Introducing 'Deviant' Social Work: Contextualising the Limits of Radical Social Work
whilst Understanding (Fragmented) Resistance within the Social Work Labour Process
Author(s): Malcolm Carey and Victoria Foster
Source: The British Journal of Social Work , APRIL 2011, Vol. 41, No. 3 (APRIL 2011),
pp. 576-593
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43771438
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British Journal of Social Work (2011) 41, 576-593
doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcql48
Advance Access publication February 2, 201 1
Introducing 'Deviant' Social Work:
Contextualising the Limits of Radical
Social Work whilst Understanding
(Fragmented) Resistance within
the Social Work Labour Process
Malcolm Carey and Victoria Foster
Malcolm Carey is lecturer in social work at the University of Manchester. He previously worked
as a social worker for older and disabled people before entering higher education. His research
interests include contingency and deviant social work, alternative social work labour processes
and qualitative social work methodology. His new book , The Social Work Dissertation
(2009), is published with McGraw Hill /Open University Press. Victoria Foster is a Research
Associate at the University of Manchester. Her research interests include research ethics ,
critical and feminist methodology and parenting, cultural disadvantage and exclusion. There
were no grant or funding bodies attached to this research.
Correspondence to Malcolm Carey, School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, University
of Manchester, Room 4.309, Jean McFarlane Building, Wilton Street, Manchester M13 9PL,
UK. E-mail: M.Carey@manchester.ac.uk
Abstract
This paper draws upon case study research to explore deviant social work. This is
defined as small-scale acts of resistance, subterfuge, deception or even sabotage
that are typically hidden yet scattered throughout parts of the social work labour
process. Taking a wide variety of forms that can include recalcitrant attitudes as
well as practices, deviant social work can be seen as being distinct from radical
social work, most notably due to its implicit, pragmatic, non-idealistic and individual
dispositions and strategies that are not rooted within epistemologica!, professional or
other institutionally defined parameters. In contrast, positive deviant social work seeks
as its maxim application and tangible support to vulnerable people above theoretical
critique, rhetoric or perpetual reflexivity. Just as significant, because of its covert and
disparate expressions, deviant social work also largely evades managerial or policy-led
forms of location, surveillance and control. It is concluded that only engagement with
an eclectic mix of critical theories is likely to help us locate and understand the many
forms of resistance that inevitably emerge within an unpredictable, demanding,
© The Author 2011.Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of
The British Association of Social Workers. All rights reserved.
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Introducing 'Deviant' Social Work 577
highly regulated and under-resourced quasi-professional labour process such as social
work.
Keywords: Radical, social work, deviancy, recalcitrance, responsible subversion
Accepted : December 2011
[T]he 'new' social work professional/manager is required to be unthinking,
procedural, dispassionate and above all, unquestioning and obedient
(Thomas and Davies, 2005, p. 728).
Paradoxically, greater elaboration of rules and guidelines can actually make
them more uncertain (Evans and Harris, 2004, p. 892).
Introduction
The limits of radical social work are now well versed. Among others, these
include the overtly 'academic' nature of many counter-hegemonic stances
articulated throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and occasionally reiterated
such as within more recent attempts to accommodate widespread deskilling
evident within a care management labour process via neo-Marxist analysis
(see, e.g. Ferguson and Lavalette, 2004; Ferguson and Woodward, 2009).
Radical social work has also typically failed to gain little more than
limited support amidst 'front line' practitioners and, more significantly
perhaps, has maintained a general incapacity to offer practitioners tangible,
pragmatic or sustainable ways by which to meet the pressing, local,
crisis-orientated yet relatively small-scale or 'micro' needs of service
users and informal carers. Conversely, broader, often grandiose and much
more general, 'macro' dynamic or ontological themes have taken priority,
such as the role of social work within a diminishing welfare state apparatus,
the underlying causes of greater regulation within social work organisations, the wider impact of globalisation or the links that have seemingly
persisted between social work and the 'anti-gulf war' movements, and so
on. A subsequent lack of applicable advice regarding ways by which to
apply radical social work at a local or 'street level' has perhaps in some
way helped to encourage practitioner apathy (although other explanations
do exist). For example, even during the peak of a fleeting era of popular
radical tendencies in social work, Parsloe (1981) discovered that within
area social service departments in Britain, less than 10 per cent of practitioners identified themselves as being sympathetic to either 'sociological'
or 'radical' practices.
Nevertheless, gaps and uncertainties within any 'radical' academic analysis were also apparent during this period. For example, Harris (1998) notes
that during the height of radical social work, there were disparities between
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578 Malcolm Carey and Victoria Foster
theoretically driven agendas- that stressed managerial control, deskilling
and other losses of discretion for practitioners- and the day-to-day experiences of social workers in local authority social service teams:
Parochial professionalism in supervision was geared to developing orien-
tation to the personalized and discretionary nature of social workers'
contact with service users, rather than the imposition of control. It gave
social workers considerable discretion to define problems and the priority
allocated to them, choice over their preferred methods of work, and
control over how they rationed their time and paced their work... the
nature of social work in the 1970s/early 1980s did not render it susceptible
to managerial control ... as the radical social work literature suggested
(Harris, 1998, pp. 849-50).
