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RESEARCH PRODUCT

The otherness of social work under neoliberal governance

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This special issue examines the topic of ‘understanding the Other’ from a very different perspective of ‘Otherness’, which advocates that the own Otherness of social work be reflected on as well. In the contexts of many current societies, social work itself increasingly appears as a strange element – an exceptional idea – as ‘the Other’. Moreover, a question raises over whether social work itself is understandable to those who are outside of it. In this paper, social work is distinguished at three institutional levels: as a science, as a profession and as an ideology or social movement. The paper aims at analysing how social work itself is put into the position of ‘the Other’ in the current era dominated by neoliberal dogmas, particularly by the ‘triumph of managerialism’. The process of Othering and the marginalisation of social work in its own fields have serious consequences for the identity of social work today. At the end of the paper I will try to demonstrate how social work can make itself more und...