‘Introducing Michael Gove toLoïcWacquant’: Why Social Work Needs Critical Sociology

Abstract

In 2013, Michael Gove, then Secretary of State for Education and Health in the UK coalition government, criticised social workers for laying insufficient emphasis on the 'agency' of individuals and for being too preoccupied with social and economic inequalities. Such a perspective, which is not unique to Gove, needs to be countered by reaffirming the significance of an expansively critical sociology for social work. In this context, the thematic concerns of the French theorist, Loïc Wacquant, illuminates key aspects of social work engagement with clients which Gove and his ideological associates appear intent on ignoring. The issues raised have significant political resonances given the pending UK General Election taking place in May 2015.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 13 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.