Trapped in discourse? Obstacles to meaningful social work education, research, and practice within the neoliberal university

Abstract

This article appraises the role of the neoliberal university in regulating social work education, research, and practice. The dominance of governments and employers in determining social work education is highlighted, alongside the ascendancy of skills-based and vocational training. Moreover, it is proposed that research, associated learning, and practice are now more often molded around essentialist science-based, behavioral or functionalist paradigms, which fit conveniently with free market, politically conservative, and authoritarian agendas. The neoliberal university is increasingly able to rationally prepare social workers to fulfill narrow ideological objectives, which includes priority given to attempts to empower, pathologize, and scientifically manage structurally disadvantaged populations from minority groups. Reductive and positivist paradigms, nevertheless, can struggle to cope with social fragmentation and diversity, with social work students often ill-prepared for many of the complex and poorly funded challenges which they later face as qualified practitioners. Analysis for the article draws from critical theory, and it is concluded that market-based discourses and related professional paradigms—and the symbolically constituted and hyperreal fantasies which they help to maintain—can prove difficult to escape. Social work continues to face a precarious future within university settings in which free market narratives, associated norms, targets, and labor insecurity prevail.

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