Delanty (2005) has offered an even more sceptical stance when he argues
that widespread support for what quickly became 'institutionalized
Marxism' within academic departments during the 1970s and 1980s had
more to do 'with [a] quest for tenure than the search for the scattered
traces of revolutionary consciousness' (Delanty, 2005, p. 80). Whilst this
may understate the sincerity or productive critique of some dissident
voices of the time, it again underlines the chasm often held between the
construction of theory and the possibilities for tangible forms of praxis in
the field. As Delanty adds, the 'professionalisation of opposition' within
University departments centred more 'as a form of critique rather than
an emancipatory practice'. Furthermore, as Howe (2009) notes, as
well as failing to explain or accommodate the more nuanced and complex
(yet pragmatic) needs of service users, radical social work as academic
discourse also tended to make sympathisers feel 'either guilty or helpless'
(Howe, 2009, p. 129).
This paper draws from case study research and interviews and seeks to
explore distinct yet largely unidentified and unexplored forms of resistance
within the social work labour process- that of 'deviant' social work.
Deviant social work (DSW) can be defined as minor, hidden, subtle, practical, shrewd or moderate acts of resistance, subterfuge, deception or even
sabotage that are embroiled in parts of the social work labour process.
Alongside tangible forms of recalcitrant practice, DSW may also include
attitudes or emotional responses that defy established or expected professional or institutionally determined conventions. Although such anomalous acts of disobedience have links to radical social work- such as
regarding their attempts to resist or undermine normative organisa
processes whilst also seeking to consolidate altruistic practitioner i
tions- DSW is also distinct because it is predominately non-colle
and individual, is not necessarily explicitly tied to a critical or 'eman
tory' ideological agenda and, yet, ironically, is for the most part a re
to the control related processes that radical social workers identified
priority. The paper is in three parts and seeks to explore DSW and
different forms of expression it can take. First, a discussion of the l
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Introducing ' Deviant ' Social Work 579
of radical social work is presented, followed by a number of alternative
explanations of forms of state control and resistance. Second, two case
studies are presented alongside more general findings that reflect some of
the differing ways in which DSW is applied. Finally, the discussion
section draws from the general findings to identify the distinct qualities of
DSW. It is also suggested that due to its disparate and unpredictable
forms of expression, in order to contextualise DSW, we must draw from a
wider range of theoretical sources than radical social workers do at
present or have in the past.
The limits of radical social work, alternative critical
explanations and resistance
Following the initial expansion of radical social work as academic pursuit
and sustainable career, Pearson (1975Ď) documented the irony of many
of the debates on offer. In particular, the link between critical theory and
practice appeared tenuous and unconvincing:
Very often, invariably, [radical social work] criticisms are mounted at a level
far removed from the actual practice and experiences of contemporary
social welfare. Radical thought (which seems quite unable to find its
radical praxis) advocates various kinds of moves towards a political understanding of social work, but it rarely backs these up with any real appreciation of how these prescriptions connect up with the day-to-day practice
of social workers and the organisational conditions of social welfare
(Pearson, 1975Ò, p. 140).
Although personal tenure and kudos may have influenced any theoretical
privileging at the expense of practice-orientated concerns, as Delanty
(2005) suggests, it is likely that other factors were influential in determining
the pursuits of radicals. For example, Althusser's (2003) insistence that the
nurturing of separate 'realms of theory' were crucial to promote revolution
and progressive social change remained a popular stance for academics at
the time. Simpkin (1979, p. 132), however, noted other restraints and paradoxes, such as any budding radicals being 'faced with having to earn a living
themselves' and inevitably having to spend time and energy attempting to
'resist their own exploitation'. Subsequent day-to-day acts of collective
resistance- such as confronting management or becoming involved in
trade union activities- can initially appear enticing to the student or practitioner but may quickly become 'boring or attract intense hostility from
established interests', especially if applied over an extended period.
Indeed, any hostility may prove to be just as apparent, if not more so,
from colleagues or even service users, especially if essential tasks are not
fulfilled or provisions supplied as part of any radical manifesto. Such
examples can mean that any 'commitment becomes yet more unenviable'
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580 Malcolm Carey and Victoria Foster
in the highly stressful, bureaucratic and resource starved environment of
the typical social service department.
