Abstract
Dissenting Social Work: Critical Theory, Resistance, and Pandemic is important reading for social work practitioners, educators, students, theorists, and researchers for accruing knowledge central to the development of critical analytical skills. Paul Michael Garrett presents an analysis for developing “dissenting social work” (DSW), an approach for developing critical habits for self-questioning that are important for micro, mezzo, and macro analysis and development of needed services in the profession. DSW is an effort to oppose moves to limit possibilities for practitioners and educators that would influence social workers to “serve as mere handmaidens or functional auxiliaries of capitalism and the institutional orders that it requires” (p. 4).
Garrett identifies 13 themes that can be viewed as a foundation for discussion about DSW. Themes include DSW as an approach that is: (1) “attuned to and seeks to eradicate the harms caused by humans, other species, and the planet by capitalism”; (2) “enriched by feminist perspectives and the theorisation of heteropatriarchy”; (3) “combats white supremacy and racism”; (4) “encourages analyses vibrating with an historical pulse and is keen to examine the evolution of economic, state and cultural processes marginalising, stigmatising or exploiting different groups”; (5) “appreciates the tremendous gains which technology brings, but is alert to the threats posed by techno-authoritarianism; (6) “convinced that dissent has to be a collective endeavour as opposed to an individual activity”; and (7) “aligned with, energised, replenished and sustained by the oppositional activity generated ‘on the ground’ within trade unions, activist social movements, community organisations, progressive coalitions, ‘user’ networks, marches and campaigns” (pp. 4–5).
Garrett (p. 5) offers views consistent with those of Wendy Brown (2015, p. 31), who avers that ‘neoliberal rationality disseminates the model of the market to all domains and activities-even where money is not an issue—and configure human beings as mere market actors’. Garrett discusses social workers as “agents of the state” who, as noted by Loic Wacquant (2009), need to defend the dignity and integrity of their professions. Garrett (p. 33) considers Karl Marx to be aligned with dissenting social work because of Marx's provision of critical tools and critique of capitalist society. Garrett (pp. 33–34) tells the reader that Marx advocated “a ‘ruthless criticism of everything existing … ruthless in two senses: the criticism must not be afraid of its own conclusions, nor of conflict with the powers that be’ (Marx in Tucker, 1972, p. 13, original emphasis).” Garrett's analysis of the disproportionate prevalence of illness and death from COVID among African Americans in the United States, as well as the disproportionality of COVID illness and death of Black and Brown persons in other nations, critically highlights the frequency of explanations for these realities that fail to identify the causative influences of historically prevalent structural racisms.
The reader is reminded that the history of capitalism is also a history of slavery, colonialism, and the brutal treatment of slaves (Garrett, p. 38). Social workers’ critical consciousness is required in consideration of contemporary conditions in the mining and marketing of cobalt, essential in the manufacture of rechargeable batteries, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where children work in “stone age” conditions for a dollar or two daily in mining (p. 38), as well as analysis of other exploitative practices hidden from consciousness.
Garrett extends the Marxist analysis into consideration of “productive” and unproductive” work and ideological groups. Garrett offers a Marxian cautionary note to social workers when he addresses contemporary realities of deepening exploitation and deteriorating conditions of work in the expanded working day resulting from the expanded use of technology (pp. 45–46).
Analysis by Garrett in Dissenting Social Work continues with critical analysis of diverse perspectives in chapters about (1) Neoliberalism, Human Capital, and Politics: Michel Foucault and Wendy Brown; (2) Surveillance Capitalism: Shoshana Zuboff; (3) Equality Now: Jacques Ranciere; (4) Critical Scholarship and Neoliberal Penalty: Loic Wacquant; (5) Dissenting with the Arch-Contrarian: Hannah Arendt; (6) Remembering That African, Asian and Palestinian Lives Matter: Emmanuel Levinas; (7) It Is Becoming Impossible to Breathe: Frantz Fanon; and (8) Social Work's Chinese Future? Antonio Gramsci. It is especially useful in this book about the critical theory that Garrett provides a model in every chapter for critical analysis through his analysis of major perspectives in the work of each of these theorists and their significance for the field of social work. Chapter content includes systematic explanations of key concepts and critical analysis of usefulness for contemporary dissenting social work. Several perspectives are criticized by Garrett for their Eurocentric views and blatant racism, but useful concepts from these theorists for dissenting social work are also offered.
Garrett (p. 229) concludes by referencing warnings by Holocaust survivor Hannah Arendt as he reminds readers about the consequences of failure to be sufficiently inquisitive, of thoughtlessness, and of risking the loss of political freedom. The need to combat thoughtlessness is viewed by Garrett as critical in social work education and dissenting social work (Garrett, p. 229).
