JOURNAL OF STUDENT SOCIAL WORK, VOLUME VII

Speaking Truth to Power:

Interrogating the Invention of the
Social Worker and the Client
TRACEE WORLEY

The development of a professional social work identity involves being

socialized into the history, mission, values, and ethics of the profes-
sion--learning what social workers can say and do. This socialization
also corresponds with a silence about the limits and philosophical
extremities of the profession--what social workers do not, perhaps
cannot, say. Drawing from social theorist Michel Foucault’s analysis
of subjectivity, power, knowledge, and discourse, this article aims to
articulate the limits of the social work profession. By examining the
historical and contemporary invention of the “social worker” and the
“client,” I challenge social workers to consider the work that must be
conducted upon themselves.

F OR NEARLY 100 YEARS, PUBLIC DEBATE HAS BEEN CIRCULATING regarding the
identity of contemporary social work. The nature of this debate is re-
flected in arguments concerning social work’s values, the relevancy of
its knowledge base, and its professional status (Bitensky, 1978; Bar-On,
1994; Eaton, 1958; Flexner, 1915; Gibleman, 1999; Haynes & White, 1999;
Risler, Lowe, & Nackerud, 2003). At the heart of this debate lay questions
concerning epistemological, theoretical, and methodological challenges
and opportunities for social work in the 21st century. What is social work?
Is it a quasi-profession? Has professionalization privileged technique over
social justice?
Michel Foucault (1984a) provides a strong starting point for examining
these questions: “My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything
is dangerous, which is not exactly the same thing as bad, if everything is
dangerous, then we always have something to do” (p. 343). We always have

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something to do. This is a positive position: not all social work knowl-
edge and practices are bad, but they all can be problematized in an
effort to expose their limitations and highlight their possibilities. From
this position, social workers can grasp the nature of the debate by fo-
cusing on the dangerous potential of knowledge and practices rather
than starting with the assumption that they are inherently good or
bad. Moving beyond these moral categories, Foucault advises us to
conduct a “critical ontology of ourselves” in which we analyze and re-
flect upon what we are in order to recognize the dangers of our con-
duct (Foucault, 1987).
In problematizing the origins of social work and the shaping of the
social work professional identity, I argue that critical examination of
knowledge production, subjectivity, difference, and power allow us
to help “determine which is the main danger” (Foucault, 1984a, p.
343) in the creation of ourselves as professionals who help others in
the name of social justice. By conducting a critical ontology of social
workers, I will illuminate how particular “expert” and “client” identi-
ties, social relationships, and practices are made possible while others
are excluded. It is in this space of social work discourse that potential
“dangers” can be located: as social work produces knowledge, it nec-
essarily blocks other ways of knowing and being. It is not my intention
to provide a blueprint for alternative knowledge and practices; rather,
by fostering a “limit attitude,” (Foucault, 1984b) I contemplate the his-
torical and contemporary limits that have been placed upon social
workers and interrogate them in an effort to establish the possibility
of moving beyond them.

Shaping of the Social Worker Subject Position

Before interrogating how contemporary social work professional

identities are constructed, let us first consider the historical origin of the
social worker. In the early 20th century, economic depressions, the
emancipation of slaves, and the explosion of immigrants from Southern
and Eastern Europe to urban areas such as New York City, prompted an
awareness of the need for social programs to assist millions of the
poor and needy (Glicken, 2006). Social work as a profession began
to take shape in the early 1880s with the formation of charity organi-
zation societies and settlement houses. Their objectives, to “repress
mendicancy” and inculcate values such as “politeness, cleanliness,
and independence” were met through a system whereby “friendly
visitors” and settlement house workers (most of them middle and up-

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 JOURNAL OF STUDENT SOCIAL WORK, VOLUME VII

per class white women) investigated applicants for charity and pro-
vided support in immigrant communities (Specht & Courtney, 1995).
Parton and O’Byrne (2006) observe that the growth and legiti-
mization of social work was closely allied with modernist aims to de-
velop rational forms of social organization, which reflected broader
utopian goals for creating ideal cities with ideal citizens. The central
focus of the modernist project was the classification of the popula-
tion based on the scientific claims of the different “experts” of the
new human sciences--particularly medicine, psychiatry, psychol-
ogy, criminology, and social work. These “experts” theorized about
the nature of human beings, their perfectibility, the reasons for their
behavior and the order in which populations could be classified. In
this sense, human qualities were conceptualized as measurable and
“could be changed, improved, and rehabilitated” (Parton & O’Bryne,
2006, p. 39). It is in the modernist tradition that a new scientific edu-
cation was introduced into universities in the United States. Oper-
ating under the assumption that scientific inquiry could be used to
improve the human condition, professional schools of medicine, psy-
chiatry, and law were established across the country. By adopting a
scientific approach similar to the social sciences, social work found its
home in the academy beginning with the first school of social work,
the New York School of Philanthropy in 1904, later known as the
New York School of Social Work in 1917, and finally becoming the Co-
lumbia School of Social Work in 1963 (Feldman & Kamerman, 2001).
A necessary element in reconstructing the invention of the so-
cial worker is the concept of discourse. Foucault (1980) defined dis-
courses as “historically variable ways of specifying knowledge and
truth--what is possible to speak at a given moment” (p. 93). Follow-
ing Foucault, Margolin (1997) conducted a discourse analysis of ear-
ly 20th century social work case records to demonstrate how social
workers created and sustained themselves as well as others, primar-
ily through the language of helping. By examining this language, we
can observe how as the classification of populations into “allegedly
universal moral categories” such as the “mentally ill,” “the criminal,”
“the delinquent,” “the drunkard,” “the wayward woman,” and the
“orphan” (Wagner, 1997) warranted the intervention of social work-
ers. Margolin pays particular attention to this classification process,
suggesting that it reflected the power interests of the middle-class:
“social work stabilizes middle-class power by creating an observable,
discussable, [and] write-about-able poor” (p. 5).
By inventing such categories, or what Foucault (1969) calls “sub-