As a female-dominated quasi-profession, social work also lacks the legitimacy, and more tangible forms of power, of more established 'traditional'
professions such as medicine or law (Macdonald, 1995); subsequently, its
contested role and influence often remain much more circumscribed in
practice. Such limited power, however, did not prevent many academic
'radical' social workers from competing with one another to claim that
just about every cause or social problem could be confronted, or even overcome, by the humble social worker on the front line. In relation, one of the
most powerful questionings of the validity of radicalism within social work
was offered by Brewer and Lait (1980) within their polemical assault upon
the then relatively infant welfare profession. The authors identify radicalism as a component of wider deficiencies seemingly apparent within the
social work project. In contrast to health or education welfare services,
these include a seemingly unclear- if not nebulous- role that may often
translate into considerable autonomy and discretion for the typical social
worker. Any ambiguity of role may also help to accentuate a lack of evidence provided of longer-term positive outcomes for service users following
social work interventions. The authors add that there remains a likelihood
that associate professionals (doctors, teachers, nurses, voluntary sector
groups, etc.) can fulfil the social work role just as effectively, if not more
so, and that a paradoxical yet historically entrenched tendency to greatly
exaggerate professional and personal capabilities persists within social
work. Radicalism, the authors suggest, had partly emerged due to such miti-
gating factors and had only succeeded in placing further unrealistic expectations upon practitioners or impressionable students:
People without clearly defined jobs who are not very busy tend to indulge in
all sorts of extramural speculation . . . simply because they have time to do so
. . . this is one of the reasons why social workers engage in what P.Morgan
(1978) succinctly termed the 'Revolution on the Rates' . . .. We are not surprised if disappointed expectations have led to disillusion and flight. It is
surely downright cruelty to heap upon social workers the burden of 'restructuring society' as well as paying everyone's gas and electricity bills (Brewer
and Lait, 1980, pp. 106-10).
Such (partisan) criticism tended to exaggerate the extent of support for
radical social work outside the more tranquil world of higher education,
and also ignored any evidence to the contrary regarding the efficacy of
some crucial social work interventions (e.g. group work, domiciliary, day,
respite or foster-care, among other services). What Brewer and Lait did
recognise, however, were the links that remain between more traditional
and 'radical' social work: for example, the tension that persists between
the high ideals and broad ambitions of both therapeutic and critical
approaches and the constrained reality of the typically highly stressful,
bureaucratic and financially restricted social work department, bound
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Introducing ' Deviant Social Work 581
also as they invariably are to ever-increasing and legally enshrined pro-
cedures and policy. Eileen Younghusband (1981, p. 9) also regularly
observed social work's tendency to make 'too big or too exclusive claims'
regarding what it could achieve, whilst also consequentially often 'being
incoherent about what it was and did'. As Pearson (19756) also points
out, within a competitive (and at times ego-centred) radical discourse-
built around the generation of ever more grandiose ideals and ambitions-there is always a danger that the more immediate, and perhaps
humdrum, problems of the typical 'client' might become relegated or lost
as a priority:
. . . the personal, disorganised, inarticulate, small-scale troubles of clients are
left unconnected (in theory and practice) from the large-scale, public organised, collective, articulate issues which are thought to constitute politics. It is
the failure to recognise the interconnections between these two areas which
establishes the awkward problem of the person in social work's politics
(Pearson, 1975Ò, p. 141).
Such tensions continue to be accommodated or explained by alternative
attempts to capture the more nuanced and 'micro-structural' dynamics of
political and social life- readily articulated in aspects of critical theory,
post-structuralism, post-Marxism or 'standpoint' feminism. For example,
within the Frankfurt School, Marcuse (1964) had helped to predict the
limited support for radical social work in his analysis of a mass 'nonoppositional' or 'one-dimensional' society where a large majority of 'postindustrial' consumers (across social classes) see no point in rebelling against
forms of authority as their primary needs (food, shelter, access to consumer
durables, etc.) are identified as being adequately met. This, Marcuse argued
(drawing especially from Freud), had led to the emergence of a form of
'repressive desublimation' in which personal liberties or principles (within
the workplace as elsewhere) are given up or remain significantly compromised in exchange for access to material and sensory pleasures, such as
those enjoyed within an ever-expanding and hedonistic consumer society.
In this context, critical themes discussed by radical social workers- such
as the intense regulation of the social work labour process or flaws
embedded within the social democratic welfare state consensus- are (consciously or unconsciously) perceived as acceptable in exchange for relative
freedom and access to material rewards such as those enjoyed during times
of leisure. Harris's (2003, pp. 63-76) analysis appears to support this view
by drawing upon empirical research that indicates that most social
workers are prepared to surrender- or at least significantly compromise-the loss of their 'technical' and 'ideological' autonomy within a
now highly rationalised care management labour process.
