critical pedagogy and social work

8/8/2019 Critical Pedagogy and Social Work

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Feminist links, postmodern interruptions: Critical pedagogy and social work Affilia ; Thousand Oaks; Winter 1999; Joan Pennell ; Janice L Ristock ;Volume: 14Issue: 4Start Page: 460-481ISSN: 08861099SubjectTerms:

FeminismSocial work EducationColleges & universities

Abstract: Postmodern perspectives can constructively interrupt conventional views as long as social workers remain linked to feminist and other intersecting emancipatory movements. This article deconstructs the dichotomy between science and practice and presents a class exerciseto illustrate how an analysis of feminist links-postmodern interruptions can promote a self-critical and proactive education in foundationcourses for largely female students in historically marginalized regions of Canada and the United States.Full Text:Copyright Sage Publications, Inc. Winter 1999[Headnote]Postmodern perspectives can constructively interrupt conventional views as long as social workers remain linked to feminist and other intersecting emancipatory movements. This article deconstructs the dichotomy between science and practice and presents a class exercise toillustrate how an analysis of feminist links-postmodern interruptions can promote a self-critical and proactive education in foundationcourses for largely female students in historically marginalized regions of Canada and the United States.To move into the space of deconstructing/deconstructive inquiry is... to tell... a different story "that makes a critical difference not only atthe site of thought but also at the site of sociopolitical praxis." (Spanos, 1987, p. 276)Empowerment approaches to professional education and the new postmodern paradigms exist in an uneasy tension or outright rejection of each other. In the social work profession, empowerment has served as a framework for countering the oppression of particular groups(Davis, 1994; Gutierrez, Parsons, & Cox, 1998; Mondros & Wilson, 1994; Saleeby, 1997; Simon, 1994b); however, from a postmodern

perspective, any theory@ including a theory of emancipation, is suspect because it is viewed as forming a grand narrative (Lyotard, 1984)or dominant story line about the nature of social work. Thus, some advocates of social change have argued that postmodernism is a"dangerous approach for any marginalized group to adopt" because it provides little guidance on transforming society and becomes mired ina nihilistic rejection of all emancipatory aims (Hartsock, 1990, p. 160; see also Di Stefano, 1990).Others have contended that postmodernism can offer an important antidote to the totalizing thinking of so many critical thinkers and socialactivists by disrupting their preestablished ways of conceptualizing the world (Hekman, 1990). Lather (1991), citing Spanos (1987), positedthat postmodern perspectives generate different stories, stories that prevent researchers and activists from assuming a posture of either absolute certainty of truth or incapacitating uncertainty of courses of action. In moving toward deconstructing/deconstructive inquiry@ onesimultaneously dismantles what is being studied (deconstructive inquiry) and how it is being studied (deconstructing inquiry). Thecombination of both activities prevents modes of thought and action from becoming rigid--or, to use Spanos's term, preterite-anddisassociated from their material and historical contexts and provides room for alternative stories or possibilities for our lives and work.On one hand, the postmodern antidote seems to be crucial in an era when schools of social work in the United States and Canada have beencriticized for failing to incorporate multiple perspectives, particularly those from marginalized groups, and have been urged to adoptculturally responsive approaches (Canadian Association of Schools of Social Work, 1991; Congress, 1994; Green, 1982; Lum, 1986) and to

break down the dichotomy between international and domestic curriculum content (Asamoah, Healy, & Mayadas, 1997). On the other hand,this antidote has to be scrutinized for its effects: Will it devitalize change efforts? To address this question, social workers can assess what

postmodernism (actually postmodernisms, since this is not one body of thought), particularly deconstruction, have to offer in regard todismantling prevailing views in social work education. Accordingly, in this article, the authors use a deconstruction of social work education to tease out and rethink some key assumptions and to make space for deconstructing/deconstructive social work discourses.At the same time, to safeguard the deconstruction from sinking into a nihilistic rejection of all values, the authors endeavor to keep italigned with commitments to social justice for all people, whatever their gender, race, class, sexual identity, or other socially constructeddemarcations. Using Phelan's (1993) "strategic essentialism," the authors engage in a double play of rejecting dichotomies that rank people

