Notion of risk is very often used to disqualify a particular
person, a group or whole segment of society. To label someone as “presenting
risk behaviour” and even ascribing this to his or her “personality”, i.e.
seeing it as a personal property, a trait imbedded in his or her proper person
(be it by psychological make-up, upbringing or by biological, “neuro-scientific”
constitution), does not only mean to take the behaviour and personality out of
its context, transfer the risk from a situation to a person, but means also to
evoke, sometimes massive, mechanisms of control and consequently depriving the
person or a group of their basic human rights, oust them from social
participation and put them in some form of social custody.
Labelling and scapegoating
Labelling is a property of social interaction by which a specific
behaviour or personality trait is stereotyped in a way that it overshadows
other properties of the person. While stereotyping in its benign form can be
useful shortcut or shorthand in interaction (if we label someone as “shop
assistant” we know what to expect and how to relate to the person in a
situation of shopping). Even if someone is given a label that is so dominant so
it extends from the situation (a doctor, policemen, professor), in which he or
she performs the pertaining role, it may do some injustice but not much harm.
However there are such labels that discredit the bearer, spoil his or her
identity, produce stigma (Goffman 1963) and therefore construct, sometimes
unsurmountable, obstacle for social participation and rob him or her off
contractual power. By the deprivation of valid means of interaction and social
roles and his acts being read and judged on the account of the discrediting
label, the labelling becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy, since a person in such situation is given a “license to deviate”
and has little else to do.
Often people labelled by disqualifying labels serve as scapegoats for a certain group,
sometimes the whole society. They are ousted as culprits for all the troubles
and misery of the group, become a conductor for pent-up frustration, grief and anger
of the group. For the leaders of such persecution (sometime termed “moral
crusade” (Becker 1963) or “moral panic” (Cohen 1980)) having a scapegoat means
increase in their power and obedience of the group.
The source of labelling, stigmatising and scapegoating the risk
behaviour and personality is the uncertainty inherent in the “risk society”. It
is the way of fending off the fears of what might happen, of unpredictability
and precariousness of existence.[1]
Risk avoidance is the other side of
risk society or the imperative of risk. It is a leading principle of many
public agencies concerned with public safety (police, sanitary inspection,
etc.) – partly by concern for safe environment, partly by concern individual
human beings might present. Latter being done by surveillance, constraint, in
many cases also by restraint and confinement.
Although social work is not immune of such operations, these
operations must be seen as unacceptable for social work. The mandate of social
work is to support in coping with risks brought by society, its mode of
production and organisation, however on the micro level of individuals and
groups, it has to maintain the perspective that risk is the property of
situation not a person, and apply the user perspective of risk taking as a
means of benefiting and leave aside the custodian and guardian perspective of
risk avoidance and thus impoverishment of one’s life and opportunities.
Harm reduction
Social work is not interested
in what is right or wrong but what works or doesn’t.
We do not consider whether the use of drugs is right or wrong, or
whether a parent should stay with their children or not, whether one should not
talk to oneself, or kill oneself, should have a home, drive a car, wear socks
of the same colour etc. We know that a drug can have destructive but also
creative effects, that parents are a major resource, but can also pose a major
threat to their children, we know that inner voices can be equally encouraging
or demanding, etc. it is not a question of relativism, it is a question of what
kind of machine is at work.
The criteria for the construction of the machine should be that the
arrangements ensure maximum gain minimum loss to all participants; not only in
economic terms - damage and improvement could be also bodily, emotional,
sensual: pain, disgust, hurt and joy, pleasure, beauty; satisfaction to some
degree.
The reduction of harm and increase of benefit; the pragmatics escape
the binary division of the grammatical rules. It is not about a choice between
health or illness, right/wrong, success/failure, black/white –we want the
picture to be at least black and white,
but preferably in colour.
What is specific in this construction, is the mandate of social work
to observe the stakes of the weakest participants. Social work is there with
the purpose of being a guardian or an advocate, to safeguard the interests of
the weak who cannot do this for themselves; and to advocate on the behalf of
those who do not have enough power to be heard on their own.
Harm reduction is a leading
notion replacing the guilt, the mistake, the lack.
References
Becker, H.S. (1963), Outsiders.
New York: Free Press.
Cohen S. (1980), Folk Devils and Moral Panics, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Goffman, E. (1963), Stigma - Notes on the management of Spoiled Identity. Engelwood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall; (1968),
Penguin edition.
[1] Although the risk taking is a leading and productive principle of
the capitalist society and is sustaining the whole industry of risk (insurance,
gambling, extreme sports etc.), its darker side is the risk avoidance, with whole apparatus of risk control (safety,
security, etc.).
