Adrienne Chambon

Catching the shimmers of the social: from the limits of reflexivity to methodological creativity

With the questioning of the neutral objective researcher, reflexivity has jumped to the forefront of qualitative research, thus positioning the embodied researcher within the research process. In its power to reveal tacit embodied social structures, reflexivity is touted as the hallmark of methodological validation while also being described as a messy process, particularly in participatory research. In this article, we use illustrative examples from our participatory research exploring the healing practices of racialized minority youth in Canada to highlight the limits of reflexivity and participation. We examine the messy processes in the preliminary phase of our research project and the invaluable insights we took into developing a creative methodology.

The circulation of knowledge and practices across national borders in the early twentieth century: a focus on social reform organisations

In this article, we focus on the emergence of ideas and practices at a local level as the result of the transnational circulation of knowledge in social reform that became shared understandings in the transatlantic world of the early twentieth century. Bringing together the theoretical frameworks of transnational history with imperialism and post-colonialism studies, we revisit the results of two research projects on the settlement house movement and on the history of a childcare agency that were established in the same period in Toronto, Canada. The West End Crèche and St. Christopher House are examples of two organisations whose history can only be understood with respect to their transnational connections. Archival research reveals that the transnational activities of these organisations were immense; the imperial connections to Britain and the, often competitive, relations to the USA, were prevalent, as was social reform knowledge from continental Europe. These organisations, the outcome of local and transnational struggles and endeavours, became significant actors in the development of social services in Canada. We conclude with conceptual and methodological considerations for social work research and argue for a radically different framing of social work knowledge with the related set of questions about influences, strategies, resistances and translations.

Recognising the Other, understanding the Other: a brief history of social work and Otherness

Recognising the Other, understanding the Other is an essential question in social work but it is an entangled one. I have chosen to highlight the multi-layered nature of the question of Othering in social work from a historical point of view and discuss current understandings and alternatives for social work’s implication in this question. From the beginnings of social work and the ‘social question,’ to categorical knowledge of groups and professional competencies that rest on a Self/Other division, contextualised structural knowledge and positions of social citizenship, an ethics of the encounter, and an understanding of particularities stemming from simultaneous multiplicity views that transform the landscape of the Self and the Other.

“They Give Reason a Responsibility Which It Simply Can't Bear”: Ethics, Care of the Self, and Caring Knowledge

We explore briefly Foucaults ideas about the care of the self, creating ourselves and what he meant by ethics. We then examine the work of five artists–Mark Rothko, Cindy Sherman, Helena Hietanen, Samuel Beckett, and Betty Goodwin–to help us begin to think very differently about illness and human suffering. Taking our lead from Beckett, we regard reason as being given too much responsibility for the work of a caring knowledge, and that it is through the arts that new ideas about bioethics can emerge.

Rethinking youth violence and healing

In a world where violence and healing are posited as oppositional, critical youth studies, youth work practitioners, and human rights and social justice activists often locate themselves on the healing side of the divide, shedding light on the suffering and alleviating the pain of the violence. However, current theoretical developments prompt us to critically engage this oppositional binary constructed between violence and healing. We have come to a crossroads where we can no longer innocently position ourselves on the side of healing because we are deeply implicated in the violence as well. In this paper, we draw on our research on the healing practices of racialized minority youth in Canada to think through the prevailing dichotomy of violence and healing. We use a poignant case scenario of an ordinary encounter in an ordinary place to explore the complexities of the space between youth violence and healing and make visible their inseparably relational and interactional nature. We draw on both foundational and emergent conceptualizations of encounters, emotions, spaces and places, as well as subjects and subjectivities to rethink and theorize youth violence and healing.

