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, Alicia Chatterjee School of Social Policy and Practice, University of Pennsylvania , Philadelphia, PA, USA Correspondence to Alicia Chatterjee, School of Social Policy and Practice, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA. E-mail: aliciach@upenn.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Yoosun Park School of Social Policy and Practice, University of Pennsylvania , Philadelphia, PA, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic
The British Journal of Social Work, Volume 54, Issue 5, July 2024, Pages 1988–2005, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcae016
Published:
13 February 2024
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Accepted:
16 January 2024
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Alicia Chatterjee, Yoosun Park, Trauma as the ‘Belief That the World is a Dangerous Place’: The Obfuscation of Systemic Violence in Social Work’s Discourses of Trauma, The British Journal of Social Work, Volume 54, Issue 5, July 2024, Pages 1988–2005, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcae016
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Abstract
The concept of psychological trauma has been taken up widely in popular culture and in diverse academic fields including social work. In this work of poststructuralist discourse analysis, we used methods of close reading to examine a random sample of thirty social work articles on trauma (published 2010–2020). Our aim was not to refute the salience of the concept nor to establish its true meaning and correct usage, but to critically examine its discursive functions; what does ‘trauma’ do in social work? In our analysis, the progressive aims of the discourses of trauma—to counter pathologisation and confer legitimacy to harms that have been marginalised—are unrealised. ‘Trauma’ is deployed in multiple, often contradictory ways and the slippages between intent and function work to construct the trauma-laden as non-normative, damaged subjects, and legitimate objects, thus, of social work scrutiny and intervention. Social work’s discourses of trauma undermine their own efforts to centre a structural analysis. If ‘to perceive the world as a safe place’ is a signifier of normative, non-traumatised functioning, then what does ‘trauma’ do when applied to the racialised, gendered, colonised and marginalised, for whom the world is not a place of safety but of material and psychical violence?
discourse analysis, poststructural theories, race, social work, trauma
© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Association of Social Workers. All rights reserved.
This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/pages/standard-publication-reuse-rights)
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