Social Work as Social Control Re-Examined: Beyond the Dispersal of Discipline Thesis

Abstract

A common theme in recent historical and theoretical scholarship on the development of social and penal policy has been that of the `dispersal of discipline'. It has been suggested that social discipline in modern society is maintained as much by the institutions of welfare, particularly those of social work, as by those institutions explicitly concerned with punishment. This paper argues that large-scale historical and theoretical analyses of social control in social policy require a framework through which systematic observations of the concrete implications of this process can be made. It draws on the conceptual vocabulary of Basil Bernstein's sociology to suggest an appropriate perspective for developing an understanding of the social control effects of social policy, especially in the context of social work practice.

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