Critical Reflexivity and Moral Regulation

Critical Reflexivity and Moral Regulation

This article by Harjeet Badwall examines the use of critical reflexivity in social work, arguing that it can inadvertently reinforce colonial notions of moral superiority and re-center whiteness. The research draws upon narratives from racialized social workers in Toronto, Canada.

Abstract

Critical reflexivity, a dominant framework in social work, aims to address power dynamics between social workers and clients. However, this article explores how it can re-inscribe colonial ideas of moral superiority, recentering whiteness within social work education and practice. Research with racialized social workers in Toronto reveals that critical reflexivity can function as a governing technology that silences the operation of racism.

Keywords: Colonialism, racialized social workers, reflexivity, whiteness

Introduction

The article questions whether critical reflexivity might function as a tool of governance and regulation in social work. It explores how it may contribute to re-inscribing colonial constructions of whiteness. Critical reflexivity needs to be analyzed within the context of White dominance in social work education and practice. It suggests that critical reflexivity can re-install whiteness through the colonial production of moral superiority and innocence, silencing the operation of racism in the daily work lives of social workers of color. Social work’s historical constitution within colonial and imperial projects is inescapable. The previously unmarked (White), universal subjects at the center of the profession’s colonial beginnings are now encouraged to mark themselves, examining relations of power, naming their subject-positions, and adopting a critical lens on the self. In contemporary anti-oppressive social work, these critical moves are assumed to minimize the effects of uneven power relations in practice. However, such practices cannot be divorced from the liberal (White) foundations of Western knowledge production. Moving from an unmarked helper identity to a marked critical worker identity does little to de-center White dominance in social work. Instead, critical reflexivity may re-center whiteness and replicate the very practices of domination it hopes to undermine.

Research Overview

This paper draws on research conducted with racialized social workers in Toronto, Canada, exploring how whiteness in social work can limit the use of critical reflexivity for non-White social workers. It builds on previous work (Badwall, 2014), providing a background of the research, exploring the usefulness of critical reflexivity, presenting critical race and postcolonial scholarship to show how critical reflexivity risks replicating colonial constructions of White normativity, and presenting narratives from racialized social workers that describe how critical reflexivity centers White subjects and disavows everyday racism. These narratives offer insights into the gaps in social work education concerning the use of critical reflexivity and the operation of whiteness. The research originated from narratives shared by racialized social workers about everyday racism in their work lives, stemming from the author's experiences as a social worker for nearly 20 years. Concerns about the lack of attention to these dilemmas led to an exploration of whether other social workers of color were experiencing similar difficulties (Badwall, 2014). Participants' stories confirmed worries about the lack of attention to race in social work practice, revealing how White dominance permeates the discourses shaping the profession's values and practices. Most critically, their stories illustrate how the profession’s most dearly held values (empathy, critical reflexivity, and client-centered practices) collude with the operation of daily racism (Badwall, 2014).

Critical Reflexivity as a Dominant Practice Tool

Participants identified critical reflexivity as a dominant practice tool, but their stories show how it may reinscribe the very power relations it intends to challenge. Its use was complicated during moments in which racism took place in their clinical work with White clients. Racialized workers described racist practices by White clients, such as demands to work with White workers, uttering racial slurs, questioning worker skills/training, and, in some situations, uttering death threats or using physical violence (Badwall, 2014). The high numbers of racist encounters were alarming. When workers attempted to discuss these encounters with colleagues and managers, they were met with reactions that effaced the effects of racism (Badwall, 2014). Responses included instructions to stay focused on client needs and practice compassion; in many cases, the racism was viewed as a personal issue belonging to the worker, as opposed to a professional practice dilemma that needed attention. The workers’ involvement in critical reflexivity within peer consultation meetings or team meetings was seriously compromised due to the ways in which racism was silenced. The workers’ narratives illustrated how the practice of critical reflection is unequally accessible and inhabitable by differently positioned social workers, specifically, racialized social workers.

Methodology

The methodology involved one-to-one, semi-structured interviews with racialized social workers who volunteered after responding to a recruitment letter. Participants were provided with consent and confidentiality forms. Names of participants and organizations were kept confidential, and pseudonyms were used. The research focused on the experiences of non-White workers, referred to as racialized and/or social worker of color, signifying the research’s concerns with practices and discourses that shape the production of racism and the color line. Race concepts are constitutive of racial differences and everyday practices of racial governance (Hesse, 2004). The theoretical lens is informed by scholarship that examines the discursive production of race and racism (and subsequent subject-formation), in addition to revealing the material effects that are institutionalized and experienced by racialized subjects (Ahmed, 2004; Goldberg, 2009; S. Razack, 1998). This approach allowed the tracing of race ideologies and acts of racism as constitutive of the profession’s values, identities, and practices (Jeffery, 2002).

