Social Work, Welfare, and Aging

In the past several decades, helping professions have been variously seen as an economic and moral cornerstone of contemporary societies and, more recently, a self-disciplinary form of governmentality. The latter perspective encapsulates a more ambivalent position toward professionalization, insofar as the privileges and status accorded to professionals are dependent on a form of subjugation and reflexive monitoring. Reflecting on Judith Butler’s conception of “performativity,” it could be argued that the notion has important implications for contemporary debates over agency, subjection, and “resistance” in social work practice. In light of technologies of surveillance and control in contemporary social work, performativity offers a framework toward analyzing the production of a subjective space based on trust between social workers and service users.