A Violent History of Benevolence: Interlocking Oppression in the Moral Economies of Social Working

by Chris Chapman, A.J. Withers

Overview

A Violent History of Benevolence traces how normative histories of liberalism, progress, and social work enact and obscure systemic violences. Chris Chapman and A.J. Withers explore how normative social work history is structured in such a way that contemporary social workers can know many details about social work’s violences, without ever imagining that they may also be complicit in these violences. Framings of social work history actively create present-day political and ethical irresponsibility, even among those who imagine themselves to be anti-oppressive, liberal, or radical.

The authors document many histories usually left out of social work discourse, including communities of Black social workers (who, among other things, never removed children from their homes involuntarily), the role of early social workers in advancing eugenics and mass confinement, and the resonant emergence of colonial education, psychiatry, and the penitentiary in the same decade. Ultimately, A Violent History of Benevolence aims to invite contemporary social workers and others to reflect on the complex nature of contemporary social work, and specifically on the present-day structural violences that social work enacts in the name of benevolence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442628861
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	02/20/2019
Pages:	536
Sales rank:	433,621
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.45(d)

About the Author

Chris Chapman is an associate professor of Social Work at York University.
A.J Withers is a PhD candidate in the School of Social Work at York University, and an organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction
Social Working, Interlocking Oppression, and Moral Economies
A Brief Discussion of Some Indigenous Social Workings on This Land
Organization and Structure of A Violent History of Benevolence

Part One: Deconstructing Social Work and Social Work History

1 Troubling the Standard Account of Social Work
The Standard Account
The Pull of the Other Side of the River
Charity Organization Societies: Beyond Friendly Visiting to the Poor
Settlement Houses and Jane Addams
The New "Social Work"
What the Established Riverbanks Obscure
Contemporary Charity Organization and the Continued Polarity of the Riverbanks
"Mingling" as Continued Solution to Structural Violence
Conclusion

2 White Supremacy and the Erasure of Racialized Social Workers
Social Work History as White Social Work History
Black Churches: Bestowing Charity and Organizing for Change
"Separate Spheres" and Women’s Clubs
The Great Migration: Migrant Assistance and the Shift towards Black Incarceration
Black Settlement Houses
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
Anti-Lynching
Ida B. Wells-Barnett
White Social Work and Anti-Lynching
Maggie L. Walker and the Independent Order of St Luke
The Social Work Profession, Social Science, and Education
Black Social Work in Canada
Settlements in Canada
Anti-Slavery Societies and Black Immigrant Assistance
Social Services
Class Stratification and How It Interlocked with Racism and Social Work
Early Women Social Workers and Gender Roles
Subjugated Community-Based Social Workings Beyond Black and White
Conclusion

3 Social Work as Displacement, Denigration, Cisheteropatriarchalization
Professional Social Work as the Delegitimization of Local Practices and People
Centring Imperialist Displacement; Decentring Ruling Class White Exceptionality
Cisheteropatriarchalization as an Advancing White Ruling Class Moral Economy
Early Professional Social Work and Cisheteropatriarchy
The Ethic of the Healing Power of Domination and Imagined Moral Superiority
An Initial Shift in the Ethic of Relating Across Difference: The Knights Hospitaller
Claims of Relative Innocence, Part One: Progressive and Secular Dividing Practices
Claims of Relative Innocence, Part Two: Knowing It Was Wrong|
Conclusion

Part Two: Interlocking Genealogies of the Ethic of the Healing Power of Domination and Imagined Moral Superiority

4 Knowing Better: Liberalism, Instrumental Violence, and Making New Humans
What We Like to Say; What We Actually Do
Claims of Relative Innocence, Part Three: Interpreting Others’ Motivations
Further Standardizing Instrumental Violence: The Theresian Criminal Constitution
Kant’s Enlightened Morality: Rational Self-Assurance and the Birth of the "New Man"
Gentle Instrumental Violences, Part One: Rationalizing Colonial Education
Gentle Instrumental Violences, Part Two: Continual Observation and Coerced Penitence
Gentle Instrumental Violences, Part Three: Psychiatry, Unchaining, and Moral Treatment
Surveillance, Sorting, and Scientific Stratification
The Validation and Invalidation of the Invalid: Emergent Social Welfare Policy
The Validation and Invalidation of the "Indian": 1800s White Settler Colonial Policy
Legislated Exclusions: Racialized and Disablist Immigration Policies
Conclusion

5 Rehabilitation/Eugenics
The Moral Economy of Rehabilitation
The Origins of Rehabilitation before the First World War
Soldiers, Sailors, and Sameness
Medical, Economic, and Civil Rehabilitation
Overcoming Disability
Nationalizing Rehabilitation
Professional Social Work and Rehabilitation
Rehabilitation and the Enforcement of Cisheteronormativity
Rehabilitation/Eugenics and Whiteness/Nationality/Citizenship
Conclusion

6 Assimilation/Genocide
The Moral Economy of Assimilation
Destroying Lives
The Unquestionable Good of Imposing Whiteness onto Others
Destroying Lifeworlds
White Supremacy and Care
Conclusion

7 What If It Isn’t Getting Better? What Do We Do Then?
The Significance of Implicating Ourselves in Interlocking Legacies of Violence
Is It Getting Better?
Still "Forcibly Transferring Children of the Group to Another Group"
Towards Addressing the Chronic Gap between What We Say and What We Do
Navigating Inherently Oppressive Systems: The Everyday Life of Many a Social Worker
Moving Forward: Learning from Social Movements and Displaced Practices
Disability Justice and the Democratic Redistribution of Dependence and Care
Conclusion

Conclusion: The Varied Paths That Brought Us Here

Timeline: Selected Events from the Age of Enlightenment through the Progressive Era

Notes
References
Index

What People are Saying About This

Sheila Neysmith

"Sensitive to how history is written, Chapman and Withers pull out threads that reveal what is not included in usual histories of social work."

China Mills

"The book beautifully and at times devastatingly traces the violent history of benevolence from which much current social work, and psy-expertise, has grown. This is a study of historical violence and atrocity that disrupts and makes unfamiliar continued and contemporary practices, making us look anew at how these practices enact violence, encouraging a deep ethical questioning of people's imagined rights to intervene in others' lives."

Donna Jeffery

"Linking history to the present is very important to social work readers. Discussing rehabilitation, assimilation, and repair, A Violent History of Benevolence acts as a counter-narrative to the more simplistic, history-as-progress narrative often assigned to conversations about social work. This information is vital for students and faculty, and the social work knowledge base."

Editorial Reviews

"Linking history to the present is very important to social work readers. Discussing rehabilitation, assimilation, and repair, A Violent History of Benevolence acts as a counter-narrative to the more simplistic, history-as-progress narrative often assigned to conversations about social work. This information is vital for students and faculty, and the social work knowledge base."

—Donna Jeffery, School of Social Work, University of Victoria

"The book beautifully and at times devastatingly traces the violent history of benevolence from which much current social work, and psy-expertise, has grown. This is a study of historical violence and atrocity that disrupts and makes unfamiliar continued and contemporary practices, making us look anew at how these practices enact violence, encouraging a deep ethical questioning of people’s imagined rights to intervene in others’ lives."

—China Mills, Lecturer in Critical Educational Psychology, School of Education, University of Sheffield

"Sensitive to how history is written, Chapman and Withers pull out threads that reveal what is not included in usual histories of social work."

—Sheila Neysmith, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto

From the Publisher