Critical Reflexivity and Social Work

Social work students are taught to reflect on the self to address biases, judgments, or values that may impinge on their relationships with clients. This practice is considered an extension of anti-oppressive practice (D’Cruz, Gillingham, & Melendez, 2007; Fook, 1996; Healy, 2005) and is used as an instrument by practitioners so that they may remain client-centered, minimize the effects of their power/privilege, and be empathetic in their relationships with clients. Keenan (2004) identifies self-reflection as the defining feature of clinical practice, through which workers describe themselves, their clients, and the clinical relationship. The practice of reflection is intended to support an examination of the multiplicity of truths and identities that may shape clients’ lives. She suggests that the possibility for social justice and transformation is intimately linked to social workers’ awareness of the self. The characteristics of the practice involve an awareness of one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (D’Cruz et al., 2007). Other scholars have extended these understandings to include critical examinations of relationships of power, privilege, and oppression. Furthermore, critical reflexivity also serves to bridge the separation between theory and practice in social work education by focusing on the micro-practices that shape the worker/client relationship (Healy, 2000; Heron, 2005; Hick, 2005; Keenan, 2004; Napier & Fook, 2000; Pease & Fook, 1999). Engaging in critical reflectivity aids workers to enhance their practices and minimize the effects of unequal power relations (Keenan, 2004).

D’Cruz et al. (2007) suggest three specific streams that define critical reflexivity:

1. As a practice in which individuals are supported to process information and create knowledge to guide life experiences and choices. It is seen as a “project of the self,” in which individuals may see themselves as active citizens with the abilities to reconstitute and change “the very nature of identity itself” (Ferguson, 2003, as cited in D’Cruz et al., 2007, p. 76).

2. As a critical approach to professional practice, emphasizing a connection between knowledge and power. Knowledge in social work is not simply a resource to deploy but rather a “process of looking outward to social and cultural artifacts and forms of thought which saturate our practices” (White, 2001, as cited in D’Cruz et al., 2007, p. 78). However, this type of reflexivity may be used as another “device to legitimate the knowledge claims of professionals, rather than question them” (White, 2001 as cited in D’Cruz et al., 2007, p. 78).

3. Exploring the landscape of emotions. Emotions are reflected upon to “promote a deeper understanding between the worker and the client” (D’Cruz et al., 2007, p. 80) and to better enhance practice. Reflection on emotions and lived experiences represent a counter-discourse to positivistic or objective knowledge (Ruch, 2002, as cited in D’Cruz, 2007, p. 81).

Critique of Critical Reflexivity

In critical social work, workers are positioned as powerful and clients are situated as powerless (Mullally, 1997). Reflections center on examining the workers’ social locations through sites of dominance (as identified by Heron, 2005) and naming “bad practice” or examining one’s power-over relationships with clients. This emphasis on examining aspects of subjectivities shaped by dominance means that the sites in which racialized workers experience inequities do not have room to be explored. When racism occurs within practice, workers’ engagement in processing the ethical dilemmas resulting from the racist encounter is constrained by the powerful/powerless binary. Furthermore, critical discourses in social work, such as anti-racism, diversity and critical reflexivity, re-center White subjects through heroic narratives in which their reflections about whiteness, power, and bad practice restore their professional identities back to a place of innocence—this is not available to social workers of color who name racism.

Whiteness: Moral Superiority and Innocence

Social work scholar Rossiter (2001) cautions that social work’s historical formations are inescapable within contemporary social work practices; to ignore the historical formations of the profession is to find oneself in a “flight towards innocence” (p. 2). She suggests that social workers are always implicated in relations of power and never outside of the historical and social formations of how knowledge is produced. Framing such practices as sites of trespass and harm is important because critical perspectives simultaneously recognize that harm is inevitable (an important intervention to rupture innocence) and prescribe critically reflexivity as antidotes to any harm that may occur. Historically, social work gained social power through technologies that were exercised to shape the moral character of citizens. Settlement House Movements (SHM) and Charity Organization Societies (COS) enforced the social control of populations deemed to be outside of moral bourgeois respectability (Jeffery, 2002; Sakamoto, 2003). Reform work allowed White women to enter the public space, to shape the moral character of the nation, while at the same time constituting “spaces of public subjectivity for women” (Roger, 1998, p. 103). Aboriginal populations and the increasing numbers of immigrants, who did not reflect the morals and values of the British, posed a threat to the nation while simultaneously being the ground on which the nation was built (S. Razack, 1999; Roger, 1998). The arrival of communities from China, India, and Japan posed worries for White settlers. Colonial officials exploited new immigrants for the development of new industries (Dua, 2004; Park & Kemp, 2006); however, migrants, specifically women, from these countries posed a threat to the nation’s purity as a White nation, particularly through the development of ethnic communities and interracial sexual activity (Dua, 2004; Valverde, 1992). Populations outside of bourgeois identity required direction from civilized subjects to manage and control their desires (Goldberg, 1993; Stoler, 1995). The control and regulation of populations deemed to be Other were largely masked through discourses of helping and charity. The imperial self was also a self-regulating subject whose morality was largely shaped in comparison to those communities deemed to be different (S. Razack, 1999).

