St. Thomas University, Fredericton, NB, Canada
From
Modernism to Sustainability:
New Roles for Social Work
I
have titled this paper “From Modernism to Sustainability: New Roles
for Social Work.” An equally appropriate title may also have been
“From Modernity to Sustainability and Social Justice” as the
thesis of this presentation is that social work needs to become involved
in the movement toward a sustainable society and, if social work is to
become involved in this movement, the profession must shift paradigms.
Social work must move beyond modernity and build its interventions on
a very different ideological foundation. A foundation which calls for
new roles as it focuses on interdependence and collectivity rather than
individualism, on connectedness rather than dualism, and on holism rather
than reductionism.
The paper, structured in four parts, will:
1. Provide background information regarding the environmental crisis and
social work;
2. Expose the ideological context within which the exploitation of nature
and people (social injustice) takes place
3. Identify some of the essential characteristics of an emerging paradigm
which can be the foundation for movement toward sustainability and social
justice.
4. Discuss some important and possibly ‘new’ roles for social
work practitioners and educators if the profession is to take a part in
the movement toward a sustainable and socially just society.
1. The Environmental Crisis and Social Work
Attention has been drawn to the environmental crisis in many magazines2
and much research attests to the extent of the devastation which is taking
place; see for example, Korten
(1995), Meadows, Meadows,
Randers & Behrens (1972) and The
World Commission on the Environment and Development (1987). The environmental
crisis is taking place as humans are causing significant and possibly
irreparable harm to the environment through the pollution of the air,
the oceans and the soil, and by depleting renewable and non-renewable
‘resources.’ An example in North America is the exhaustion of
certain fish stocks in the Atlantic and Pacific fisheries.
Despite this awareness mainstream social work has been absent from involvement
in the environmental movement. The profession as a whole has not yet appreciated
the significant changes that will occur in our personal and social relationships
either in response to environmental changes or in efforts to avoid its
detrimental effects.
One of the main reasons the profession has not been involved is that social
work arose and developed within modern North American society - within
modernism. The profession’s roots in Charity Organization Societies
and Settlement Houses, for example, placed the profession in the role
of caring for people who were considered to be unable, for various reasons,
to function effectively in society. With the advent of mass production
and mass consumption and the beginning of the welfare state, social work
settled into its role as one of the professions caring for, and at times
advocating for, the social needs of people who had difficulty fitting
into society. Social work found its ‘niche’ in modern society,
and supported modern society, by largely ‘helping’ those who
unable to support or care for themselves in a manner considered appropriate
by social norms.
Figure
1:
- at our current population humans have transformed 50% of land on earth to deserts, cities, farms or pastures.
- since the industrial revolution humans have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide by 30%
- 50% of the vast oceans of petroleum have been used up by humans.
- human activity has caused the extinction of 1 million species in the past 25 years.
- in the 1990s, 50 million people have been displaced by war
2.
Modernism: The Ideological Context of Exploitation
Modernism, as David Harvey (1989)
points out, occurs when modernity is a characteristic of modern industrial,
capitalist society. Modernity began in the struggle of the enlightenment
to break free from the medieval church-state lock on power and knowledge,
and manifests itself in rationalism, positivism, individualism, anthropocentrism,
linear progress and absolute truths (see Harvey,
1989; Irving, 1994). Modern society is embedded in modernity and support
the acceptance of beliefs such as the primacy of economic well-being,
that consumption will lead to individual well-being, that abundance will
lead to human well-being, and that progress is inevitable and good (see
Figure 2).
Further,
the root assumptions of modernity - dualism, dominance and reductionism
- are seldom identified and challenged. It is these beliefs which separate
people from nature and people from each other, and leads to a social and
economic structure which allows and enables exploitation.
Dualism is the belief that reality is composed of inherently separate
parts. As a result,humans are seen as separate from nature and separate
from God. This fragmentation leads to people seeing the world in terms
of distinct and discrete parts (such as, mind from body, intellect from
emotion, and male from female). Such compartmentalization becomes a way
of thinking and leads to human lives being divided into separate components
of personal and professional, material and spiritual, etc.