Among others, Laclau and Mouffe (1985) had also stressed the plurality
of modern societies that are seemingly based more upon a myriad of social
group formations and conflict points that pivot around gender, 'race',
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582 Malcolm Carey and Victoria Foster
sexuality and many others. Previously such social and culturally defined
boundaries regularly transcend those built around class. Ackroyd and
Thompson (1999) also point to empirical studies that suggest that in the
workplace, 'identity polities' often usurp the traditional class-based conflicts between management and workers. In contrast, Marxist or secondwave feminist-inspired radical stances too often compress complex social
and cultural dynamics or issues into convenient 'binary' simplicities
(between managers and workers, women and men, working and middle
class, and so on). Foucault's later exploration of governmentality (and its
relation to discourse and power) also added to earlier 'post-structural'
debates that sought to question the neo-Marxist privileging of an allpowerful 'monolithic' state, social class and any economically deterministic
analysis of the predictable workings of monopoly capitalism. Governmentality instead stressed the ways in which practitioners- as well as 'service
users', carers and so forth- become held within normative discursive frameworks (or statements) that help determine, mould, shape or restrict
their subsequent attitudes, roles and purpose; such as when they are codified within governmental, professional, organisational and legally defined
linguistic apparatuses and traditions. For example, within a seemingly
'emancipatory' participation discourse, the service user as discursive
subject is invited into a social work/health organisation, but quickly
learns through hegemonic rituals, such as the interview, the meeting, the
conference and informal chat with a professional, etc., their normative
role and reverential status within wider institutional frameworks and tra-
ditions. As well as locating and determining role, a discursive statement
can also exclude subjects who think or act differently (Mills, 1997). Elsewhere, more dispersed, subtle yet effective streams of governance also
emerge, including government by 'audit, marketisation, privatisation, quan-
goisation and the devolution of responsibility for the management of
various risks- "for health, wealth and happiness"- to non-state institutions
and private individuals' (Miller and Rose, 1990, p. 5).
Welfare professionals also play a key role in governance by ' not . . .
weaving an all-pervasive web of "social control" (as radical social
workers had claimed), but of enacting assorted attempts at the calculated
administration of diverse aspects of conduct through countless, often competing, local tactics of education, persuasion, inducement, management,
incitement, motivation and encouragement' (Rose and Miller, 1992,
p. 175). Even forms of quasi-collective, yet quickly institutionalised, resistance such as anti-oppressive practice add to such micro-techniques of hegemonic self-governance and control, such as by discouraging apathy and
offering a revitalised moral and 'reflexive' professional purpose to the
despondent social work practitioner who previously felt 'tied up' in
bureaucracy and without power.
Not everyone, however, has been convinced by some of these pessimistic
arguments. For example, as part of an articulate critique of CCTV use and
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Introducing ' Deviant ' Social Work 583
'entrepreneurial redevelopment' in Liverpool City Centre, Coleman (2004,
pp. 30-1) draws from aspects of Foucaulťs and Marx's work (among
others) whilst highlighting flaws within the 'governmentality thesis'. This
includes a tendency to place too much emphasis on 'the local' and 'the
micro', which is typically presented alongside 'a self perpetuating and overmanagerial conception of risk'. In its- at times dogmatic- insistence upon
discrediting any association with Marxism, there are also accusations of
avoiding recognition of the impact of ideology, 'dematerialising' any analysis and, at times, preposterous accounts that have disregarded or completely
'taken the state out of [any] analysis'. Likewise, Ackroyd and Thompson
(1999, pp. 155-8) question the implicit conservatism held in much neoFoucauldian analysis when they draw attention to the relatively widespread
presence of employee resistance and ra/sbehaviour within work organisations. Contrary to many post-structural suppositions that privilege the cen-
trality of 'normative integration', the trance-like corporate-induced
'creation of obedient bodies' or mass nurturing of a 'colonized consciousness'- as well as a rationale that resistance is often counter productive
because 'discipline can grow stronger knowing where its next efforts must
be directed'- there is instead (upon closer empirical inspection) evidence
that the recalcitrant worker has not disappeared but merely adapted their
behaviour or attitudes to accommodate changing circumstances (e.g.
Taylor and Bain, 2003; Schoneboom, 2007, among many others).