according to supposedly essential characteristics (such as male-female and whiteblack) and simultaneously uphold these attributes as the basis for social action. What remains, to use Elam's (1994, p. 106) term, is a "groundless solidarity@" with the foundation of oppressiveclassifications and universalizing theories removed and bridges of ethical activism spanning particular situations and commitments added.Thus, the authors' approach emphasizes not only a critique of injustices but an affirmation of real people struggling with real issues.RESEARCH AND PEDAGOGY AS EMPOWERMENTThis approach uses a method of "research as empowerment," which "seeks to effect empowerment at all stages of the research processthrough critical analysis of power and responsible use of power" (Ristock & Pennell, 1996, p. 9). This method attunes the researcher to the

power plays of what is studied and how it is studied. It also has implications for critical pedagogical practices in university classrooms thatare concerned with using power responsibly while fostering critical understandings and opening up possibilities for transformative socialaction.Questions of research theory that ask What can one know? and What good can knowing do? and questions of pedagogical theory that ask How can one teach? and What can one learn? inform one another that when one works within an empowerment framework that seeks toaffirm real people and to disrupt what Foucault (1980, p. 131) called "regimes of truth," both those of individuals and those of academic
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disciplines (Ristock & Taylor, 1998). These questions are especially pressing in the context of contemporary universities, most of whichhave felt the pressure of an increasingly diverse student population. Sometimes, however, institutions respond to this pressure just by lettingothers in and adding others to the existing curriculum, which leads to revolving-door access (in September and out by January) and a larger

but untransformed curriculum. The authors believe that a postmodernist pedagogy of empowerment is appropriate: one that aims to create"home communities" from which diversely located students can begin to engage in dialogic inquiry, working together from a basis of

personal voice and respect for the different voices of others. The method is empowering in that it encourages students' voices, and it is postmodernist in that it simultaneously draws critical attention to the constructedness of those voices.This research method is illustrated by a classroom exercise, "My Home Community," which the first author developed for undergraduatesocial work foundation courses on human behavior and the social environment first in Canada and then in the United States. The intent of this exercise was to open a space, or home community, in the school of social work for deconstructing/deconstructive inquiry. The exercise

was seen as advancing critical social work education-a learning program open to appraising what social work is doing and why (reflexivity)and committed to reflective and responsible courses of social change (praxis).In the authors' experience with antiviolence and prodemocratic action research, research as empowerment is sustained through a culture of feminist links and postmodern interruptions. The feminist links keep the research firmly aligned with efforts to overcome gender and other intersecting forms of oppression. Feminist links, or partnerships, appear to be of special relevance to the social work profession, whoseworkforce and clientele are not only predominately female but whose primary role as caregivers leads to devaluation in a society thatesteems science and technology over service (see Van Den Bergh, 1995). The postmodern interruptions ensure that the positions remainflexible and responsive to culture and context; otherwise, feminist links could enforce conformity to political correctness. As C. Brown(1994) posited, "Pedagogically, and politically, it is possible to recognize diversity of experience and yet challenge people to explore howthese experiences have been socially, historically and politically constructed" (p. 42). Likewise, feminist perspectives interrupt postmodernthinking that challenges grand narratives and, in so doing, could obscure material or concrete forces that shape women's and men's lives.As feminists, the authors both advance feminist links; however, the first author, a social-work educator, carries out the deconstruction fromwithin the profession, a deconstruction that is subject to questioning from the second author, a community psychologist based in women'sstudies. The intent of the deconstruction is to advance a critical stance toward social work education that appraises social work discourses(systems of statements on social interventions) in their contexts, so as not to reproduce relations of subordination. In carrying out thisdeconstruction, the authors seek to nudge social workers and others to expand the range of possibilities for professional education bychallenging the assumptions of the discipline about the nature of the "subject," both the subject of social work and the subject who doessocial work. The ultimate aim is to promote empowerment and to work toward social change, that is, simultaneously to assert individual andcollective control over one's destiny within a nexus of mutually caring relationships (see Rappaport, 1990).DECONSTRUCTING/DECONSTRUCTIVE SOCIAL WORK DISCOURSESAlthough social work has various intellectual roots (Payne, 1991; Reamer, 1993) and social work education has diverse stances on itsmission and approaches (Dinerman & Geismar, 1984), the profession in the United States and Canada, as in England, has been heavilyinfluenced from its early days by a White, middle-class sense of morality (Valverde, 1991). This notion of morality has shaped socialservice administration and practice and has limited the capacity of women social workers and service users to effect change together (seeCallahan, 1993). Reflecting on the current status of social work education, Munson (1994) warned that the development and creativity of schools of social work will be stymied by adhering to narrowly framed criteria of excellence, and pointed to the control exercised throughgovernmental financing and employers' preferences over social work curricula.