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ject positions,” social workers became judges of normality. Through

their techniques of home visits, observations, and note-taking, a new
figure arose that became the object of intervention, something to be
reformed. Foucault (1977) maintains that: “We are in the society of
the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the social-
worker judge. It is on them that the universal reign of the normative
is based” (p. 304). Most salient in Foucault’s analysis of the invention
of subject positions is his notion of “power/knowledge relations,” in
which he understood that it is impossible to think of knowledge out-
side of its connection to power. We know someone to be “delinquent”
or “mentally ill” not because of traits that are inherent to those indi-
viduals, but, rather through the power of experts to conduct scientific
research, distinguishing the deviant from the normal and the ill from
the healthy. This process, in which the modern state confers power
upon credentialed “experts,” allows for the creation of others as
objects of knowledge. Who is defined as “expert” and who is defined as
“other” is the result of a particular configuration of power/knowledge
relations.
As social work evolved from the voluntarism of friendly visi-
tors and settlement house workers into a full-fledged profession
with a distinctive value base, body of knowledge, and method for
training, several authors argue that it has matured from its preoc-
cupation with the morality of the poor to having a keener appre-
ciation of the limits of science and its ability to respond to complex
societal problems (Feit, 2003; Gibelman & Schervish, 1997; Levy
Simon, 1994; Reisch & Andrews, 2002). The last 20 years have wit-
nessed considerable scholarly and practice activity focused on
empowerment, the strengths-based perspective, cultural compe-
tence, evidence-based practice, and person-in-environment con-
siderations. The emergence of this knowledge base, transmitted
systematically through formal education in schools of social work,
gives shape and meaning to our self-fashioning as experts, both in-
dividually and as a professional collective. How are our subject posi-
tions shaped today? Has the way we imagine ourselves as “experts”
changed from the modernist goals of moralizing the poor and deviant?
The Code of Ethics: How Social Workers Imagine
Themselves and Who They Serve

Since the 20th Century, codes of ethics have been central aspects
of professions (Banks, 2006). Banks suggests that codes of ethics es-
tablish guidelines for professional behavior, contribute to the profes-
sional status of an occupation, establish and maintain professional
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 JOURNAL OF STUDENT SOCIAL WORK, VOLUME VII

identity, explain the moral stance of a profession, and protect clients

from harmful activities (Banks, 2006, p.44). Given the importance of
the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics
in guiding professional behavior, it is a key document for analyzing
how contemporary subject positions of both social worker and cli-
ent are formed. The Code includes four major sections. The first sec-
tion, the Preamble, summarizes social work’s mission and core values
and sets forth several key themes to practice, including service, social
justice, dignity and worth of the person, the importance of human
relationships, integrity, and competence (NASW, 1996). As the Pream-
ble lays out the framework for the rest of the Code of Ethics, it is a good
starting point to conduct a discourse analysis to investigate
how social worker and client subject positions are constituted:
The primary mission of the social work profession is to enhance
human wellbeing and help meet the basic human needs of all
people, with particular attention to the needs and empowerment
of people who are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty. A
historic and defining feature of social work is the profession’s fo-
cus on individual wellbeing in a social context and the wellbeing
of society. Fundamental to social work is attention to the environ-
mental forces that create, contribute to, and address problems
in living. Social workers promote social justice and social change
with and on behalf of clients. “Clients” is used inclusively to re-
fer to individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communi-
ties. Social workers are sensitive to cultural and ethnic diversity
and strive to end discrimination, oppression, poverty, and other
forms of social injustice. These activities may be in the form of
direct practice, community organizing, supervision, consultation
administration, advocacy, social and political action, policy devel-
opment and implementation, education, and research and evalu-
ation. Social workers seek to enhance the capacity of people to
address their own needs. Social workers also seek to promote the
responsiveness of organizations, communities, and other social in-
stitutions to individuals’ needs and social problems (NASW, 1996).