Finally, Kemshall (2010, pp. 5-10) again questions some of the propositions attached to neo-Foucauldian analysis, including those that link
'risk' and 'actuarialism' to social work, whilst assuming that obedience
will necessarily follow any such disciplinary projects, schemes or tech-
niques. For example, advocates of risk theory- which assumes 'a component of diverse forms of calculative rationality for governing the
conduct of individuals, collectivities and populations' (Dean, 2010,
p. 206)- prioritise types of 'total' surveillance and regulation, in which
populations are encouraged to 'exercise . . . prudential choice, such as
healthy eating, pension planning, crime prevention, leading to a law-abiding
life [in which] the good citizen is the responsible, prudential one'. In a
similar vein, professionals are formally encouraged to utilise 'actuarialism'
or the 'formal, statistical calculation of [service user] risk assessments in
social work, social care, health and criminal justice'. As Kemshall points
out, such seemingly 'total' systems of intricate and dispersed discursive
regulation (among other types of moral duty and self-regulation) are continuously open to negotiation, resistance and paradox, which includes the
capacity of service users or practitioners to ignore advice or follow instincts
or contrary personal beliefs, instead of complying with formal guidance,
procedure, or the apparent legitimate stance of line managers or policy
makers. In depicting a more materialist (and less discursive) stance, Jones
and Novak (1999) and Clarke (2005) also note that many service users
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584 Malcolm Carey and Victoria Foster
tend to be more 'abandoned' by any 'reflexive state' rather than surveyed or
self-disciplined.
Nevertheless, what Foucault and his many admirers have drawn attention
to is recognition of the more dispersed and intricate nature of power and
forms of discipline and surveillance, as well as a realisation that a personal
or group 'will to power or govern' can lead to forms of dominance that may
cut across the market, social class, gender and race, among other social
phenomena or categories.
Methodology
This research initially aimed to explore 'alternative, unconventional or
unorthodox' forms of social work practice. Data were collected during
semi-structured and unstructured interviews completed from between
January 2009 and May 2009. A convenience sample that comprised statutory social workers who specialised in work with either adults or children
developed and grew over the period. The majority of interviews were completed in London, although four took place within an inner city within
North-West England. In total, a sample of fourteen practitioners was interviewed. Interviews lasted, on average, from between one and two hours.
A 'mixed methodology' was utilised that was influenced by three symbiotic strands that included the use of:
(1) Case study research: which seeks to 'identify and then explore a determined case in great depth and detail, so as to understand and appreciate
the characteristics or unique qualities embodied within' (Carey, 2009,
p. 92).
(2) Ethnomethodology: through which the researcher asks questions regarding 'how social reality is constructed and/or negotiated through everyday
interaction and talk' (Marvasti, 2004, p. 75).
(3) Thematic analysis: which provides an underlying inductive form of analysis that proceeds 'from scrutiny of one case to produce a low-level gener-
alization, which then starts to define and characterise a given
phenomenon' (Plummer, 2001, p. 163).
Transcripts and notes from interviews were read several times and themes
were identified and coded to exemplify specific attitudes and practices. The
individual case studies and embedded themes then helped to determine the
ways or strategies by which practitioners respond to, construct, negotiate
and order their (professional) roles and relations. Subsequently, quotes
from each practitioner that best captured their response to themes
addressed were isolated for analytical purposes. The two cases presented
reflect examples of specific ways in which practitioners engage in forms
of what were eventually determined to be forms of 'deviant social work'.
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Introducing ' Deviant ' Social Work 585
Disparate varieties of deviance were noted throughout interviews, and the
cases presented provide only two broad examples of deviant social work in
practice. Data that draw from other practitioners within the sample are also
used where they support the overall findings, and the more general findings
are also included alongside case studies and more generally within the discussion at the end. Finally, it is recognised that because of the limited size of
the sample, these results may not be representative of wider practices and
beliefs.
Case study 1: Pragmatism, 'responsible subversion' and
'positive deviance'
Pauline had twelve years' qualified experience within adult social work, and
had also previously worked as an unqualified 'care assistant' within a local
authority residential care setting for disabled and older people for three
years. During the interview, Pauline asserted that she regularly engaged
in 'unauthorised' acts of social work and, like some other participants,
initially expressed a sense of pride and dignity at what she perceived to
be 'creative' and 'rewarding' acts of sedition that 'duped management'.
However, further on in the interview, Pauline became more reflective
and began to ruminate that her primary motives for deviant practice were
not simply 'fun'-based or a response to seemingly didactic regulatory processes, but also provided a clear drive that allowed her to cope with a difficult role in a demanding and constraining organisation:
It's about tryin' to help the service user or family rather than just tryin' to
cover your back all the time or just getting the paperwork done. It's like
trying to give a purpose to the daily grind of the job, hoping to give it
meaning and make it less futile ... I like to think that there are very few
of us who are here just to pay the mortgage. Without bending the rules a
little it's now almost impossible to help anyone .... Everyone here knows
that you won't get anything from the [funding] panel if you're too honest.
Pearson (1975a) has suggested that what he terms 'industrial deviance'
within social work is a relatively common activity that is motivated by
two primary drivers:
In the case of social work, industrial deviance amounts to a small scale
restructuring of the welfare state on a day-to-day extemporised level. It is
restructuring which supports the little man against the big machine, and it
is informed by two levels of experience - first the ordinary sense of concepts
of equality, freedom, justice, human rights, which any citizen might pick up
in his daily passage in the world; secondly the rather specialised sense of
those concepts which a social work apprentice obtains in his professional
training (Pearson, 1975a, p. 44).