Nevertheless, marginalized groups are pushing for an expansion of its knowledge base and methods and are urging a movement beyondconventional content and even prescriptions of cultural sensitivity to highlight alternative worldviews and practices and, particularly in thecase of indigenous peoples, advancing their control over educational programs (see, e.g., Morrissette, McKenzie, & Morrissette, 1993; Pace& Smith, 1990; Pennell, Flaherty, Gravel, Milliken, & Neuman, 1993). In response, some social work educators (such as Leonard, 1994;Rossiter, 1993; Schriver, 1998) have urged the adoption of postmodern thinking to foster a climate for developing a critical pedagogy insocial work education that attends to previously marginalized perspectives.A primary tool for such excavation is deconstruction, the uncovering and overturning of the central assumption of a discourse (Culler,1982), and through this decentering, opening the way for telling "different stories." In this article, the authors begin by identifying the coreassumption of social work discourse that scientifically derived knowledge should serve as the guide for social work practice. They thendestabilize this assumption by pointing to discursive evidence that reverses, negates, and displaces it while still using it, and thus expandingthe range of what is possible. The aim of deconstruction is not to destroy the central assumption, one on which social workers continue todepend, but, rather, to bring it to its limits, to exhaust its intellectual resources and reveal its illogic. Its benefit, as Derrida (1981)explicated, is that in keeping positions "confounded" (p. 96), it serves to

confirm and shake logocentric [rationalistic] and ethnocentric [European-based] assuredness ... to transform concepts, to displace them, toturn them against their presuppositions, to reinscribe them in other chains, and little by little to modify the terrain of our work and thereby

produce new configurations. (p. 24)Such "disruptive voices," feminist researcher Fine (1992) stated, "unearth, interrupt, and open new frames for intellectual and politicaltheory and change" (p. 220).Home CommunitiesDeconstructive objectives may appear grandiose and elusive when one engages in undergraduate social work education, but from a

postmodern perspective, they are all the more called for when the course is intended to orient students to a set of foundational theories for subsequent courses and practice in the field. The unfamiliar and androcentric theories typically covered in courses on human behavior andthe social environment (see Burden & Gottlieb, 1987; Humphreys, Nol, & Laird, 1997), however, are likely to push students to keep upwith the extensive material, rather than to allow them the safety and space to dismantle the underlying assumptions. In the case of theCanadian and U.S. courses, these pressures were compounded by the students' gender and location.


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The students who completed the exercise discussed here were mostly female and attended universities in historically marginalized regionsof their countries, although the presence of more prosperous communities was evident in both. The Canadian students were enrolled at auniversity in the province of Newfoundland on the geographic and political-economic periphery of Canada. This province had experiencedchronic poverty, unemployment, and out-migration, further exacerbated by the collapse of its primary industry, fishing, and counterbalanced

by its residents' sense of loyalty to their families and communities, traditions of mutual support, and resistance to outside restructuring(Burford, 1997; Fairley, Leys, & Sacouman, 1990). The U.S. students attended a university in North Carolina, a state that has historically

been marginalized culturally, economically, and politically but at the time in question was experiencing extensive but uneven economicgrowth, leading to a disjunction between what has been called the New South and the Old South. Whereas the industrialized, urbanized, andair-conditioned New South has been heralded for its introduction of progress and prosperity@ the rural Old South has been reviled for its

parochialism, prejudice, and backwardness and simultaneously esteemed for its attachments, honor, and sentiment (Boles, 1995; Cash,

