'Anti-Oppressiveness': Critical Comments on a Discourse and its Context

Abstract

This paper identifies and aims to explain an apparent dissonance between the dominance in Britain of ‘anti-oppressive’ social work discourse and the socio-political context surrounding its use; a context often claimed to feature excessive regulation and control. Pursuing this, some politically radical aims associated with ‘anti-oppressiveness’ are spelt out, and the difficulty of achieving these in an unconducive climate is discussed. Then, a distinction made by Robert Merton between ‘latent’ and ‘manifest’ functions is used to suggest that the manifest radicalism of ‘anti-oppressive’ discourse can helpfully be distinguished from some latent largely unrecognised consequences of its use - not consequences with politically radical impact, but with a social meaning congruent with a climate of control. It is concluded that the ‘success’ of anti-oppressive discourse might well be viewed as requiring more of the kind of critical analysis that the discourse itself was supposed to espouse.