Into Another World: Child Neglect, Multi-problem Families and the Psychosocial Dynamics of Late-modern Child Protection

Abstract

In this chapter I want to continue the project of theorizing modern child protection as a deeply embodied practice, which flows through the body and inner life and is enacted through movement. I shall do this by developing further an understanding of the expressive dimension and exploring how it has evolved into the present within the transition to reflexive modernity. In many respects, earlier chapters — and especially the last two — have dealt with the rational features of contemporary child protection: how in reflexive modernity risk is known by social workers and other professionals as risk and the future always known to be uncertain; how lay people engage in life-planning by using incoming information to weigh up the increased choices they face and make decisions about their lives. The implication has been that these are conscious decisions and that at all times people basically know what they are doing and why. Yet, this is palpably not the case. A central element to child protection, like reflexive modernity itself, is about what is not and perhaps cannot be known in the unfolding of social practices. There is a fundamental dimension to child protection that is irrational, that swirls around the mind, body, organizations and social systems; that is inherently chaotic, uncontrollable.