Early social workers were directly involved in the constitution of deviance and morality in the nation-making project (Valverde, 1991). Consequently, these practices constituted the perception of White subjects as kind, empathic or, as Berlin (2005) suggests, workers who possessed a great capacity to love. Drawing on Hamilton, Berlin (2005) suggests that a worker’s “capacity to love” and accept others was achieved through a reflective practice about the self.

Hamilton’s representation of reflective practice suggests that “unlovely” motives are inescapable. Being aware of (and managing) the bad impulses that “persist within” is a sign of love toward self and others. The underlying assumption suggests that unlovely motives require reform, and that love is the antidote. Whiteness in social work was constituted through imperatives to help, specifically through the production of desire to aid populations in need (Heron, 2007). Heron argues that desires to help others are formed through acts of benevolence and virtue, shaping the identity of “helpers” through relationships with clients who are constructed outside of moral superiority:

Heron’s (1999) intervention is very important here; she directly locates desires to help as practices that secure whiteness and innocence. On a similar note, Margolin (1997) explains that social workers’ professional identities depend upon seeing themselves as subjects who are “doing good” (p. 65). Therefore, contemporary social work identity attempts to construct itself as a “radical reversal of the earlier ‘aggressive’ social work” (p. 9). However, he contends that current practices dedicated to equalizing relations between workers and clients are an “intensification of earlier patterns” (Margolin, 1997, p. 9) because social workers still depend upon identities that need to know themselves as both good and outside of relations of power. Critically reflexive practices serve as technologies of power through which social workers can inhabit critical identities. Harm that can occur in our work with clients and communities may be redeemed through the practice of naming any transgressions or trespasses. The art of critical reflexivity may serve to restore the workers’ sense of confidence and reinscribe innocence about their participation in the lives of Others. Hence, critical reflexivity can function as a regulatory technology to govern how social workers are to perform “good” and “critical” identities. The distinction between its historical and contemporary formations exists within the language used to describe its intention. I am suggesting here that the words love and help have now been replaced by the word critical. To admit to bad practice is to restore one’s sense of self as good, loving, and, in its contemporary manifestation, a critical social work subject.

Project of the Self

Workers may engage in critical reflexivity through case conferences, journaling, case notes, or informal discussions. Commitments to critical practice, anti-racism, and anti-oppression require that social workers learn to work effectively with communities of difference, producing additional sites in which colonial continuities emerge through practices of learning about Others. To acquire knowledge about the Other, the directive is to also learn about themselves, their own judgments, biases, values, privileges, and powers (Keenan, 2004; Kondrat, 1999). Learning about the self is a professional tool that allows workers to regulate those aspects of the self that could negatively affect clinical relationships. Adams (2003) notes that “contemporary notions of reflexivity tell us more about the culture and traditions of Western, late modern society than they do about our liberation from them” (p. 225). He argued that reflexivity should be conceptualized as a “reflexive project of the self rather than being supremely capable to transcending cultural, social and historical restrictions” (p. 231). Adams’ critiques are used here to express some cautionary notes about the high expectations that can emerge through the claims that are made about critical reflection in social work education. Critical reflexivity has become another hegemonic script in social work, and its connections to whiteness are made through reflections on the self that restore the subject back to a place of innocence and moral superiority. The self that is being referred to here is the unitary self of modernity, a construction that remains common in our society today. Heron (1999) stated that the unitary self requires knowing itself as a moral subject, and that this knowledge can be assessed only through “stories about being good or bad” (p. 83). Because the unitary self in reality is not a stable identity, it relies on normalizing scripts of goodness and badness to identify itself. Boler (1999) suggests that this form of “self-critique easily functions as a form of ‘confession’ ” (p. 178) to erase historical complexities and reproduce self- inoculations of either guilt or innocence. The unitary subject is reinscribed through these practices, and the analysis of these moments remains locked into discourses of morality. Self-examination becomes the vehicle through which subjects reflect on their conduct as moral beings. Foucault has suggested that modern ethical practices centrally focus on self-examination through historically situated practices of confession and psychotherapy (as cited in Srivastava, 2005).

