Individual Consciousness and Ideology

Abstract

We begin this chapter by once again considering a problem which social workers on the left experience in relation to their practice; it is perhaps one of the most fundamental problems they have to confront, one which appears to be inescapable. We refer here to the contradiction which appears to exist between, on the one hand, the development of a structural analysis of social problems and, on the other, the understanding of individuals and their experiences; this contradiction is often expressed in terms of the conflict between a macro-analysis and a micro-intervention. There are a number of issues which need to be distinguished in trying to understand this problem. One centres around the effects of structural analyses on the possibility of effective responses by social workers to individuals and families. The problem here is presented in terms of the question: Does the analysis of wider structural factors invalidate the approach to understanding individual consciousness and the effective response to individual needs and problems? Alongside this issue is linked another and similar one: in attempting to understand the complexity of social, political and economic factors in the creation and maintenance of social problems, social workers frequently appear to experience a certain distancing effect.