1941). Whether the students came from these regions (although the majority did), their current educational and practice milieus were out of keeping with those of the many Eurocentric, Northern, or Mainland (in the case of Newfoundland) theories and studies that they wereassigned to read.Differences in social location were also evident between the instructor and students and among groups of students. The instructor camefrom the outside, whether as a Mainlander to Newfoundland or a Northerner to North Carolina; likewise the identities of the students at bothuniversities were split along lines of ethnicity, race, religion, and region. These differences were especially likely to breed caution andcovert power plays in social work programs in which the students were evaluated not only academically but in regard to their suitability for their chosen profession. The cautiousness was likely to go beyond inhibiting the expression of their views to guarding their subjectivities,that is, their contingent and changeable sense of self, to conform to the expectations of their profession, university, instructor, andclassmates. Given the multiple and mixed expectations that were tugging on the students' subjectivities, the first author, in designing thecourse, asked, How can students affirm their own identities and respect their classmates' and recognize how their subjectivities areconstructed through their material and discursive contexts? How can students use their experiences and regional context to challenge the

biases in course theories (deconstructive inquiry) and question their own assumptions (deconstructing inquiry)? How can this courseencourage a dismantling of the students' and others' assumptions about human behavior and the social environment but promote the visionof social work as socially responsible action?Without any ready or final answers, the first author started by seeking to foster a safe space for deconstructing/deconstructive inquiryPointing out disparities between theories and students' contexts or highlighting academic power plays so early in the course would be likelyto confuse and intimidate the students. Instead, the first author opened the Canadian and U.S. courses with an exercise called "My HomeCommunity" to emphasize identity, connection, dialogue, and change. On the worksheet for the exercise, the aim was presented asconstructing theories on community out of class members' experiences of their home communities. The students were not confined to onedefinition of home community but were asked to "pick the place that you think of as your home community-it could be where you grew upor whatever place feels most like home to you." To encourage emotional safety and respect, much of the discussion was conducted ingroups of three students, with each small group deciding what it wanted to present to the class of approximately 35. The worksheetemphasized that students were to share only what they felt "comfortable talking about" and to "treat with respect what others [said] abouttheir home communities" and "not discuss it outside the [small] group without their permission."In both countries, each student, as well as the instructor, identified his or her home community and explained why it felt like home, citingsignificant attachments, memories, and commitments. Most of the students geographically located their home communities, pointing with

pride to the communities' positions on a map. This activity educated the other class members (including the instructor) on the geography of the province or state, and, in turn, gave them the opportunity to present the places with which they identified. In the second part of theexercise, the students were asked to consider ways of creating a learning community in their social work programs. This activity generatedextensive discussion of the ways in which their programs did and did not feel like their home communities and of strategies for heighteningtheir sense of community within the program.The students' main response was that the class exercise was welcoming. It gave them a friendly forum in which to become connected witheach other, the instructor, and the course, which was in sharp contrast to many of their previous experiences of university life. Building onthis opening, later class exercises and assignments encouraged the students to check out the relevance and ethics of course materials againsttheir personal and practice experiences. Both courses sought to affirm the strengths of historically marginalized peoples and regions; inaddition, to counter the global dominance of the United States, the North Carolina course stressed international initiatives and perspectives.The presentation of these applications at home and abroad served a dual purpose of encouraging the students to question both the coursetheories and their own experiences.Identifying: Science Over Practice