Doing ‘technological time’ in a pediatric hemodialysis unit: An ethnography of children

Since the 1960s, hemodialysis has been a common intervention for children with end-stage renal disease, however little is known about how they experience hospital-based hemodialysis. A focused ethnography was undertaken to explore children׳s perspectives of the time, space and technology of a hemodialysis unit at a Canadian pediatric urban hospital. The children׳s temporal and socio-spatial positions were an effect of their technologically mediated embodiment and shaped their perspectives, evaluations and expectations. The findings suggest that further explorations are needed to envision ways to create with children an overall positive place that merges and balances technological care with child focused care.

The Transnational Circulation of Model Programs for Children in the Early 20th Century in Toronto

Abstract This article addresses a transnational history of caring, recognizing that deliberate networks of relationships were established across nations, which contributed to shaping social supports. How were transnational influences, local initiatives of nation building, and early manifestations of social work related? The article draws upon the archives of a childcare agency established in Toronto, Canada, in the early 20th century. Some of the transnational influences were tied to the colonial history of Canada and to imperialist transmission. This is also a gendered history, as women led such organizations. An intriguing finding shows a greater presence of international visitors in the beginning years of the agency, and a restricted local pattern subsequently. This shift is illuminated by historical policy considerations.

Transnational histories of social work and social welfare – An introduction

Social work and social welfare emerged as institutions of modern nation-states, circumscribed by nation-state borders and inscribed in specific local and regional contexts; as such they have been examined traditionally as institutions confined to nation-state borders. While social work has constantly been searching for its domain and identity (Dominelli, 2007), more recently social work has been facing a number of new challenges on a national and global scale. First, the collapse of state socialism in the 1990s, interpreted as proof of the singularity of modernization and development, facilitated the dismantling of socialist welfare systems and the emergence of social work as a post-socialist welfare institution (Beblavý, 2008; Iarskaia-Smirnova, 2011). Second, the neoliberal logic continues to shape the ongoing restructuring and downsizing of Western welfare states, increasing the burden for social work (Baines, 2010). Third, welfare institutions of nation-states appear to be inadequate when dealing with global and transnational issues and processes (Chambon, Schröer, & Schweppe, 2012). Fourth, national welfare institutions are becoming increasingly interconnected and influenced by global policy actors (Deacon, 2007) and by cross-border processes of policy translation (Good Gingrich & Köngeter, in press; Lendvai & Stubbs, 2007). While these transnational developments have multiple and profound effects on social work, they have been only tangentially addressed by social science and historical research. Much of the conventional research into social work and social policy has suffered from “methodological nationalism” – the implicit assumption of nation-states as natural entities of investigation bounded by territorial borders (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002). Nation-statecentric perspectives fall short in examining the dynamic and intrinsically transnational welfare institutions and processes (Kettunen & Petersen, 2011). Moreover, “methodological nationalism” built in social policy analysis has been intertwined with nationalism underlying the practice of designing social policies and contributes to the growing disjuncture between sedentary welfare systems and transnational citizens (Baines & Sharma, 2002). Similarly to contemporary analyses, historical accounts of social work and social welfare often exhibit methodological nationalism. Kettunen and Petersen’s (2011) critique of nation-centric historical analyses pointed to three common types of historical research on welfare states: (1) history as national specificities, when welfare institutions are studied as formations bearing nation-specific and intrinsic characteristics; (2) history as origins, exemplified by research concerned with identifying the origin of welfare states; and (3) history as

Transforming European welfare policies, social work and social care practices: a special issue from the Third European Conference for Social Work Research

