Читать книгу The Sage Handbook of Social Constructionist Practice - Группа авторов - Страница 168

Social constructionist informed social work practice expands social workers’ use of the social beyond its typical parameters to include a foregrounding of relationships and a critical stance toward language and meaning. Social workers recognize that meanings are constructed in relationships and that meaning, identity, and the events that we privilege or marginalize in our lives and the cultures in which we exist forge the ways in which we experience the world. Because these meanings are not inherent or static, they can be explored, taken apart, modified, changed, abandoned, and re-envisioned; succinctly put, they could be otherwise. Through this relational, collaborative practice, clients as well as social workers can transform the way they see the world and themselves. Additionally, social construction's problematizing of dominant discourses and taken-for-granted beliefs generates the possibility of alternative understandings and practices. Social work practice assumes a revitalized use of the social, blending the stratification among macro, mezzo, and micro levels. For instance, social constructionist informed discussions bring to light the effects of privileged discourse in the lives of clients and invite social workers and clients to consider how they have been influenced by macro- and mezzo-level constructed values, and how these constructs manifest at the micro level. Empowerment, a key tenet of social work, occurs as clients let go of potentially unhelpful and oppressive ways of experiencing the world and co-construct new, more preferred ways-of-being. In this case, clients are not only individuals, but can include working with communities to create preferred community narratives (Irving, 1999), re-envisioning the child welfare system (Parton, 2014) and assisting in the development of new identity conclusions with trauma survivors and perpetrators (Hall, 2011; Keenan, 2012). The result is a stronger, more ‘social’ social work.