





































advisory board

Speaking Truth to Power: 
Interrogating the Invention of the 
Social Worker and the Client

The development of a professional social work identity involves being 
socialized into the history, mission, values, and ethics of the profes-
sion--learning what social workers can say and do. This socialization 
also corresponds with a silence about the limits and philosophical 
extremities of the profession--what social workers do not, perhaps 
cannot, say. Drawing from social theorist Michel Foucault’s analysis 
of subjectivity, power, knowledge, and discourse, this article aims to 
articulate the limits of the social work profession. By examining the 
historical and contemporary invention of the “social worker” and the 
“client,” I challenge social workers to consider the work that must be 
conducted upon themselves.

    f or nearly 100 years, publiC debate has been CirCulatinG regarding the 
identity of contemporary social work. The nature of this debate is re-
flected in arguments concerning social work’s values, the relevancy of 
its knowledge base, and its professional status (Bitensky, 1978; Bar-On, 
1994; Eaton, 1958; Flexner, 1915; Gibleman, 1999; Haynes & White, 1999; 
Risler, Lowe, & Nackerud, 2003). At the heart of this debate lay questions 
concerning epistemological, theoretical, and methodological challenges 
and opportunities for social work in the 21st century. What is social work? 
Is it a quasi-profession? Has professionalization privileged technique over 
social justice?   
              Michel Foucault (1984a) provides a strong starting point for examining 
these questions: “My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything 
is dangerous, which  is  not exactly  the  same  thing  as bad, if everything is 
dangerous, then we always have something to do” (p. 343). We always have 

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something to do. This is a positive position: not all social work knowl-
edge and practices are bad, but they all can be problematized in an 
effort to expose their limitations and highlight their possibilities. From 
this position, social workers can grasp the nature of the debate by fo-
cusing on the dangerous potential of knowledge and practices rather 
than starting with the assumption that they are inherently good or 
bad. Moving beyond these moral categories, Foucault advises us to 
conduct a “critical ontology of ourselves” in which we analyze and re-
flect upon what we are in order to recognize the dangers of our con-
duct (Foucault, 1987). 
          In problematizing the origins of social work and the shaping of the 
social work professional identity, I argue that critical examination of 
knowledge production, subjectivity, difference, and power allow us 
to help “determine which is the main danger” (Foucault, 1984a, p. 
343) in the creation of ourselves as professionals who help others in 
the name of social justice. By conducting a critical ontology of social 
workers, I will illuminate how particular “expert” and “client” identi-
ties, social relationships, and practices are made possible while others 
are excluded. It is in this space of social work discourse that potential 
“dangers” can be located: as social work produces knowledge, it nec-
essarily blocks other ways of knowing and being. It is not my intention 
to provide a blueprint for alternative knowledge and practices; rather, 
by fostering a “limit attitude,” (Foucault, 1984b) I contemplate the his-
torical and contemporary limits that have been placed upon social 
workers and interrogate them in an effort to establish the possibility 
of moving beyond them.

Shaping of the Social Worker Subject Position

         Before interrogating how contemporary social work professional 
identities are constructed, let us first consider the historical origin of the 
social worker. In the early 20th century, economic depressions, the 
emancipation of slaves, and the explosion of immigrants from Southern 
and Eastern Europe to urban areas such as New York City, prompted an 
awareness of the need for social programs to assist millions of the 
poor and needy (Glicken, 2006). Social  work as a profession began 
to take shape in the early 1880s with the formation of charity organi-
zation societies and settlement houses. Their objectives, to “repress 
mendicancy” and inculcate values such as “politeness, cleanliness, 
and independence” were met through a system whereby “friendly 
visitors” and settlement house workers (most of them middle and up-

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9 / Worley



per class white women) investigated applicants for charity and pro-
vided support in immigrant communities (Specht & Courtney, 1995).  

   Parton and O’Byrne (2006) observe that the growth and legiti-
mization of social work was closely allied with modernist aims to de-
velop rational forms of social organization, which reflected broader 
utopian goals for creating ideal cities with ideal citizens. The central 
focus of the modernist project was the classification of the popula-
tion based on the scientific claims of the different “experts” of the 
new human sciences--particularly medicine, psychiatry, psychol-
ogy, criminology, and social work. These “experts” theorized about 
the nature of human beings, their perfectibility, the reasons for their 
behavior and the order in which populations could be classified. In 
this sense, human qualities were conceptualized as measurable and 
“could be changed, improved, and rehabilitated” (Parton & O’Bryne, 
2006, p. 39). It is in the modernist tradition that a new scientific edu-
cation was introduced into universities in the United States. Oper-
ating under the assumption that scientific inquiry could be used to 
improve the human condition, professional schools of medicine, psy-
chiatry, and law were established across the country. By adopting a 
scientific approach similar to the social sciences, social work found its 
home in the academy beginning with the first school of social work, 
the New York School of Philanthropy in 1904, later known as the 
New York School of Social Work in 1917, and finally becoming the Co-
lumbia School of Social Work in 1963 (Feldman & Kamerman, 2001).

