3 Article Summaries Summary of Chapter 2 and 10 in Donna Baine’s book “Doing anti-oppressive practice: Social justice social work”

3 Article Summaries
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3 Article Summaries
Summary of Chapter 2 and 10 in Donna Baine’s book “Doing anti-oppressive practice: Social justice social work”
The two chapters of the book discuss the importance of anti-oppressive practice (AOP) among social work practitioners. In chapter 2, the author acknowledges the forces that have shaped social work practice and workplaces, including globalization, neoliberalism, and managerialism. Baine (2011) argues that globalization creates socially-just environments for social workers through supportive organizations such as the International Federation of Social Workers and International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW). The two bodies recognize the efforts of social workers in emancipating people and promoting social change and justice by uniting countries and eliminating global economic inequality. Social workers need to recognize the importance of globalization and addressing challenges from a global perspective (Baine, 2011). Problems such as poverty and inequality have worsened due to historical injustices such as slavery, colonialism, corruption, and dictatorship. Besides globalization, the second force that is relevant to social work practice is neoliberalism, which maintains that social needs can be met using private markets or individual skills instead of government or collective efforts. This concept of global capitalism results in social injustice with a widening gap between the poor and the rich. Managerialism, the third force affecting social workers has resulted in workplace reorganizations, particularly in public sectors. Managerialism dictates the way social workers use their skills in their practice and treats social work as consultancies providing services for profit. The “New Public Management” or the neoliberal management system maintains the mindset of reducing wastages and inefficiency in the workplace.
While social workers within the non-profit sector have managed to avoid these challenges brought by managerialism, state workers still find the system oppressive as others end up being terminated. In chapter 10 of the book, the author presents a research which aimed at exploring the strategies that AOP front-line social workers used as they sought to integrate the principles of AOP into their daily practice to resist the oppressive mechanisms of managerialism. The strategies include increasing diversity, formulating and implementing anti-oppression policies, effective training and education, supporting organizational culture, and agency engagement in social action. Participants in the research included twenty women working in five agencies in Toronto, Canada. Baines (2011) discusses the concept of AOP and why it is necessary to integrate AOP at an organizational level within social work agencies. AOP requires that anti-oppression concepts be integrated into social work practices. The author discusses why it is necessary to institute AOP at the organizational level within agencies and identifies the strategies to institute AOP such as organizational changes. While AOP has been embedded in social work agencies today, Baines ...