Figure 2:
- Modernity’s Beliefs
- Homo
Economicus:
Economic well-being is primary and will bring about well-being in all other areas
of life, Individual interests take priority over communal well-being, Competition
for individual benefit.
Consumerism:
Well-being is achieved through abundance and consumption
Industrialism:
Mass-production is the best way to achieve the abundance needed for human well-being.
Progressivism:
Human condition gradually improves through abundance; Salvational sense
of progress primarily through economic growth and technological innovation.
Adapted from Spretnak, 1997
Domination
is the belief that ‘higher ups control those below’ and leads
to relationships being structured in terms of hierarchies of dominance
/ submission. This validates the existence and use of status, power and
wealth. As a result, in human relationships rational is seen as superior
to emotional, male as superior to female, and humans as superior to plants
and animals. When humans see themselves as the central and primary species,
Earth and the rest of nature are reduced to background for human activity.
Such human centredness contributes to egocentrism where identity primarily
rests in the self and the individual is seen to be more important than
community.
Reductionism is based on the belief that reality is a collection of objects
and leads to a mechanistic view of the world where one can know the whole
by knowing the parts. It is consistent with the view that the Universe
is fixed and unchanging and the ‘laws of nature’ are deterministic.
As a result, scientism, objectivism, instrumental rationality, efficiency,
and uniformity gain ascendance.
The bias inherent in this belief system guides people to conclude they
can do whatever they wish to achieve whatever goals they establish (masters
of the universe) since the Earth is a limitless resource, and views progress
as eternal since human ingenuity will solve whatever problems come forward.
The pressures to exploit Earth are the same pressures which result in
social injustice. As the quest for progress, growth and profit has led
to the exploitation of Earth, many groups of people have been systematically
exploited and impoverished directly through the exploitation of their
labour, or by the destruction and disruption of their livelihoods, or
as a direct consequence of environmental destruction.
For
example:
- agribusiness
forcing peasants and small-scale farmers off their land
-
people suffering as a result of the needless exposure to the toxic pollution
of their land and water as in Love Canal, New York and Sydney, Nova
Scotia
- indigenous peoples driven from their ancestral homelands due to clear cutting, burning and the ‘more progressive’ use of the land
- environmental racism where minorities are over-represented in areas of high pollution
- the many individuals who suffer from environmental illness and sensitivity.
These examples lead the author to conclude that wherever the Earth is
exploited and polluted there is social injustice. In terms of social injustice
it is also important to keep in mind “the outcasts of the great banquet
of consumerism” (Latouche,
1993) who include the 80% of the people on Earth who share only the
17% of the Earth’s resources, or the 1.3 billion people who survive
on less than $1 per day (Canadian
Council for International Cooperation: In Common, 1998).
To effectively address this exploitation and inequality we must begin with a major change in our thinking and behavior. Humans are called to put aside dualism and individualism and consider themselves as intimately connected to Earth and to people everywhere. Such a transformation requires what has been called a change of heart (Benyus, 1997), a new story (Berry, 1988), and a new cosmology (O’Murchu, 1997). Achieving a sustainable human/earth relationship is an enormous challenge and one that requires humans, especially those of us in the ‘developed’ world, to rethink what is of the greatest value and importance. This quest for meaning is fundamentally a spiritual quest; it involves the process of striving for personal integrity and wholeness in the context of relationships between oneself and nature, society and ultimate meaning (Canda, 1986).
“We
are being challenged at the very core of our being to redefine what it
means to be human and what it means to be
a citizen of the Earth.”
Cohen, 1996
“An adequate response by the profession of social work ... will entail a re-appraisal and re-orientation of the most basic paradigms that guide the social welfare field.”
Hoff and McNutt, 1994
of all kinds are seen to be in constant interaction and communication with each other. Berry (1988) uses the term “communion” to capture this innate unity of all things.