In a similar vein, Hutchinson (1990) has also prioritised professional and
altruistic drivers when discussing 'responsible subversion' and rule-bending
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586 Malcolm Carey and Victoria Foster
amongst nurses. Within this professional sub-culture, four stages are typically followed that proceed as evaluating (a problem); predicting (the con-
sequences or risks of any intervention); performing the act(s) of rule
bending; and, finally, covering (any evidence of earlier malpractice from
a patient, colleague or senior member of staff). Furber and Thomson's
(2006) interviews with thirty midwives based in two maternity units in the
North of England again highlight the altruism directed at (patient)
mothers and dependant children that will typically motivate midwives to
'break the rules'. Such deviant processes were carefully managed by midwives and included acts of deception alongside an implicit disregard for
evidenced-based policy and rules. Most practitioners interviewed identified
such acts as carrying significant risks regarding a damaged reputation or
career as well as future impaired relations with colleagues. They could
also risk potential harm to patients. However, as Ackroyd and Thompson
(1996, p. 70) stress, recalcitrance not unusually unfolds with 'considerable
informal organisation associated with it'. This can include risk assessments
being undertaken based around factors such as limiting the likelihood of
being caught and maximising the benefit to protagonists or others implicated. Essentially, occupational deviance often proceeds as a sophisticated
and adept set of pre-planned rituals that limit detection and potential
hazards.
Many of the interviews with social workers such as Pauline, however,
suggested that additional motives other than altruism inspire the deviant.
These include the relief of boredom instilled by relentless exposure to
regulation and bureaucracy, or a rational response to dissatisfaction or
resentment felt towards 'patronising' or didactic 'advice' offered by
colleagues, managers or 'higher' professionals. Indeed, as Ackroyd and
Thompson (1996) suggest, it is not uncommon within a wide range of
controlled organisational settings (manufacturing, service sector, professional, etc.), for 'the [organisational] pursuit of manageability through
the manipulation of categories and procedures [to] lead directly to the production of specific forms of organisational misbehaviour' (Ackroyd and
Thompson, 1996, p. 75). That is, by their very nature, forms of organisation
or regulation paradoxically generate types of disorganisation or deviance.
Again, Munchie (2008) proposes that deviance that might include personal
scepticism or a disregard for aspects of official policy will not unusually be
built in and around the didactic processes and restraints imposed by an
institution. However, more parochial practitioner cultures- including
those of resistance- will also be of influence. Types of deviance tend to
vary: these include not least the application of less punitive approaches to
a role than might be demanded from above.
For this research, deviance within social work was sometimes also generated at an ego-centred or emotional level, and was not always fired by
grander political, altruistic or professional needs alone. This finding is
again supported by Spreitzer and Sonenshein's (2004, pp. 841-3) research
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Introducing ' Deviant ' Social Work 587
that identified a myriad of deviant acts within organisational settings yet
isolated personal attributes on behalf of protagonists that can be defined
as offering forms of 'positive' deviance. These consisted of 'intentional
behaviours that depart from the norms of a referent group in honourable
ways'. Importantly, as with all forms of practitioner discretion, not all
acts of deviance will be positive: indeed, some may instead be self-serving
and counter the interests of service users, informal carers or colleagues.
More often than not, however, most participants felt that they often
had little choice but to 'bend the rules' in order to overcome organisational or legal restraints that restricted their capacity to 'get the job
done'.
It was apparent early on within the interview that Pauline's specific brand
of deviant social work fulfilled Spreitzer and Sonenshein's (2004) criterion
of positive deviance. As she stated:
Yes I've encouraged [service users] to lie on forms from the DSS but that is
because those benefits are now so hard to get. Does that make me a crim-
inal? Well if helping people in desperate need is now a crime you have to
ask yourself what type of society are we living in? ... I came into this line
of work to help people not to say 'no I can't help' when [service users]
ask for a little bit of support.
Case study 2: Counter-hegemonic resistance
Bill was one of the longest-serving practitioners within the sample, having
worked within statutory social work (generic and specialist) for more
than thirty years. Bill had deliberately avoided a career in management,
as he perceived this type of 'social work' to be 'unethical'. When asked if
he had ever considered himself to be a 'radical social worker', he dismissed
this label and remarked that in his experience, such practitioners had
tended to be 'career driven above all else'. Nevertheless, despite such scepticism, it became clear that at least some aspects of the radical cultural
agenda had influenced Bill's viewpoints and beliefs. Bill's overview of the
current state of social work exemplified this point:
Most of the policies we work under belong to a very cynical view of the
world in which everything is market-driven and consumer-led . . . some of
us know from personal experience that it is very difficult to find employ-
ment around here, especially if you have a disability. We are often all
that a user has left in what can appear as a very selfish world.
