Discourses of community : reconciling social work and community development

This research involves examining the current, highly individualising and specialised nature of social work, and its capacity to respond to a more political agenda of community development and community building. It emerges from action research that I conducted with a group of social workers in which we examined the challenges in reconceptualising their practice to include a greater community orientation. The thesis explores the origins of professional social work in nineteenth century liberalism and the rise of the ‘social’, and it draws on Foucauldian notions of governmentality and discourse to analyse the potential for community to exert collaborative agency, while also responding to demands for ‘governing at a distance’. I develop a typology of competing discourses of community that are evident in the literature, in policy and in practice, and apply these to my analysis. In concluding, I develop a model for community practice to integrate my critique. While the research commenced as a traditional doctorate, three years and four articles into the process, I resolved that my original objectives could be met as effectively by converting to a PhD by Publication. The resulting thesis comprises nine chapters: a framing chapter, three chapters linking each of the four refereed papers published during the period of candidature, and a concluding chapter. The framing chapter provides the intellectual context for the total project, and the linking chapters serve to supplement the theoretical analysis with specific discussion relating to the discursive commonalities and interconnections between the chapters. The conclusion seeks an integration of the project in a model that develops an approach to social work that reconciles the critique explored throughout the research.