Reading Wacquant: social work and advanced marginality

Abstract

Professor Loic Wacquant was born in Montpelier in 1960. He was educated in France before completing a Ph.D. in Chicago in 1994. He is currently Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. His work is concerned with the impact of neoliberalism in the area of welfare and penal policy. Wacquant has published a number of highly influential books the most notable of which are Les Prisons de la misère (1999, translated in 20 languages; new and expanded English edition, Prisons of Poverty, 2009), Body and Soul: Ethnographic Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer (2000), Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality (2008) and Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (2009). These works, along with the major papers listed in the bibliography, form the core of Wacquant's analysis of the impact of neoliberal welfare and penal policy. These papers consider three key areas: advanced marginality, race (ethno-racial domination) and the rise of the penal state. His significance as a commentator for social work, specifically, lies in his critical engagement with these three areas that have so shaped the development of modern welfare and penal policy. The article concludes that Wacquant's work provides a clear analytical framework for the study of the organisational and social contexts of contemporary practice. His work also calls for a more politically engaged social work practice—a form of practice that will move away from social work as a narrow bureaucratic activity dominated by risk management and return to core social work values.

Keywords:

• Wacquant
• advanced marginality
• neoliberalism
• social work

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Professor Wacquant and to the reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier versions of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Ian Cummins worked as a mental health social worker and probation officer before taking up academic posts. His research reflects this practice experience concentrating on mental health issues in the CJS with a focus on policing. In addition, he seeks to examine the impact of the increased use of imprisonment on individuals and the wider community.