“Without losing what we know”: Third sector social work and dissent in the context of epochal crises

• In Event: Loyalty, Voice or Exit? Implications of New Public Management for the third sector

Abstract

This paper builds on Nancy Fraser’s (2021, 2019) argument that the overlapping crises of social reproduction, climate, economy, and public health have resulted in a splintering of the hegemony of dominant groups. This generates a “wilding of the public sphere” in which groups urgently seek counter-hegemonic storylines and alternative solutions to interwoven crises (Fraser, 2021, n.p.). This paper further theorizes the impacts of New Public Management in social work in the nonprofit or third sector, as well as consent and dissent among social justice-engaged social work organisations and their leaders.

Data for this paper were collected using in-depth, qualitative interviews and a convenience sample of ten executive directors and managers of non-profit social services in a large city in Canada. Data were analysed using a constant comparison method involving multiple readings of the field notes and transcripts, until patterns and themes could be discerned. The paper analyses three themes, namely, dissent as: 1) working on the edges of the managerial state; 2) working on decolonisation including what it means to be a settler in a former colony such as Canada; and 3) ongoing critical reflection. The themes are further discussed under a final interwoven theme that is argued to reflect new hegemonies, in particular political world-making, building new emancipatory knowledges, theory, practice and hegemonies.

Social-justice-engaged practices can emerge within systems hostile to social solidarity, suggesting that dissent is resilient to neoliberalism though it may sometimes operate quietly and at the level of individual practice. This resistance and the nascent, shared, dissenting narratives can contribute to the de-legitimatization of oppressive social structures as nonprofit social workers search for, and build, more emancipatory approaches.

References

Fraser, N. (2019). The old is dying and the new cannot be born. Verso.

Fraser, N. (2021). Climates of capital. New Left Review, 127 (Jan–Feb), n.p.

Author

• Donna Baines, The University of British Columbia, Jack Bell Building For The School of Social Work