     A necessary element in reconstructing the invention of the so-
cial worker is the concept of discourse. Foucault (1980) defined dis-
courses as “historically variable ways of specifying knowledge and 
truth--what is possible to speak at a given moment” (p. 93). Follow-
ing Foucault, Margolin (1997) conducted a discourse analysis of ear-
ly 20th century social work case records to demonstrate how social 
workers created and sustained themselves as well as others, primar-
ily through the language of helping. By examining this language, we 
can observe how as the classification of populations into “allegedly  
universal  moral categories” such as the “mentally ill,” “the criminal,” 
“the delinquent,” “the drunkard,” “the wayward woman,” and the 
“orphan” (Wagner, 1997) warranted the intervention of social work-
ers. Margolin pays particular attention to this classification process, 
suggesting that it reflected the power interests of the middle-class: 
“social work stabilizes middle-class power by creating an observable, 
discussable, [and] write-about-able poor” (p. 5).  
        By inventing such categories, or what Foucault (1969) calls “sub-

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ject positions,” social workers became judges of normality. Through 
their techniques of home visits, observations, and note-taking, a new 
figure arose that became the object of intervention, something to be 
reformed. Foucault (1977) maintains that: “We are in the society of 
the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the social-
worker judge. It is on them that the universal reign of the normative 
is based” (p. 304). Most salient in Foucault’s analysis of the invention 
of subject positions is his notion of “power/knowledge relations,” in 
which he understood that it is impossible to think of knowledge out-
side of its connection to power. We know someone to be “delinquent” 
or “mentally ill” not because of traits that are inherent to those indi-
viduals, but, rather through the power of experts to conduct scientific 
research, distinguishing the deviant from the normal and the ill from 
the healthy. This process, in which the modern state confers power 
upon credentialed “experts,” allows for the creation of others as 
objects of knowledge. Who is defined as “expert” and who is defined as 
“other” is the result of a particular configuration of power/knowledge 
relations.
      As social work evolved from the voluntarism of friendly visi-
tors and settlement house workers into a full-fledged profession 
with a distinctive value base, body of knowledge, and method for 
training, several authors argue that it has matured from its preoc-
cupation with the morality of the poor to having a keener appre-
ciation of the limits of science and its ability to respond to complex 
societal problems (Feit, 2003; Gibelman & Schervish, 1997; Levy 
Simon, 1994; Reisch & Andrews, 2002). The last 20 years have wit-
nessed considerable scholarly and practice activity focused on 
empowerment, the strengths-based perspective, cultural compe-
tence, evidence-based practice, and person-in-environment con-
siderations. The emergence of this knowledge base, transmitted 
systematically through formal education in schools of social work, 
gives shape and meaning to our self-fashioning as experts, both in-
dividually and as a professional collective. How are our subject posi-
tions shaped today? Has the way we imagine ourselves as “experts” 
changed from the modernist goals of moralizing the  poor and deviant?

The Code of Ethics: How Social Workers Imagine 
Themselves and Who They Serve

         Since the 20th Century, codes of ethics have been central aspects 
of professions (Banks, 2006). Banks suggests that codes of ethics es-
tablish guidelines for professional behavior, contribute to the profes-
sional status of an occupation, establish and maintain professional 

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identity, explain the moral stance of a profession, and protect clients 
from harmful activities (Banks, 2006, p.44). Given the importance of 
the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics 
in guiding professional behavior, it is a key document for analyzing 
how contemporary subject positions of both social worker and cli-
ent are formed. The Code includes four major sections. The first sec-
tion, the Preamble, summarizes social work’s mission and core values 
and sets forth several key themes to practice, including service, social 
justice, dignity and worth of the person, the importance of human 
relationships, integrity, and competence (NASW, 1996). As the Pream-
ble lays out the framework for the rest of the Code of Ethics, it is a good 
starting point to conduct a discourse analysis to investigate 
how social worker and client subject positions are constituted:
        

      

         The concept of discourse is central to analyzing the subjectivities 
that are expressed within the NASW Code of Ethics. By paying particu-
lar attention to the representation of worker and client subject posi-
tions in the code, it becomes apparent that these positions are con-
stituted through dualistic categories such as: privileged/oppressed, 

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The primary mission of the social work profession is to enhance 
human well being and help meet the basic human needs of all 
people, with particular attention to the needs and empowerment 
of people who are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty. A 
historic and defining feature of social work is the profession’s fo-
cus on individual well being in a social context and the well being 
of society. Fundamental to social work is attention to the environ-
mental forces that create, contribute to, and address problems 
in living. Social workers promote social justice and social change 
with and on behalf of clients. “Clients” is used inclusively to re-
fer to individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communi-
ties. Social workers are sensitive to cultural and ethnic diversity 
and strive to end discrimination, oppression, poverty, and other 
forms of social injustice. These activities may be in the form of 
direct practice, community organizing, supervision, consultation 
administration, advocacy, social and political action, policy devel-
opment and implementation, education, and research and evalu-
ation.  Social workers seek to enhance the capacity of people to 
address their own needs. Social workers also seek to promote the 
responsiveness of organizations, communities, and other social in-
stitutions to individuals’ needs and social problems (NASW, 1996).