The concept of discourse is central to analyzing the subjectivities

that are expressed within the NASW Code of Ethics. By paying particu-
lar attention to the representation of worker and client subject posi-
tions in the code, it becomes apparent that these positions are con-
stituted through dualistic categories such as: privileged/oppressed,

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financially stable/impoverished, unlimited technical knowledge/lim-

ited individual capacity, strong/vulnerable, powerful/powerless, and
worker/client (one who does not ‘work’ on society, but on whom soci-
ety and the social worker works). Within these dualisms, social workers
are always fixed to the positions on the left and clients on the right. Fur-
thermore, this mode of representation fails to acknowledge the com-
plex individual and collective histories that exist within each category.
To illustrate how these categories constrain the articulation of
the whole self, consider the complexities inherent in my own for-
mation as a social worker. According to the Code of Ethics, I fit the
description of someone in need of the help of a social worker. I
grew up as what could be categorized as “disadvantaged:” an Af-
rican-American youth living in a low-income, single parent fam-
ily. Growing up in the economically blighted community of West
Oakland, California during the early 1980s, my family was inti-
mately affected by the high rate of poverty, crime, and the crack
epidemic. Terms such as “crisis,” “at-risk,” and “marginalized” could
be used to describe the conditions I faced, yet, within the logic of
the Code of Ethics, in becoming a social worker, I must disengage
with this experience, as the oppositional subject positions do not al-
low for being both the social worker and the oppressed. Some may
argue that rather than disengage with the experience of oppression,
I could use this common experience to enhance my connection to
the communities in which I work. Such sentiment constitutes a fur-
ther danger, as it masks the power I wield as a social worker over my
clients. Hence, in the social work context, my experiences beyond the
practice setting are dislocated at worst or used to manipulate my
power at best.
The disempowering effects of the oppositional constitution of
social worker and client identities is particularly problematic, given the
profession’s stated commitment to social justice. Although the Code is
intended to position social workers to challenge social injustice, the
oppositional constitution of worker and client leaves little room for
dialogue among equals, insofar as it assumes that social workers and
clients do not exist in equal social worlds and that clients are depen-
dent on the work that will be conducted upon them to become em-
powered. Within these categories, there is neither reciprocal interac-
tion nor a space where the social worker is on equal status with the
client. In naming clients as objects of intervention, help can never
flow both ways, and if it does, it is neither acknowledged nor codified
within the Code of Ethics. The danger in this assumption is that, rather
than enable a politics of social justice, oppositional categories foster

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a politics of domination, as “privileged” professionals make claims on

behalf of “oppressed” groups. The placement of the social worker sub-
ject position as the helper, the powerful, and the invulnerable, fun-
damentally contradicts the pursuit of social justice; by beginning our
work in a space of inequality, we effectively foreclose the possibility of
moving toward equality.

Conclusion: Speaking Truth to Power

Conducting a critical ontology of social worker and client subject

positions is not about what is good or bad more than it is about an
awareness of the limits of the social work profession. The aim of such
a task is to unmask the forms of knowledge by which we construct
ourselves as “experts” and by which our “clients” are objectified; the in-
terventions that operate upon them; the judgments, decisions, and
forms of authority to which they are subject; and the types of relation-
ships to which they are drawn into, with us as social workers.
By engaging in this critical ontology, my purpose is to articulate
that the consequences of our expertise cannot be acknowledged while
our professional identities are being formed. Foucault (1977) argues
that for any discipline to exist and have a piece of knowledge, there
have to be certain things that go unsaid: “There is not one but many
silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie
and permeate discourses” (p. 27). I argue that in order to be aware of
the main danger, it is critical to speak truth to these silences. Social
workers must not only acknowledge that the historical invention of
the social worker and client are tied to certain moral imperatives, but
that the present invention is also rooted in oppositional identities
that are fixed in a relationship, which is fundamentally hierarchical,
oppressive, and unequal.
Speaking truth to the power of the social worker identity requires
that we do a kind of ethical work on ourselves by “shaking up habits,
ways of acting and thinking, of dispelling commonplace beliefs, [and]
of taking a new measure of rules” (Foucault, 1991, p. 11-12). Such
ethical work pushes us beyond the limits of the NASW Code of Ethics
and allows us to confront those things that cannot be said. The stakes
are high: if we chose to work at the center of our subject positions as
experts we run the risk of becoming uncritical and placing ourselves in
a struggle against our clients and their realities, even if we believe that
struggle is toward equality. However, working at the limits of ourselves
stipulates that we work at the frontiers of what a social worker is,
working from a place of vulnerability. It is through working at limits

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that I have come to realize that in order to transgress oppositional

categories, it is necessary to suspend a preoccupation for the care of
the other (i.e., vulnerable, oppressed, powerless individuals) and focus
on the care of the self.
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