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BJSW Advance Access originally published online on November 13, 2007
British Journal of Social Work 2008 38(4):680-696; doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcm124
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Association of Social Workers. All rights reserved

Humanitarian Narrative: Bodies and Detail in Late-Victorian Social Work

Carolyn Taylor

Carolyn Taylor is currently Senior Lecturer in the Department of Applied Social Science at the University of Lancaster and has taught for a number of years on qualifying and post-qualifying social work programmes. Her research interests include child health and welfare past and present and qualitative methods of social enquiry, particularly the exploration of textual and documentary realities. She is co-author (with Sue White) of Practising Reflexivity in Health and Welfare: Making Knowledge (Buckingham, Open University Press, 2000).

Correspondence to Dr Carolyn Taylor, Department of Applied Social Science, University of Lancaster, Bowland North, Lancaster LA1 4YT, UK. E-mail: c.p.taylor{at}lancaster.ac.uk


  Abstract

How should we interpret the humanitarian narratives of early social work? This article suggests that we explore the ways in which bodies and detail were used to establish the grounds for humanitarian action in the late-Victorian period. Drawing on case material from a child welfare organization in Manchester and Salford, it explores how the ‘filthy body’ of the child and the failings of ‘worthless’ parents were used to justify interventions to ‘rescue’ children from urban slums. Thus, progressivist and revisionist accounts of history are dispensed with in favour of a form of cultural history that recognizes the multifarious activities that comprise social work past and present and the fluidity of categorizations that are deployed in the practice of intervening in the flow of lives of the poor. This, it is argued, moves us beyond the tendency to focus on secondary sources relating to a few prominent organizations such as the Charity Organisation Society and the metropolis. Instead, emphasis is placed on the contribution of regional histories and localized, fine-grained empirical studies to broadening analytical approaches and deepening understanding of social work past and present.

Keywords: social work history, child welfare history, voluntary organizations, Victorian philanthropy, humanitarian narrative, bodies and detail


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