Bill stressed his general distain for not only aspects of formal policy-
including specifically community care and the Every Child Matters
agenda- but also organisational and managerial cultures that had seemingly restricted his capacity to support vulnerable people. As a consequence, Bill felt that he had no choice but to evade, disregard and at the
very least query aspects of formal procedures and policies:
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588 Malcolm Carey and Victoria Foster
Why should I do as I'm told when it just leads to nothing being provided?
What is the point in going out to [the service user's] house and filling out
all those forms if there is nothing available [to the user] at the end of all
the effort and hard work? ... I ignore the rules sometimes because the
'system' is unfair.
Among other studies, Dustin's (2007) findings following interviews with
care managers in London echo much of Bill's cynicism when the author
draws attention to the general scepticism regarding policy present among
some front line practitioners. Indeed, there prevails a sense that care management 'is a simulacrum of care or an imitation of care in the same way
that McDonald's food is a simulacrum of food . . . [it] is not "natural"
[and] is highly processed and bureaucratized and serviced by people who
do not "care" in the sense that they must maintain professional boundaries
between themselves and those they care for' (Dustin, 2007, p. 153).
Nevertheless, in attempts to confront such 'McDonaldisation' processes,
Bill was pressed on his reference to 'ignoring the rules'. Examples he
offered included spending greater time with service users than was
permitted, engaging in unspecified 'unprofessional activities', exaggerating
needs within assessments or 'panel' applications for support services
(a common reference point for most interviewed) and confronting middle
or senior 'management' about organisational policies within supervision
or team meetings. More extreme practices were also detailed. Among
others, these included "'whistle blowing" to the local media about
planned cuts to support services [seemingly via an anonymous fax]',
encouraging informal carers or users to legally challenge local authority
decisions to refuse support services or encouraging service users/family
members/informal carers to exaggerate or provide false information if
applying for support services (benefits, housing, schooling, financial
credit, and so on). Bill also noted that in the past, he had sometimes confronted colleagues about their beliefs or practices, including those that
were part of an established professional discourse or organisational policy.
In contrast to such findings, Kunda (1991) drew from extensive ethnographic research with 'high-tech' engineers in the USA to conclude that
resistance by such professionals against corporate ideals remains largely
inconsistent, fleeting and is typically accommodated or defused by resilient
corporate cultures that are able to 'strategically accommodate cynicism
within the spectrum of acceptable workplace behaviours' (Schoneboom,
2007, p. 405). Among others, Schoneboom (2007, p. 420) questions this
commonplace post-structural stance (especially influenced by Foucault)
and instead highlights the creative flair and constructive 'counterhegemonic' impact of recalcitrant white-collar anonymous 'bloggers'
(online diary writers) working in Greater Manchester and Lancashire. As
the author concludes:
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Introducing ' Deviant ' Social Work 589
The bloggers in this study point to the presence, in today's knowledge
organizations, of employees who enjoy their work yet are deeply critical
of the ideological underpinnings of management philosophy and concerned
that their labour is serving narrow corporate ideals that fail to benefit individual workers and society as a whole.
As with other interviewees, Bill's engagement with informally construed
acts and values would appear to add support to Evans and Harris's
(2004) proposition that 'policy on the ground often bears little resemblance
to formal public policy', and also that discretion 'is an irreducible component in street-level bureaucrats work . . . that managers cannot eliminate'
(Evans and Harris, 2004, p. 879). Thomas and Davies (2005) also question
the not uncommon assumption that within typically hostile and cramped
office spaces, resistors within state social work are quickly identified by
their over-didactic supervisors and are subsequently 'pathologised,
viewed as deviant or defective members of the organization' who make
up 'a minority of "awkward types" to be dealt with by either re-education
or removal' (Thomas and Davies, 2005, pp. 729-30). Instead, their empirical research suggested that managers may be as, if not more, likely to bend
the rules than their immediate subordinates. Despite this, it is important to
stress that each of the participants interviewed regularly stressed their per-
ceived limited and receding discretion, which was sometimes presented as
an almost rare and precious component of a role that was being continuously compromised (through greater bureaucracy, managerial supervision,
surveillance and monitoring due to more engagement with information and
communication technology, and so on).
Finally, along with other members of the sample, Bill pointed out that the
more subtle or slight acts of 'deviance' stood as much to reflect the many
changes that had occurred over the past three decades as much as they represented types of subterfuge or resistance. For example, expressions of
'empathy' or the provision of positive support to a service user or, just as
significantly, a practitioner's refusal to embrace punitive interventions tar-
geted at vulnerable adults or families were all now seemingly recognised as
potentially deviant acts within the confines of the social work departments
in which the interviewees were based. As Bill concluded:
Just offering a little time or support [to a service user] is now a crime it
seems. That wasn't the case when I started out in this job; it was just a
basic skill that was assumed to be part of your practice. Now you're a
radical or are considered to be a little 'odd' if you continue to argue for
support for the users! It seems to be far more important that we're back
at the office typing up our forms . . . collecting more and more information
is all you really do if you let management have their way.