These techniques were designed to assist a subject in becoming “a master of oneself” (Foucault, 1984, p. 349), as management of one’s subjectivity is a central task of modern organizations (Rose, 1999). The art of managing the self, while at the same time being skilled in one’s work with populations of difference thus operates to strengthen the imperial self (Jeffery, 2002). Jeffery (2005) argues that the self-reflection process in social work largely examines White privilege and discussions about whiteness. The major consequence, according to Jeffery (2005), is that whiteness as a set of practices mirrors social work as a set of practices. Ahmed (2004) asserts that whiteness is invisible only to those who embody whiteness, while non-White bodies see whiteness everywhere. Therefore, how does naming whiteness exclude or include voices of racialized Others? She suggests that such declarations reinscribe White privilege by centering the White subject in reflective practice. The use of the word critical serves as an indicator to set apart progressive Whites from racist Whites. Even within its critical incarnations, the practice is at risk of becoming a “discourse of love, sustaining the narcissism that elevates whiteness into a social and bodily ideal” (Ahmed, 2004, p. 2). Ahmed (2004) points to the postcolonial critique of anthropology in which the desire to know the Other serves to foster narcissism, as the “other functioned as a mirror, a device to reflect the anthropological gaze back to itself” (p. 2).

Ahmed’s reformulation of reflexivity as a problematized discourse of love provides a very important intervention because it points to the historically constituted identity of the worker who maintains dominance through practices that secure innocence, such as love, charity, or selflessness. In social work, these practices translate into empathy, critical reflexivity, and client-centered practice.

Critical Reflexivity on the Ground: Experiences of Racialized Social Workers

The social workers interviewed for this research identified critical reflexivity as a dominant concept in social work education. Their narratives echoed themes about examining relations of domination to support social justice in practice. Workers' stories revealed critical reflexivity is constructed as a practice that supports increased empathy or compassion. When racism occurs in clinical practice, the powerful/powerless positioning of the worker/client relationship works against racialized workers when they attempt to reflect critically on the incidents. Through their social work education, participants explained how they were required to build their written assignments around their reflections on their life experience and their social locations, in particular, their examination of power and privilege.

Deepi, a South Asian woman, describes her education, emphasizing the importance of knowing oneself to ensure reduced harm in work with others. Jen, a Filipino woman, describes the process as one that should cultivate empathy and compassion, questioning intentions and enhancing empathy. For Farzana, a Middle Eastern woman, performing these practices reassures her that she is working “with people from a genuinely anti-oppressive perspective.” This suggests that workers must be certain types of subjects to be deemed suitable for the field of practice: empathic, oriented to social justice, and committed to self-critique. Participants shared the importance of examining the power they hold in relationship to their clients and the dominant discourse about the identities of workers (as powerful) and clients (as powerless). This understanding of the worker/client subject positions has been made popular through anti-oppressive perspectives in social work. However, I suggest that the powerful and powerless binary shaping the worker/client relationship fixes the orientation of the types of reflection that are possible. The workers are limited to discussing only the sites of domination in their work and how these may affect client populations. My contention with this particular understanding or theorization of power between workers and clients is that it does not take into account a multiplicity of subject positions that shape the identities of workers and clients. Too often, the fixed nature of the worker/client relationship does not permit examination of the fluid and complex operations of power. What is left out are the ways in which subjects are mutually constituted moment by moment, through historical and social discourses of power.

Sim, a South Asian woman, illuminates the absence to localized practices of power, which may be playing out in more than one dominant direction. Her narrative points to the multilayered operations of different forms of power. Numerous other examples were provided by participants outlining responses from their organizations that diffused the effects of racism in clinical practice. For example, Seema (a South Asian woman) explains that her attempts to bring race into discussions at case conferences were often met with comments like “race is abstract” or “of course you would talk about race as a woman of colour.” She explains that her team’s responses eventually resulted in issues of race being silenced, regardless of the fact that she had been raising these concerns in her role as the supervisor of the team. Her professional status as a supervisor did not afford her any authority to address issues of race. Seema’s comments point to the absence of recognizing how race is embodied (Alcoff, 2002). Her attempts to reflect upon dilemmas about racism with her team were met with objectification of her as a person of color, while, at the same time, they divorced race from the discussion. Racialized workers are caught within a myriad of responses that construct how race will be recognized

