Accounting for an encounter involving a social worker and man with learning disabilities and crafting tools for ethical social work practice

ABSTRACT

This article critically reads a social encounter in which a social worker and a middle-aged man with learning disabilities are implicated. To do so, I draw upon ideas and approaches associated with anthropology and the sociology of everyday life to expose invisible, or invisibilised, dimensions of social interaction which may, otherwise, be obscured, backgrounded, and perhaps even concealed by virtue of their ‘thereness’. Through the prisms afforded by these disciplinary lenses, a seemingly ordinary, and unspectacular, social encounter may be regarded in the context of everyday life alongside learning disability, as registering/generating multiple forms of language, and as being inescapably saturated in multifaceted forms of power. Because these disciplinary tools may help map not only the particular social encounter to which this article is concerned but also social interactions more generally, they constitute useful resources, to be cultivated, or crafted, for ethical social work practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Learning disability
• social encounter
• sociologies of everyday life
• anthropology
• theory (as a toolbox/kaleidoscope)
• ethical social work practice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).