Dubrovnik Manifesto 2019[1][2]
The Necessity of the Social
In September 2019, over one hundred people
active in social work praxis gathered in Dubrovnik to explore some of the most
urgent current challenges and to reassert and reinstate social work. This manifesto, discussed before, during,
and after the event, is our collective statement on the importance of social
work praxis in the contemporary context.
Facing an increasing brutalisation of
society that goes hand in hand with the destruction of welfare systems,
encountering old and new forms of structural and concrete acts of violence, we
set out to explore how we can contribute to re-emphasise and revive the critical
tradition of social work, and reinforce solidarity with those who are oppressed,
at-risk and vulnerable.
After decades of a diminished social,
in a neo-liberal conjuncture that has privileged the economic and
neglected, marginalised, and thoroughly downgraded the social dimension as the
basis of our existence, there is an urgent need for the breakthrough of a
brand-new social, analogous to the one superseding classic
liberalism at the end of the 19th century in the Global North.
Social work has not only to be a part of
this breakthrough, and would be strengthened by this emergence, enabled to
survive as an essential feature of society –it also needs to play an active
role in bringing it to fruition.
In order to do so we have to defy notions of
‘professional neutrality’, reclaim social work as a community-oriented,
relationship-based activity that goes far beyond academia, and build strong
coalitions of workers, academics, service users, movement activists, trades’
unionists and everybody else working towards social justice.
Radical Social Transformations
We are living through yet another great
transformation. The transformation of the future will be radical – whether we give up and merely observe
the collapse of civilisation, or if we try to bring about a more socially just
world: based on the common good and on
the values of care; of living together with profound awareness of both our
vulnerability and strengths as individuals and as a society. We need to actively
preserve what is good, including the natural world and the eco-system, and
radically change that which does not work.
Globalisation, digitalisation, forced
migration, demographic changes, a changing division of labour, etc., have
exposed us, in different ways, to unprecedented, and sometimes unseen, risks that
are greatest for those who are excluded from privileges and experience exploitation,
discrimination and poverty. The radical transformation has also created
numerous new opportunities in terms of communications, mobility, diversity,
productive capacities and culture. Yet we crave for security (both
social and physical) and fear violence, which keeps emerging in new
forms and with a growing intensity.
The natural and political dimensions
of the catastrophe merge into one through global warming,
caused by fossil capitalism and the rush to turn natural resources into profit.
They are epitomised by migration, including migration forced as a result of
conflicts, climate change and economic misery; by fear exploited by
authoritarianism (fuelled by fundamentalisms of many different kinds), by increasing
inequality created by neo-liberal regimes, and by the removal of liberties and
freedom (gentrification for the rich – immobility for the poor), enforced
hatred and discrimination towards all who do not conform to what is set as the
male, white, heterosexual norm; growing exploitation through new forms of work
in the so-called gig economy; and an expanded precariat, with deep psychological
and social consequences, making human existence precarious indeed.
Yet, there have been important developments
towards an inclusive society. The rights of people with disabilities and
children have been clearly stated, enshrined in global Conventions, albeit with
some hiccups and never fully implemented in practice. Deinstitutionalisation
and long-term care have been introduced, albeit not without
obstacles, contributing to a re-evaluation of old age (old is good),
childhood, madness and disability.
New social movements keep arising desiring a
better, more dignified, life connecting the grassroots and global scales. New,
alternative, forms of economic relations are being developed and a new kind of
urban revolution seems to be imminent, not least in the Fearless cities
movements. Trades’ unions, including trades’ unions of social workers, need to
be established where they do not exist and strengthened where they do, and to
adapt to new forms of work and to advocate for measures to benefit the whole of
society. New forms of fighting racism, sexism and other forms of
discrimination and fighting the global, life-threatening, climate emergency are
emerging, calling for no less than a radical system change!
Although the age of austerity seems to be waning,
what post-austerity will look like is still under construction.
Wisdom of Social Work Interfaces
To steer the transformation toward human
solutions, practical wisdom is needed. The role of social work
is to do just that; furthermore, it has to safeguard and promote marginalised
and disrespected local or indigenous knowledge so it withstands and has
impact on the global rule of abstract schemes. Ordinary everyday life – the
Life World – should become the basic and pragmatic criterion of policy change
and adaptations – ensuring the sovereignty of people.
Besides the unalienable mandate of social
work to provide the everyday, users’, perspective on life and the world, the
strength of social work lies in bringing together unseemly combinations of
knowledge and logics of action. The major sources of social work action
syntheses are ethics, organisation and politics.
There is the need to know what is the right thing to do, how to organise the
transition and where to obtain the power to do it.