In constructing the class exercise, the first author acknowledged a key assumption of social work education: that education for social work practice takes place under academic auspices. During the first session, the students, seated in a university classroom, were handed a courseoutline with stipulated course sessions, readings, and assignments, as well as a worksheet on their first class exercise. The message was thatthe university speaks with authority on what preparation students require to graduate as social workers.This message reflects the profession's roots in the social upheaval of the 19th century and the prevailing scientific ethos that the ills of modem society could be remedied through planning by "men of reason" (see Friedmann, 1987). From the outset, social work in Canada andthe United States was conceived as a means of effecting moral reform guided by scientific knowledge, rather than the vagaries of acharitable impulse (Simon, 1994a; Trattner, 1984; Valverde, 1991). The belief that women were, by nature, too emotional for efficient

planning justified their control by male boards of directors and administrators (Struthers, 1987). The "scientific imperative" was firmlyentrenched in U.S. and Canadian social work, with social surveys used to document the extent of social ills and to promote the necessity of

professional social work services (Irving, 1992; Zimbalist, 1977).The aspirations of the fledgling profession for scientific legitimacy were undermined, however, by Flexner's (1915) well-known speech to aU.S. conference of social workers. In that period, Flexner was considered the leading authority on professional education and had studied


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medical education in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Thus, his conclusion-that social work was disqualified as a profession becauseit (unlike the prototype profession of medicine) failed to delimit a systematic body of knowledge-gained immediate attention and continuedto haunt social work nearly a century later (Austin, 1983; Haynes, 1998).More than 50 years after Flexner's diagnosis, Etzioni (1969) and others characterized social work, along with nursing, library science, andearly education, as semiprofessions and observed that they had one notable attribute in common: the prevalence of women workers. Onecontributor to Etzioni's volume, Toren (1969, p. 157), commented that social work's more recent recruitment from "lower social strata"further eroded its professional status. Etzioni's and Toren's solution for raising the semiprofessions to professional status was to weight their composition toward male workers. More recently, Baines (1991) agreed that the prevalence of women in these professions eroded their social power but added that the rationalization of women's professionalism was based not on specialized knowledge and expertise, as in thecase of men, but on "an ethic of service or care" (p. 37). Contrary to Etzioni, Toren, and others, she argued that recruiting more men would

not raise the status of and achieve equality for a women's profession; instead, she asserted that the solution lies in identifying and rewardingthe skills and knowledge of caring labor.Partly to bolster assertions of social work's scientific base, the education of social workers was placed in universities, rather thanindependent schools affiliated with social agencies (see Gripton, Nutter, Irving, & Murphy, 1995). This decision was made and uphelddespite the fluctuating support of university administrators (Irving, 1992) and the opposition of some early social work leaders, particularlythe influential Mary Richmond, who contended that social workers were best educated in the field, where they could develop "practicewisdom."The move into the universities reflected the Platonic assumption that rational knowledge precedes and guides correct practice and the

positivist assertion that valid knowledge is generated through objective study detached from personal passions and political strife. Asnumerous feminists have pointed out, notions of what qualifies as rational knowledge and scientific study are grounded in androcentrismand European imperialism, which privilege certain perspectives as universal truths (Harding, 1986). In social work, the academic auspiceshave been maintained, despite the reservations of feminists and others (Valentich, 1996).Although social work education has retained links with agency practice through field-instruction programs and fields-of-practice courses,the dominance of the university is evident in the discourse on social work education. A case in point is the Encyclopedia of Social Work'sdescription of social work education, which affirms practice but confirms the flow of knowledge from the university classroom to agency

practice:Social work education has developed within the context of agencies and agency practice. The application of classroom learning in agency or field practicum settings has been a characteristic of social work education throughout its history." (Frumkin & Lloyd, 1995, p. 2244)Reversing: Practice Over ScienceAt the same time, the quote from the Encyclopedia of Social Work can be used to upend the rationalist assumption in social work discoursethat classroom knowledge should dictate agency practice. "The context of agencies" is acknowledged as the site in which social work education developed; there would be no social work education or, as is true of any other profession, no social work itself, without itsenactment in fields of practice. Thus, contrary to the Platonic view, the instructional nature of the field is affirmed. Such a belief iscongruent with John Dewey's influential pragmatic philosophy of learning through doing and, more specifically, supported the winning sidein the early debate between proponents of practice wisdom oriented to microlevel intervention versus those of social theory oriented tomacrolevel planning (Austin, 1983). Although Mary Richmond lost the battle of locating social work education in the university, shesucceeded in establishing close links between schools and field placements and advancing theory based on practice. Thus, it can be arguedthat within social work discourse, the hierarchy of scientific knowledge over experiential insights actually rests on the primacy of the latter.The class exercise was in keeping with this reversed assumption. Its aim, as stated on the instruction sheets, was to "construct together atheory of community out of our own experiences," instead of social workers applying theories to themselves and those with whom theywork as professionals. Together, the class was engaging in a form of participatory action research (Alary, Beausoleil, Guedon, Lariviere, &Mazer, 1990; Whyte, 1991) in which by sharing experiences and reflecting on these experiences, they were constructing their ownconclusions. Ignoring but reflecting the academic debates on the meaning of community (McKnight, 1987; Solomon, 1976; Warren &Lyon, 1988), these students emphasized what was important to them: place of origin, ties of blood and friendship, commitments of faith andidentification, and settings of informality and comfort.

