Call for papers Social work and life course in times of acceleration 4 th International Congress of the Swiss Social Work Society (SSTS) September 12 and 13, 2018 at the School of Social Work and Health Sciences EESP Lausanne (Switzerland)
Social work and the life course in times of acceleration The 4th International Congress of the Swiss Social Work Society (SSTS) focuses on the transformations of social work in a society characterised by the acceleration of social and technological changes due to the unfettered competition typical of contemporary capitalism (Rosa, 2010). Uncertainties affecting social and political institutions, family relationships and employment status increase vulnerabilities in the life course, whereas the rise in inequality increase not only the pace of daily life for people in employment but also the apparent lack of activity of those who are excluded from the labour market. Against this background, the multiplication of transitions, choices and critical life events and situations that appear to be lived in ever tighter time spans clearly have an impact on both institutions and individuals. How does social work evolve in the face of such changes? How do social problems change? How do the techniques (or technologies) implemented to respond to social issues develop and with what impact on social work clients? The SSTS Congress will approach these questions on the theme of acceleration along three axes. The first axis questions the connections between acceleration and social policies; the second seeks to look at the life courses of populations reached through social work, while the third examines the transformations of social work that lead to a marked increase in the number of actors involved in social interventions. Axis 1: Acceleration and social policies Social acceleration has consequences on the political functioning of liberal Western democracies as well as on their modes and modalities for decision making and policy implementation which tend to replace legislation with less rigid procedural directives (Scheuerman, 2004). Such processes also impact on social policies. Papers that pertain to this first axis will focus on questioning and conceptualising the transformations of social policies within the context of contemporary capitalism. They will deal with the following issues: how should these transformations be analysed with regard to social and technological acceleration? To what extent do they result in changes in the social representations and practices of social work? How should we think of the timeframe in which social intervention takes place? Which interventions or social innovations support social and technological acceleration? In what ways does acceleration impact on the modes of management, governance, bureaucracy and the demands placed on social policies in terms of efficacy and efficiency? How, and in what spheres does the financial onus of social policies shift between the public and the private sector as well as between the state, the philanthropic sector and the family? Axis 2: Conceptualising social work in terms of the life course The second axis is focused on the life courses of the target populations of social work. These life courses are the result of a complex set of more or less formal norms, procedures and rules and are framed by administrative and institutional processes. Within this context, age is prominent as a naturalised classification criterion (among others, such as gender) (Perriard & Tabin, 2017). Papers that will be included in this second axis will concentrate on the following questions: how do the life courses of social work clients unfold since these are now asked to assume personal responsibility, become active and invent or reinvent themselves in a shorter and 2
shorter timeframe? (Ravon & Laval, 2015). How do social workers intervene using routinized processes, when life courses have become more uncertain and de-standardised and when statuses have become increasingly fragile and are subject to change? How do social workers adjust or fail to adjust to critical events, biographical transitions or bifurcations? How does the concept of the life course translate into the practice of social work and its professional development? Does it take into account social relations in terms of age, gender, ethnic origin and social class? Finally, what are the challenges for social work education and research when drawing on the individual and social policy dimensions of the life course approach? Axis 3: Multiplication of actors and reconfigurations of social interventions The transformations of contemporary capitalism force populations to leave the regions in which they live; these processes call into question the borders of the nation-state. This process also increases the complexity of social work as social workers have to respond generally at the local level to challenging issues arising from the internationalisation of social problems, the consequences of (de-)colonisation and the impact of socalled natural disasters. They find themselves in a paradoxical situation as they are simultaneously meant to promote the quality of life of social work users at the individual level and to respond to demands aimed at rationalisation, efficiency and efficacy dictated by the neo-liberal focus on management and on the bureaucratisation of practices (Dominelli, 2010). Some countries regulate the conditions of practice of social work more strictly than others and tend to reinforce and legitimate its existence as a profession, while others subscribe to an approach that tends to broadly question the legitimacy of all professions. The latter trend weakens the position of social workers (Vrancken, 2012), reinforces modes of de-professionalization and generates the multiplication of actors in the field of social intervention. In either case, reconfigurations of practices, adjustments to existing intervention methodologies and/or the elaboration of new methods are required. The papers submitted for this third axis must deal with the de-compartmentalisation of professional practices, the recognition of the expertise of social workers, particularly with regard to the dialectic between lay and expert knowledge (Gutknecht, 2016; Chiletti, 2016). Along the life course, what factors shape the subdivisions of the professional, voluntary and familial realms, the transfers of financial charges and the segmentation of the labour market in social work? What forms do the collaborations that these changes imply actually take? How do they become embodied in interdisciplinary and interinstitutional mechanisms? 3
References Chiletti, Sylvia (2016). I mille volti della perizia. Sapere esparto, sapere profane nei processi per infanticidio a Firenze all inizio del XX secolo, Criminocorpus [Online], Folie et justice de l Antiquité à l époque contemporaine, Messo online il 03 giugno 2016, consultado il 03 ottobre 2017. URL: http://criminocorpus.revues.org/3284. Dominelli, Lena (2010). Social Work in a Globalising World. Cambridge & Malden: Policy Press. Gutknecht, Thierry (2016). Actualité de Foucault. Une problématisation du travail social. Geneva: Editions IES. Perriard, Anne & Tabin, Jean-Pierre (2017). L âge dans les politiques sociales. Traverse, revue d histoire, 2017(2), 85-98. Ravon, Bertrand & Laval, Christian (2015). L'aide aux "adolescents difficiles". Chroniques d'un problème public. Toulouse: Erès éditions. Rosa, Hartmut (2010). Alienation and Acceleration. Towards a Critical Theory of Late-Modern Temporality. Malmö/Aargus: NSU Press. Scheuerman, William E. (2004). Liberal Democracy and the Social Acceleration of Time. Baltimore & New York: John Hopkins University Press. Vrancken, Didier (2012). Le travail social serait-il devenu une profession? Quand la "prudence" s'invite au cœur d'un vieux débat. Pensée plurielle, 30-31(2), 27-36. 4
We would like to warmly invite specialist practitioners, academic staff and researchers in social work as well as colleagues from neighbouring disciplines to address these topics and participate in the congress in one of the following ways: 1. Symposia (two hours long) with at most three or four individual contributions from researchers, practitioners and/or teachers, focusing on a particular theme/axis, with a moderated discussion. The symposia proposals have to provide the following information: name and organizations of the responsible, title of the symposium, abstract, names, E-mail addresses and organizations of the participants and the chosen axis ; 2. Individual contributions of 20 minutes which must clearly fit into one of the three axes. Congress languages are French, German, Italian and English. All proposals must be submitted in one of these four languages. Symposia and individual contributions will be held in the language(s) the proposal was submitted in. Using an anonymous review process, proposals will be evaluated by members of the organizing and the scientific committees. Each proposal will be evaluated by two persons. The criteria are: suitability with the congress themes, originality/novelty, conceptual and theoretical frames, methodological frames, quality of argumentation. Proposals must be received by the Organizing Committee no later than 31 January 2018. They will be posted on the web page at the following address: ssts2018.hes-so.ch. Notification about proposals will be forward on 20 April 2018. The organizers of this congress are: Société suisse de travail social HES-SO University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland Schools of Social work of Lausanne, Geneva, Fribourg and Sierre SUPSI, Scuola Universitaria professionnale della Svizzera italiana Pôle de recherche national LIVES, Lausanne 5