This special issue documents a selection of the many excellent papers presented at the Third European Conference for Social Work and Social Care Research (ECSWR) in March 2013 at Jyväskylä, Finland. It follows an earlier special issue, which was based on the very first ECSWR research conference series held at Oxford in 2011 (see European Journal of Social Work, volume 15, issue 4). The editors of this important first issue, Staffan Höjer and Brian Taylor, were enthusiastic and full of trust when they described in their editorial the recent developments and near future perspectives for European social work and social care research. One of their future visions, following the North American scholarly developments of the Society for Social Work and Research, was to have a distinct European organization with the task to promote high-level innovative and interdisciplinary social work and social care research, build networks of researchers within Europe as well as foster links between European and wider international research networks. We, the editors of the second special issue in European Journal of Social Work from the third ECSWR conference are very pleased to inform readers that such an organization the European Social Work Research Association (ESWRA), which saw daylight in January 2014, was first conceived and planned at the Jyväskylä conference. Its existence was collectively and legally confirmed in a historic meeting at the recent fourth ECSWR at Bolzano/Bozen, Italy. According to the Foundation Protocol, the new association ‘will take forward the development, practice and utilization of social work research, to enhance knowledge about individual and social problems, and promote just and equitable societies’. And so, an important milestone for the future activities in European social work research has been passed. The ESWRA will oversee the planning of the next ECSWR conference—our fifth so far! The conference will be in April 2015, and will be run in cooperation with the local partnering organizers from the University of Ljubljana. The first chairperson of the new society is a British Professor Ian Shaw. He will be followed in the position in 2015 by an Italian Professor Silvia Fargion. Presently, the new organization is recruiting members across countries and across the many well-established research traditions including social work and social pedagogy, as well as other disciplines in the wide social field. Among its other activities, the association is planning to continue cooperation with the European Journal of Social Work to publish further special issues arising from the conference papers of the future. As the current guest editors, we are grateful to have this opportunity to act as one of the links in the long chain of the ongoing international networking and publishing which has become more and more crucial for the increasingly collaborative present day knowledge production. European Journal of Social Work, 2014 Vol. 17, No. 5, 611–615, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13691457.2014.955326

Debating social work and otherness: introduction to the special issue

This issue came about as a result of a highly successful meeting of the PhD Summer School of the Nordic-Baltic Doctoral Network in Social Work that was held in Kokkola, Finland, in August 2011 and hosted by the University of Jyväskylä. The topic chosen by the organizing committee, headed by Aila-Leena Matthies, was the crucial, timely question of ‘Understanding the Other’ that is challenging societies, and in this context, challenging social work as a profession and as a research area. The Summer School opened with a series of invited presentations on various aspects of social work and othering. The remainder of the week, PhD students worked in small groups led by faculty facilitators affiliated with several Finnish universities. Most of the 30 students attended were, at the time, at the conceptual framing stage of their doctoral projects; each grounded in a specific practice and research arena. The group was very diverse. The exchanges were lively and led to meaningful questions about the national and local institutional contexts in which othering takes place and/or can be countered. The students’ feedback to the Summer School was very positive. On their part, the speakers and organizers felt that the presentations and debates had led to new insights. Importantly, the notions and arguments that were explored overlapped considerably among the participants, and there was a sense of shared synergy within an intellectual and emotional space open for a diversity of views. From the shared interests and the success of that week developed the idea to move the debate to a more public arena and propose a thematic issue to the Nordic Social Work Research journal. The aim was to expand upon the discussions that took place in Kokkola, and present various voices and views. That fall, Adrienne Chambon, one of the invited speakers, and Aila-Leena Matthies, the primary organizer of the Summer School, submitted such a proposal to the journal’s editorial board. We felt strongly, along with the editor of the journal, Tarja Pösö, that student voices should be present in such an issue. While temporarily occupying the status of doctoral students, young scholars are the upcoming figures in social work. Their perspectives reflect the changing and transformative nature of social work scholarship. We were aware that the students would not have completed their research by the time the articles were scheduled to go to press; however, the ‘work in progress’ idea that was central to the Summer School would be preserved and would enrich our scholarly discussions. As for the invited speakers, their presentations consisted primarily in conceptual frameworks meant to open up the discussion on othering and otherness. Therefore, the articles in this issue tend to be weighted towards the theoretical end of the spectrum, though they include references to empirical studies. These run the range from detailed case studies to reviews of larger surveys, analyses of documents, in-depth interviews, and narrative and discourse analyses. The typical length of the articles has been shortened in this issue to make space for multiple contributions.