In complexity the universe is seen as dynamic where change is a constant and natural process and where creativity and surprise are innate. The intimate and essential connectedness leads to relational thinking and balance between the needs of parts and wholes which contributes to sustainability. The tendency toward increasing complexity supports a flourishing of diversity and the proliferation of self-organized and unique local communities which respond and adapt to local realities while never losing sight of that community’s relationships with other communities.
Such a view recognizes that all life has intrinsic value and celebrates human embeddedness in nature and the interdependence of all things. Such a view has many similarities to the traditional beliefs of North American indigenous peoples and to ecofeminist critiques of patriarchy, colonization and militarism (for example see Merchant 1980; Plant 1989 and Warren 1997). This view conveys the belief that the well-being of each person and of humans generally can only be achieved along with the well-being of all things, of Earth in abundant creativity
Some social workers have attempted to incorporate broader conceptions of environment into social work (for example Berger and Kelly, 1993; Besthorn, 1997; Hoff and McNutt, 1994; Weick, 1991). As well, within progressive social work some writers have emphasized values, such as egalitarianism, community and participatory democracy, and opposition to the economic domination of society, which are consistent with those expressed above (see Bricker-Jenkins and Hooyman, 1986; Ife, 1997; and Mullaly, 1997). However, mainstream social work has been uncritical of the inherent relationship between the exploitation of nature and the social injustice which results, and has basically accepted nature to be an unlimited resource to be exploited for money. While some practices can be readily transferred (See Hoff and Pollack, 1993) others are substantially altered.
An important role for social work will be that of prophet, of readying individuals and communities to support the transformation in values and lifestyle which will be required if sustainability and social justice are to be attained. Social work’s humanistic orientation, its counseling and social development skills and its sensitivity to the significance of ideology, can assist people to understand and hopefully embrace the values of the unfolding paradigm. This activity will involve social workers working with people who due to their spiritual or ideological orientation are more readily supportive but also with people who feel a great sense of loss upon being called to give up a lifestyle based on consumption, materialism and the primacy of individualism. Grief work, where social workers will be called upon to deal with people’s experience of anxiety and loss, will expand in importance as an element of practice.
A second role for social work will be an expansion of its work with people, and their families and communities, who have been exposed to harmful substances through their work or through pollution. There can be severe physical, emotional and physical consequences when hazardous chemicals cause cardiovascular and neurological damage (see Carson, 1992; Colborn, Dumanoski & Myers, 1997). Social work assessments may expand to become biopsychosocial assessments (Silver, 1994).
A third role is an expansion of social work activism by becoming stronger advocates and more active participants in the struggle for sustainability and social justice. For example, social workers can become active in communities where there is an unusually high incidence of environmentally related disease by researching and documenting problems and causes, and by organizing and lobbying business and government to take action. Social workers could also become active in the numerous movements to reduce hazardous emissions and create sustainable agricultural and forestry industries, and in the movement to combat the corporate interests of organizations such as the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (see Chossudovsky, 1998: Korten, 1995, 1999). It is important to realize that humans must not only change their thinking but must also confront the power of the substantial corporate and international organizations whose actions promote inequality and exploitation.
A fourth role is for social workers to become involved in educational efforts to not only critique the foundations of modernity but also to be aware of and be involved with coalitions which seek to create alternative social structures. For example, social workers could support local credit unions and cooperatives, and similar efforts which promote the local control of local resources for local benefit. In so doing social work can play a role in developing local resources which are more independent of transnational interests and which create opportunities for people and local communities to establish and maintain sustainable and more equitable practices.
Further, attention to issues of spirituality will become increasingly important in social work practice as the changes called for may be experienced as a challenge to people’s ultimate values. To prepare for this role, social work educators can provide opportunities for students to become familiar with their own spirituality, its importance in the personal development of individuals, and various ways it can be expressed and nurtured.
This presentation has attempted to review how social work can move out of its supportive role within modernity and can become a significant player in the movement toward sustainability and social justice. Social work is called upon to critique its foundational beliefs and redesign its goals and activities so that the well-being of Earth and all its inhabitants is central to our values and practices.