Bill and one other interviewee's responses pointed to a more holistic and
explicitly political response to policy or organisational agendas that might
be termed counter-hegemonic or ideological in its querying of wider established practices and policy.
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590 Malcolm Carey and Victoria Foster
Discussion: locating deviant social work
Despite the apparently 'reductive' analytical components of neo-Marxist
and second-wave feminist 'radical' approaches of the past, 'positive'
deviant social workers appear to hold at least some cultural and ideologi-
cal threads that link them in part to the more grandiose and wideranging ambitions of social work's 'radical' past. Among others, these
include a sense of distrust for authority, a questioning of officialdom
alongside many established organisational and cultural norms and at
least some concern for social justice alongside a general distain for
much established statutory policy and legislation. Perhaps inevitably,
there was also regularly expressed a more general sense of empathy
felt towards the apparent plight of service users and informal carers.
Despite such similarities, however, there were also notable distinguishable qualities, attributes or practices that separate the deviant from the
radical. These included:
• a pioneering and creative sense of individualism (although this can
occasionally spill over into group or even wider forms of resistance, such
as within union-related protests);
• a lack of an explicit dedication to, or engagement with, any formal 'emancipatory' models of practice (e.g. anti-oppressive practice or service user
participation, etc.);
• commitment to a series of surreptitious or 'hidden' activities (and som
times values) that contrast with any priority previously given to more con-
spicuous 'collective' or class-based struggles emphasised by radical soci
work;
• motives that are often divergent, sometimes instinctive, and yet in contrast
to at least some radicals, are not propelled by career, ego or other powercentred drives;
• a practice-based questioning of legally enshrined, policy or professionally
defined norms and traditions, which, in some case examples, included a
rejection of behaviourist, systemic or task-centred social work approaches;
• the influence of expectations that are typically small-scale, humble, pragmatic and non-idealistic;
• an adept understanding of service user and informal carer need that
includes a personal and sincere yearning to provide immediate practical
and tangible forms of support to vulnerable groups;
• a sense of scepticism that can drift towards cynicism, especially regarding
organisational, policy-related, professional or academically enhanced
rhetoric that stress grandiose, emotionally exploitative and idealistic
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Introducing ' Deviant ' Social Work 591
themes such as empowerment, promoting equality, participation, fighting
oppression, among others.
One significant consequence of such attributes- especially the hidden and
divergent nature of DSW articulated in practice- remains that it can be
extremely difficult to identify, locate, monitor, quantify and, perhaps
most importantly, manage or regulate. That is, DSW does not suffer the
same counter productive symptoms of radical social work which, when
applied, remain visible, disruptive, conspicuous and possibly noisy or irritat-
ing to many around. This would most prominently be the case within the
relatively controlled environment of any social service department or
other social care setting. Consequentially, the occasional radical social
worker could become quickly identified and relatively easy to control
or integrate from a managerial or collégial perspective. Also, because
DSW is not tied to academic discourse in the way that radical social
work always has been, it has the merit of being less prone to becoming
institutionalised and then subsequently diluted and defused, such as in
the way that any radicalism of the 1970s and 1980s quickly became codified,
diluted and distilled into more palatable, functionalist and organisational,
legal or policy-friendly 'epistemological offspring' such as antidiscriminatory or anti-oppressive practice, service user participation,
among other practice-based models. As Foucault (1978) previously noted,
the governance of subversive citizens tends to prioritise strategies of
reform, re-education and integration, rather than resort to punitive forms
of exclusion or coercion.
Theoretically, elements of Marxist and neo-Marxist analysis can still
help us to contextualise processes of policy application, such as in understanding the causes or impact of poverty for service users or of employee
deskilling within social work. However, within such paradigms, there still
remain numerous epistemological and ontological 'gaps' relating to
aspects of the social work role, such as how to best understand and
respond to social problems or needs that relate to domestic violence or
a physical or learning disability can. As Thomas and Davies (2005)
also protest, Marxist frameworks sometimes simplify and compress
complex cultural and political proceedings into neat (binary) categories
and (paradoxically) ignore the 'varied ways [through which] different
individuals construct their identities in reflecting, resisting and reinserting the normalising discourses of new public management' (Thomas and
Davies, 2005, p. 724). This research also suggests that to fully compre-
hend a concept such as occupational deviance and resistance, the use
of a more eclectic variety of critical theories (e.g. post-structural, feminist, interpretive, queer, neo and post-Marxist, cultural materialist, and so
on) will offer a better grasp of the specific nuances and variants of creative or progressive social work.
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592 Malcolm Carey and Victoria Foster
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