Lila, a South Asian worker at a community health center, was physically assaulted by a client she had been working with for several weeks. When I asked her about the effects of this event, she stated that she needed proper supervision to reflect upon and get clear direction about the practice dilemmas with the client. This insight from Lila illustrates how social work values can collude with the operation of racism and regulate the conduct of social workers of color. Naming racism and stating one’s limits to working with a client who exercises racism produces anxieties about how her skills will be perceived by the organization. Engaging in critical reflection about the inherent practice dilemmas produced by racism is complicated by larger institutional cultures that avoid issues of race and racism. To further complicate matters, following a short ban from the organization, the client was permitted to return to the agency, and Lila was instructed by her supervisor to exercise compassion toward the client, to keep in mind the client’s vulnerability, and to consider seeing her again. If critical reflexivity is to aid workers in developing a critical, anti-oppressive practice, moralizing discourses pertaining to compassion, client-centered practice, and whiteness served as barriers to Lila’s being able to engage in the practice. A key concern in this example surrounds the politics of ethics, specifically the recognition of some forms of harm over other forms of harm. These fears are echoed in a study conducted by social work scholar Narda Razack (2001) in which she interviewed racial-minority students about their experiences in field education. Her study identified the operation of blatant forms of racism experienced by students of color; however, in spite of these violations, students were expected to perform their commitment to social work values through practices of empathy and kindness. Caring and empathy were emphasized as key components of student learning and were reinforced by students’ field supervisors.

The absence of critical reflection on issues of race posed a risk for Lila. Discussions about racist encounters in clinical practice are risky, whether workers are employed in more progressive, grassroots settings or in bureaucratic settings such as hospitals. For Seema, a very real worry is present about how racism is denied or may be exploited as education for White workers. She identifies the complexities that shape how different people will hear each other’s stories, to stress that the production and telling of stories is never outside of relations of power. When racialized workers engage in these practices, their narratives reveal that reflexive processes are embedded in relations of power, validating particular experiences and denying others.

The narratives in this article illustrate that there are particular rules governing how workers engage in practices of reflexivity with(in) teams. What do people of color have to deny, silence, or make invisible to engage in the reflexive process? If good practice depends up on critical reflection about “bad practice,” can social workers of color ever be good workers when they attempt to reflect upon racism in their daily work lives?

Conclusion: Where do we go from here?

This research suggests thinking about strategies as practices of negotiation, which are dependent upon the social, historical, and contextual practices within particular sites. The analysis shifts away from fixed points of success or failure to a discussion about how specific responses are organized discursively. Howarth and Hook (2005) advocate for approaches that move beyond the fixing of racism and stress the impossibility of such a project. As an alternative, they argue that an effective analysis of racism involves “the ways in which it becomes unintelligible, problematic, contested and rejected in people’s everyday sense-making cultural practices and social relationships” (Howarth & Hook, 2005, p. 12, emphasis in original). The workers interviewed for this study did share their recommendations of the changes they would like to see within social work. The most important was for organizations to acknowledge the inevitability of everyday racism. They did not want racism to be viewed as individual acts of discrimination but, instead, to recognize how racism is a part of the fabric of our society. Second, it was important to understand that racism will evoke critical practice dilemmas that must be reflected upon, and support must come from supervisors and managers to address these dilemmas. Finally, the research identified major gaps in social work education—the lack of material available to address the needs of workers from nondominant groups. Further studies are needed to address the needs of racialized students within social work education programs. Critical pedagogies are necessary in the classroom to disrupt the centralization of whiteness and White subjects in social work. I also believe that parallels can be made with other equity-seeking groups, such as LGBTQ communities and people living with disabilities with regard to the ways in which discrimination and violence may occur in clinical encounters.

Although critical reflexivity is an important intervention in social work, it is not without its critiques, worries, and hesitations. Racialized social workers’ narratives reflect the ways in which all subjects are invited into White liberal normativity in modern organizations, yet they also suggest that taking oneself up or performing as a viable subject in the terms provided by these norms is both tenuous and messy. It is through participants’ narratives about the role of the workers and examples of good practice that particular storylines emerged describing what is worth knowing and worth performing. Thus, we are given a glimpse into the technologies that govern the conduct of all social workers but, in particular, the effects on racialized workers when they must negotiate professional scripts of whiteness.