortunately, I must be an autodidact. My program, for all its virtues, has been very weak at theory.
So I'm starting to gear up for my comprehensive exam in May. It's the theory exam. I love and hate theory. I love ideas. I get lost in my own head sometimes, finding new ways to view and/or understand the world. But it's different when you have to apply theory to research. Then it's, well, WORK! I've decided on Marxist theory and postmodernism, with an eye towards feminist critical theory as a back-up depending on what they throw at me.
Anyway,
ubiq31 asked me what I was reading vis-a-vis Foucault. I picked up a book called "Reading Foucault for Social Work" from the library that I might just need to buy. Alas, a lot of social work-y type books focus on clinical interventions. But I'm not a therapist. I'm interested in policy and oppression and social justice. How can postmodern theory be useful in policy research and policy advocacy?Here's my embryonic thought process. Problems exist in a place and time only if we label and acknowledge them. But even how, when and why we label them becomes a factor. Policy is an intervention devised to fix a problem. But what solution is suggested is dependent upon who is defining the problem and how, and one must always ask who benefits by the policy solution proposed.
Homelessness is a good example of this. Definitions of homelessness have varied historically. But the very word "homeless" didn't exist until the Reagen era. Once we had that word, and that word functioned as a noun and not an adjective, we created a "homeless identity" and could study "them" in ways that replaced "pauper" or "vagrant" or "drunk" or "crazy person" or "street arab" or "beggar" etc etc etc. Policies fluctuate between treating individuals for individual deficits (substance abuse, psychiatric services, teaching people how to budget their money, etc), and structural solutions such as creating affordable housing, increasing the minimum wage, "housing first" that provides a roof and then clinical services, funding to make accommodations and alterations to homes for older adults, etc. Foucault spent a lot of time looking at institutionalization. I need to read more of that. From what I know, he looked at language. He looked at prison manifests. He looked at laws. He looked at inmate chronicles. He created a big picture by pulling together all the smaller parts. I find researchers in homelessness spend a lot of time "bean counting." If we know the composition of a population, does it stand that we can figure out what to do about it? The answer is . . . sometimes. Or maybe. But often we create solutions based on societal expectation rather than actual need. I believe that's how we wound up with programs that require people to take psychotropic medications in order to qualify for housing. Maybe a person's mental illness and how they choose to treat it is not related to keeping a roof over their head. Millions of people live with mental illness (treated and untreated) but are not homeless. Still, we cannot deny that some people become homeless because they cannot manage their affairs and have alienated the people around them who are overwhelmed by how mental illness flares up and affects interpersonal relationships. And then, of course, homelessness and mental illness are not synonymous. It's just that homeless mentally ill people are the most visible and worrisome to so many. Rarely out of compassion, usually out of personal fear, disgust, annoyance or depersonalized objectification that enables victim blaming. Never mind, even, the notion of housing as a human right and notions collective responsibility, as homelessness is often framed in other parts of the world.
I'm most familiar with his "History of Sexuality" and the creation and positioning of homosexuality. Same-sex sexual practices have existed since forever. But "homosexuals" didn't exist until we had a word for it. Particularly in regards to men, this is the case and it has always amused me to consider there were no laws in the UK under Queen Victoria to punish lesbians because she could not fathom what two women would do together. :snert:
Proposition 8 in California passed, in a Focaultian lens, precisely because the debate was over how to label "family". Family was positioned within a norm of society that is a collective subjective defining of a particular relationship pattern. Homophobic people try to place "the family" within historical context and assume that their idea of "the norm" has always been when in fact it has not. But we exist within a place and time and must remember that who and where and when we are determines much of our perspective. Also, at this historical juncture we as a society have been actively questioning family and gender roles within it for years, and the conflict of ideas and identities that ensue has become too threatening for too many. Does that mean the LGBT community should give up because a bunch of asshats cling in fear to their own safety zone? Hell no. It means we forge ahead from other angles to change the collective understanding of the meaning and functions of family. But we are still stuck with the classic problem of labeling and the fact that we function in a society wherein policy is dependent upon labeling.
So, how does one use these ideas to conduct social work research? I'm thinking constructivist grounded theory and client-based ethnography. Or surveys on perceptions (like opinion polls that ask annoying banal questions like "Do you approve of same-sex marriage?" vs. "Do you think the government should define marriage?" etc).
My challenge, for the exam, is to articulate two theories, their history and development, and how one would use them to conduct research. I do not know what subject they will throw at me so I must be prepared to deconstruct anything from public schooling to HIV infected mothers to human trafficking to public assistance and social security. Marxism is dry but lends itself easily to quantitative research in areas such as exploitation and disparities. I just have to train myself to write it. Foucault, on the other hand, is vastly more interesting to me but also a lot woollier.
Unfortunately, I must be an autodidact. My program, for all its virtues, has been very weak at theory.