Social work’s Ethics of Inclusion and
imperative of non-exclusion provide the humanist synthesis of the broken
dialectics of Reason/ Unreason. To follow its ethical imperatives, forms
of self-management (rather than social service management) should be sought. Social work engagement in politics needs to stem from
popular activism and an intersectional understanding and way of
working, mobilising and struggling together, acknowledging and seeking
understanding of existing differences and constructively using them as a collective
force for change.
The practical power
of social work lies in its transversal, inter-disciplinary, approach and
inter-sectoral position. The Welfare State and Welfare Society needs to be reinvented on the grounds
of a critical evaluation of the post-socialist (with post-austerity in mind)
syntheses (South East European, Global East, and Global South) and social
work’s role in the bottom-up construction of progressive social policies
asserted.
Social work has to create productive links
with other human disciplines and sectors. In education, social work can
contribute to learning in action and provide the solutions
to schooling problems (bullying,
teacher protection, supporting teachers in building solidarity). In healthcare,
constantly in relation to social work, it can bestow the importance of the
user’s perspective, involvement and participation leading to an holistic
approach to health and well-being, while still keeping existing specific needs
in mind. In both challenging and strengthening the legal frame and combining
it with social processes (in the law and administration), it can
counter debasing practices and bureaucratisation with empowering practices and
advocacy.
Practical Utopias (Challenges for Social Work)
Social work is a practical, everyday Utopia;
it is always about becoming, searching for a better place, more human and more
social. It has to have a (utopian) sense of desire – be it about changing for
the better or conserving what is good and it has to live up to the dictum that
“action is the sole medium of expression for ethics”. Throughout its history, social work has
developed many productive tools, which need to be re-strengthened and
re-loaded, with new alternatives sought and built. Social work’s classic tools
and stories must be joined by new ones and governed by the notion of users’
emancipation and the emancipation of society as such.
Comparative
social work should enable
the transfer and translation of good practices, not only across diverse
national and local contexts, but also over the life-cycle in working with
children and youth, older people, families
and groups facing multiple challenges, with people with
diverse labels – poverty, delinquency, disability, challenging mental health
concerns and so on. An intersectional
approach should focus on the inter-relationship between gender, age,
‘race’, class, sexuality, and disability. It needs to focus on building
solidarity and alliances with networks and self-organisation of marginalised
groups such as LGBTQ-identified persons, refugees and migrants, homeless
people, and initiatives and campaigns such as “Me too”, “Me two”, “blacklivesmatter”
and many more.
Deinstitutionalisation, which has, in recent decades, become a
global platform, needs an overview and a context, an appreciation of its
achievements, obstacles and traps and a vision how to handle it as a techne and
an ethical imperative. Simultaneously, it has to be sensitive to, and in a
polemical relation with, the remaining elements of oppression, detention,
constraint, punishment and even torture in the care system and beyond. Long-term care, which aspires to become
a universal provision, is a challenge per se and needs to be
consistently and radically implemented as such, to connect with other types of
existing provision in order to become universally available. Attention needs to
be given to instances of increased power
of service users (e.g. shared decision-making, co-managers, co-trainers and
co-researchers) and more collaborative ways of working on the basis of self-determination
and self-advocacy need to be realised.
There are new areas social work is entering into (such as green social work)
and new means of performing social
work (such as through social media and new technologies). There is a
constant struggle between social work and fragmenting governance and
management. In the past decades social work has been under attack from
‘proceduralism’ and projectisation,
even if social work has invented practical solutions to resolve the formal
contradictions between protection (care) and freedom.
Increasing atomisation and individualisation
of a practice based solely on individual social work, calls for a reinvention
of community social work and action (also to challenge the rise of religious
fundamentalisms and authoritarian neoliberalisms).
The challenge for social work today is to
build a vision that will guide us through new areas, foster and preserve
freedoms based on (social) security, dealing simultaneously and comprehensively
with diverse adversity and enabling people (both professionals and users) to
address life issues in a transversal and intersectional manner. In this way,
social work will enable people to live together with minimum exclusion and
maximum availability of support for personal and communal projects, without
fearing the consequences of oppression and without becoming prey to
authoritarian power.
Staying neutral is not an option. Working
passionately and fearlessly towards turning our social utopias into the reality
of a good life for all is what is needed today!
[1] The manifesto is based on ideas for the conference The Breakthrough
of the Social: Practical Utopias, Wisdom and Radical Transformations – Social
Work @IUC: Lessons Learned and Future Challenges; held at Inter-University
Centre in Dubrovnik, 2–6 September 2019, organised by the IUC ‘School of Social
Work Theory and Practice’.
[2] This is
the last version. Please ignore the previous.
