Poverty, wealth and no revolution in sight: Social work, community development and promoting the art of dissent as insurrection during the neoliberal era

Abstract

This article explores the impact of neoliberalism on the linked areas of social work and community development practice, and makes the contention that practice is often poverty driven rather than poverty informed. Using notions of dissensus and insurrection, the argument is made that the authority of the neoliberal discourse on the social structures of Aotearoa New Zealand creates conditions in which revolutionary reform is difficult, leaving the better option of continuous, variously situated, insurrections and dissents against the neoliberal story that responsibility for fault is seated within individual families and communities rather than being a function of deliberately created policies that serve the wealthy at the expense of the poor.