Negating; Both Science and PracticeGiving precedence to either scientific knowledge or experiential wisdom, however, assumes that they are separable entities. Within socialwork discourse, this assumption is contradicted by radical voices, such as those of socialist, feminist, and womanist social workers (Bricker-Jenkins & Hooyman, 1986; Chan & Dilworth, 1995; Saulnier, 1996). To transform society, these radical voices stress the necessity of araised awareness of racism, classism, sexism, and other types of injustice and increasingly recognize the interlocking and interactive nature

of forms of oppression (see E. B. Brown, 1990; Collins, 1990). Such an awareness cannot be generated through either abstract theorizing or unreflective action. It requires reflexivity@ dialogue, and praxis: identifying the human interests underlying the production of knowledge,engaging in an unshackled exchange of views, and interweaving the recreation of knowledge in line with emancipatory action and thereformation of action in line with emancipatory knowledge (see Freire, 1970; Habermas, 1970). Thus, from this vantage point, the strugglefor social change reveals the fiction that science is outside of material interests, rejoins science and practice, and negates the originalassumption that science guides practice."My Home Community" was not an overt exercise in uncovering oppression; the class analyzed neither the power of imposed theories nor the power of the instructor in expecting the class to take part in the exercise. Nevertheless, in the first class sessions it offered an implicitchallenge to control exerted by outside authorities over the views of two, largely female, groups of students living in historicallymarginalized areas of their countries. Out of the discussion, the students synthesized their own definitions of community and used thesedefinitions to examine what was lacking in their own academic programs and what could be done to strengthen their sense of communitywith each other. Thus, the exercise was a gentle way of freeing up space for reconceptualizing science-practice and using this space for creating change in the social work program and elsewhere. The process was one of research as empowerment, with the potential for


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reshifting power relations and serving as a first step toward developing a critical pedagogy. As a poststructuralist feminist position suggests,social workers cannot claim single-strategy pedagogies of empowerment, emancipation, and liberation (Luke & Gore, 1992).Displacing: Neither Science Nor PracticeAlthough the exercise encouraged the students to draw on the understandings developed from their own experiences, it did not establishtheir experiences as the final word on community. As Scott (1992) suggested, "When experience is taken as the origin of knowledge, thevision of the individual subject (the person who had the experience or the historian who recounts it) becomes the bedrock of evidence uponwhich explanation is built" (p. 25). In the class exercise, the students listened to the understandings emerging from other students'experiences and were encouraged to recognize how their own notions of community were a product of their particular experiences andlocations. For instance, the majority of the students viewed their home communities as where they grew up; their preconceptions werechallenged by other students whose lives reflected greater transiency and whose sense of home community was embedded in the current