financially stable/impoverished, unlimited technical knowledge/lim-
ited individual capacity, strong/vulnerable, powerful/powerless, and 
worker/client (one who does not ‘work’ on society, but on whom soci-
ety and the social worker works). Within these dualisms, social workers 
are always fixed to the positions on the left and clients on the right. Fur-
thermore, this mode of representation fails to acknowledge the com-
plex individual and collective histories that exist within each category. 
      To illustrate how these categories constrain the articulation of 
the whole self, consider the complexities inherent in my own for-
mation as a social worker. According to the Code of Ethics, I fit the 
description of someone in need of the help of a social worker. I 
grew up as what could be categorized as “disadvantaged:” an Af-
rican-American youth living in a low-income, single parent fam-
ily. Growing up in the economically blighted community of West 
Oakland, California during the early 1980s, my family was inti-
mately affected by the high rate of poverty, crime, and the crack 
epidemic. Terms such as “crisis,” “at-risk,” and “marginalized” could 
be used to describe the conditions I faced, yet, within the logic of 
the Code of Ethics, in becoming a social worker, I must disengage 
with this experience, as the oppositional subject positions do  not al-
low for being both the social worker and the oppressed. Some may 
argue that rather than disengage with the experience of oppression, 
I could use this common experience to enhance my connection to 
the communities in which I work. Such sentiment constitutes a fur-
ther danger, as it masks the power I wield as a social worker over my 
clients. Hence, in the social work context, my experiences beyond the 
practice setting are  dislocated at worst or used to manipulate my 
power at best.  
       The disempowering effects of the oppositional constitution of 
social worker and client identities is particularly problematic, given the 
profession’s stated commitment to social justice. Although the Code is 
intended to position social workers to challenge social injustice, the 
oppositional constitution of worker and client leaves little room for 
dialogue among equals, insofar as it assumes that social workers and 
clients do not exist in equal social worlds and that clients are depen-
dent on the work that will be conducted upon them to become em-
powered. Within these categories, there  is neither reciprocal interac-
tion nor a space where the social worker is on equal status with the 
client. In naming clients as objects of intervention, help can never 
flow both ways, and if it does, it is neither acknowledged nor codified 
within the Code of Ethics. The danger in this assumption is that, rather 
than enable a politics of social justice, oppositional categories foster 

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13 / Worley



a politics of domination, as “privileged” professionals make claims on 
behalf of “oppressed” groups. The placement of the social worker sub-
ject position as the helper, the powerful, and the invulnerable, fun-
damentally contradicts the pursuit of social justice; by beginning our 
work in a space of inequality, we effectively foreclose the possibility of 
moving toward equality.

Conclusion: Speaking Truth to Power

        Conducting a critical ontology of social worker and client subject 
positions is not about what is good or bad more than it is about an 
awareness of the limits of the social work profession. The aim of such 
a task is to unmask the forms of knowledge by which we construct 
ourselves as “experts” and by which our “clients” are objectified; the in-
terventions that operate upon them; the judgments, decisions, and 
forms of authority to which they are subject; and the types of relation-
ships to which they are drawn into, with us as social workers.
        By engaging in this critical ontology, my purpose is to articulate 
that the consequences of our expertise cannot be acknowledged while 
our professional identities are being formed. Foucault (1977) argues 
that for any discipline to exist and have a piece of knowledge, there 
have to be certain things that go unsaid: “There is not one but many 
silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie 
and permeate discourses” (p. 27). I argue that in order to be aware of 
the main danger, it is critical to speak truth to these silences. Social 
workers must not only acknowledge that the historical invention of 
the social worker and client are tied to certain moral imperatives, but 
that the present invention is also rooted in oppositional identities 
that are fixed in a relationship, which is fundamentally hierarchical, 
oppressive, and unequal.
            Speaking truth to the power of the social worker identity requires 
that we do a kind of ethical work on ourselves by “shaking up habits, 
ways of acting and thinking, of dispelling commonplace beliefs, [and] 
of taking a new measure of rules” (Foucault, 1991, p. 11-12). Such 
ethical work pushes us beyond the limits of the NASW Code of Ethics 
and allows us to confront those things that cannot be said. The stakes 
are high: if we chose to work at the center of our subject positions as 
experts we run the risk of becoming uncritical and placing ourselves in 
a struggle against our clients and their realities, even if we believe that 
struggle is toward equality. However, working at the limits of ourselves 
stipulates that we work at the frontiers of what a social worker is, 
working from a place of vulnerability. It is through working at limits 

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14 / Speaking Truth to Power



that I have come to realize that in order to transgress oppositional 
categories, it is necessary to suspend a preoccupation for the care of 
the other (i.e., vulnerable, oppressed, powerless individuals) and focus 
on the care of the self.

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