Socialno delo on-line archive

Socialno delo, Vol. 52 (2013), Issue 2-3

ARTICLES

Vesna Leskošek
Importance of social movements for social work - 101, (Abstract)

Michael Lavalette
Popular social work, official social work and social movements - 113, (Abstract)

Petra Videmšek
Influence of social movements on social work development in Slovenia - 129, (Abstract)

Srečo Dragoš
Form of social movements? - 139, (Abstract)

Marta Gregorčič
Producing struggles of self-organized communities – potencias - 157, (Abstract)

Jelka Zorn
Right to move(ment) - 169, (Abstract)

ABSTRACTS

English - 222

 
Vesna Leskošek
Importance of social movements for social work

Since its beginnings social work is closely linked to social movements. They are one of the important origins of the profession, but not the only one. They are important for social work because they emphasise collective action for social change that aims at advocating for suppressed groups of people. Some significant features of social movements are presented. Because they include variety of diverse activities with few common features, it is difficult to define them. Movements differ in relation to organisational forms, leadership, operational forms, aims and goals, sustainability and end results. They establish specific relations to the government, to political parties and state institutions. Movements can be revolutionary or reformist, they can aim at changing people or social order, they can be conservative or progressive. Feminist movement is closely linked to social work from its beginnings. Some of the women that were active in social movements were the founders of social work education and practice. They founded social work because there was a need for a profession that would raise the issue of social inequalities and its consequences. They claimed the right to the just society and that had an impact on the sort of social work that they were campaigning for.

 
Michael Lavalette
Popular social work, official social work and social movements

The interconnections between social movements and social movement activity and 'popular' forms of social work are shown. The paper presents early stage research that looks at more popular forms of social work (from Britain and across Europe) that have, very often, been hidden from the official professional histories. Popular social work is a sphere of activity that sits alongside – or sometimes in opposition to – 'professional', 'state' or bourgeois social work. It refers to the activities of a range of individuals and groups who address aspects of trauma, inequality and oppression, in ways that are non-hierarchical, mutually supportive and based on notions of solidarity. The paper suggests that focusing on examples of popular social work can help us reconsider social work's past, present and alternative futures.

 
Petra Videmšek
Influence of social movements on social work development in Slovenia

How social movement that appeared in the 1980’s influenced the development of social work practice, is presented. The article is mainly focused on feminist movement, movement for socialization of homosexuality, antipsychiatric movement and movement for independent living of handicapped people. These movements triggered a wave of changes in social work. The changes can be seen on three different levels: the relation level (changed role of users in the process of support), the structural level (development of community services) and the theoretical level (development of new concepts, new methods of social work – from traditional methods towards innovative ones). The movements also expanded the boundaries of social work (from institutions to communities), stimulated pluralisation of service providers (more NGOs that offer new programmes), asked the question of power, and stimulated participation of experts by experience in the process of support. Social work is a science of doing based on the practical, field experiences. In this science theory is based on concrete experience, emerging from concrete social groups.

 
Srečo Dragoš
Form of social movements?

Contents of social processes generate forms, with which those processes are regulated to become consolidated, intensified or blocked. Because forms are not just the consequences of contents (because of the interdependence of both variables), we cannot understand contents without understanding forms. When social movements structure their contents from defensive to demanding and further to a strategy, the conditions of direct participation become more difficult. With growing number of participants and with the complexity of the content, the pluralism of the content challenges is strengthened. At the same time the participants create smaller groups to maintain direct communication causing a distance between passive and active members. The inner dynamics of social movements is consequently faced with a problem, how to combine different social forms: small group, large group and organisation. Because of these combinations, social movements have the form, which is not characteristic only for them, so they can’t be understood as specific social form. Social movements are fluid catalysts of collective social forms in case of erosion of legitimacy.

 
Marta Gregorčič
Producing struggles of self-organized communities – potencias

Contemporary theories dealing with wider social change claim that there is no alternative to neoliberalism, that no one today is able to think one and that social change will only begin to take place (if at all) once the humankind is driven to the brink of extinction, which is supposedly already happening on the periphery of capitalism. The paper, however, presents the opposite thesis, proving on the basis of valuable contributions from revolutionary struggles in Asia and Latin America that alternative, autonomous, self-sufficient and self-determining systems have been created for decades by potencia bottom-up movements, activities and intensities of grupos de base struggles, and the self-organized pueblo, a people fighting beyond the remains of the old and the new oligarchies. It does not discuss potencia in general – in terms of revolts, the creation of alternative policies or emancipation practices – but rather in terms of autogenous revolutionary struggles responding to real, immediate needs of a community and already producing new principles, processes and requirements from within, whereby they do not only meet the basic human needs, i. e. the material conditions for life, but mostly create the social, cultural, economic, environmental and political pre-conditions of sociality. Potencias as subjectivities of those who create, undermine what neoliberalism wanted to rule out at all costs and with every possible means – sociality.

 
Jelka Zorn
Right to move(ment)

Both rights to movement are considered: a right to migrate and a right to participate in social movements. Against this backdrop, migrants face immigration controls with their multiple effects (criminalisation and selection of migrants, exploitation of migrant labour etc.). Those who lack state defined personal status of a citizen or a resident stay invisible and without state protection. However, the article considers the cases of collective mobilizations (No Borders, Erased, Invisible Workers of the World), empowerment and political subjectivization of non-citizens and how their activism challenge the notions of belonging, citizenship and access to social rights. When resisting, people create new communities, ways of belonging and networks of solidarity. This might be seen as “regularisation from below”: growing autonomy of the city (against state definitions of belonging) and de-illegalization at the micro level (at the city level, to access city social services, employers etc.)