location of their mattress and stereo. In a double gesture, the exercise both affirmed personal understandings and encouraged the students toexplore how their own understandings of themselves and the world are constructed (see Lather, 1991). Thus, the exercise disrupted not onlyconcepts of science as the authoritative basis of knowledge, but also experience. In so doing, it left room for many definitions of community, emphasizing multiple definitions and courses of action. At the same time, it did not promote the relativistic view that alltheories are of equal value and, instead, gave greater weight to notions of responsible actions for building community. After defining homecommunity, the students were expected to develop concrete strategies for creating a sense of community in their programs. The exerciseand, more broadly, the course sought to cultivate in students an openness to many views and discernment in assessing the capacity of theseviews to advance community, responsibility, and empowerment.This openness to other experiences and perspectives is in keeping with the social work dictum of "starting where the client is," one that is sohard to maintain in practice. Paralleling the dilemmas of the professor-student relationship, social work practitioners may try to set uprelationships with clients of respect, safety, and open dialogue, but they can never fully, authentically achieve such relationships becausethey are in a position of power, authority, and responsibility@ Although social workers may not abuse their positions, the whole context andhistory of the profession mark the interaction as 'unbalanced.The difficulty is compounded by schools of social work that promote ideas of science and practice shaped by primarily Eurocentric andurban influences. This practice has led to an obscuring of perspectives from other cultures (Charter, 1996), and the problem becomesespecially prominent in work across cultures. As Swift, Allen, and Naidoo (1996) found in their research on cross-cultural social work,

practitioners require flexibility, openness, and creativity to avoid an assimilationist position, to attend respectfully to other worldviews, andto intervene effectively. These researchers proposed that the "emerging postmodern discourse has the potential to create a good 'fit' betweentheory and practice because of its attention to fluidity, multiplicity of meaning and inclusivity, all of which are central to cross culturalwork" (p. 18).Pushing out, softening, and reshaping the boundaries of social work knowledge and practice create room for alternative views. It no longer makes sense to speak of "science" or "practice," which become plural and loose. Altering social work discourse to speak of sciencesdisplaces Western notions of the centrality of rational and empirical inquiry to include traditional and changing knowledge; likewise, theterm practices encourages flexible responses to variant contexts and shifting discourses. Most important, such language reminds socialworkers to "imagine again and again that when a narrative is constructed, something is left out," to ask "over and over again, What is it thatis left out?" and to "know the limits of the narratives, rather than establish the narratives as solutions for the future, for the arrival of social

justice" (Spivak, 1990, pp. 18-19). The exercise "My Home Community" was one way of asking the students what has been left out of social work theory while identifying that if they are to advance empowerment, they need to acknowledge that their experiences also leavethings out.TAKING ACTIONThe method discussed here is not restricted to social work and can be used by professionals from many other disciplines who are interestedin doing transformative action. The focus on feminist links and postmodern interruptions may at first cause a sort of paralysis. In the secondauthor's course on research in women's studies, in which students are asked to locate themselves and address power plays in their research,ethical questions, such as Who can know? and How can one know? may seem overwhelming. Yet, modem emancipation movements haveworked from the premise that reasoning subjects can identify their common experiences of oppression and unite in solidarity to overcomesystemic injustices. Such grand narratives have effectively promoted significant causes, whether for the betterment of women, colonized

peoples, or the environment. At the same time, they have reified dichotomies, the result being not only the widening of rifts among groups but the rendering of rifts within a group invisible. Researchers, practitioners, and educators are not bound, however, to an either-or choice between scientifically derived knowledge and practice-based wisdom, between expertise and caring, between links and interruptions. Thisunderstanding can help overcome paralysis. Building home communities within research and pedagogical practices is a way of generating

the space for telling and listening to many stories (stories that unite, disagree, contradict, and dismantle) to develop reasonable, responsible,and self-critical approaches to social work and the education of its practitioners.[Reference]REFERENCES

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[Author note]Authors' Note: An earlier version of this article was presented at the Canadian Association of Schools of Social Work Learned Societies

Conference, Brock University, St. Catherines, Ontario, June 1996, and published in Social Work Discussion Papers: Trends in Social Work Education, Issue 2, Memorial University of Newfoundland School of Social Work, St. John's. The authors thank Marie Weil for her feedback on the manuscript.

[Author note]Joan Pennell, Ph.D., is a professor and director of the Social Work Program, North Carolina State University, Campus Box 7639, Raleigh,

NC 27695-7639; e-mail: [email protected] L. Ristock, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Women's Studies Program, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.Address all correspondence to Dr. Pennell.

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