Performing social work : an ethnographic study of talk and text in a metropolitan social services department

Abstract

The central theme of this ethnographic study is captured in the word play in the title. It
\nis, essentially, an analysis of the social work in social work. With a primary focus on
\nthe collegial discourse taking place between 'child care' social workers and managers in
\na social services department in the North West of England, I have undertaken an
\nanalysis of naturally occurring talk, interview data, formal policy and procedure, and
\nwritten records of action taken (case files and minutes) and action to be taken (e.g. court
\nreports, strategic planning documents). My analytic focus has been upon on the routines
\nand linguistic practices through which `caseness' is accomplished. I argue that, although
\nprofessional accounts are artfully produced against certain (situated) background
\nexpectancies, the 'materials' invoked in such accounts are not entirely local phenomena.
\nThat is to say, competent accounts are both locally accomplished and contingent upon
\navailable vocabularies. In a search for analytic adequacy, I have drawn particularly upon
\nthe temporal and rhetorical 'turns' in the human sciences. Using an unashamedly
\neclectic approach, I argue that 'imported' materials, such as bureaucratic time, remain
\nmalleable and, thus, may be invoked strategically and artfully by social workers in their
\n(narrative) constructions of events and 'cases' and, indeed, themselves - allowing them
\nto reference risk, deviance or normality, for example. However, the possibilities are far
\nfrom infinite, and the liturgical nature of many encounters ensures that what is most
\nremarkable about organizational life is not its instability, but its predictability.