Everyday Ethics of Dignity Work
What Social Workers Do to Promote the Dignity of Service-users in Times of Austerity Measures and Welfare Stigma
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12901951 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jante Schmidt (0000-0003-1616-3499, University of Humanistic Studies, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 306-321 |
| Publication date | 2022-02-21 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Ethics and Social Welfare (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1749-6535 • E-ISSN: 1749-6543 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17496535.2022.2038229 |
| OpenAlex | W4213200185 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 34 |
The social work profession is committed to recognising the inherent dignity of humanity, as reflected in global and national ethical codes. The article shows what this commitment implies as a part of everyday ethics by developing the concept ‘dignity work’. Dignity work is an ongoing effortful moral activity social workers perform to promote the dignity of service-users. Social workers’ narratives, collected with professionals in the Netherlands, revealed that they do this mainly to counter welfare stigma. Welfare stigma currently forms the biggest threat to dignity as it defines people dependent on welfare arrangements and professional help as ‘undeserving’, questioning their worth as a person. Social workers perform three strategies of dignity work: affirming, equalising and including. With these practices they negotiate the self-sufficiency norm, dominant in the Dutch context, and try to counter ideas and feelings of undeservingness and worthlessness of clients. Their practices lay bare the working of ‘stigma power’ as social workers have no choice but to relate to welfare stigma daily. The analysis shows that the ethical is intertwined with the political. Studying dignity work in the context of austerity and welfare stigma reveals that otherwise seemingly ordinary everyday acts are morally and politically significant
Context (archaeology · Dignity · Political science · Public relations · Social Welfare · Sociology · Stigma (botany · Welfare · Law · Palliative Care and End-of-Life Issues · Patient Dignity and Privacy · Psychology · Social Psychology · Social Work Education and Practice · Social Work
Anti-Oppressive Social Work Theory and Practice
Dignity is a useless concept
Qualitative Interviewing and Grounded Theory Analysis
Participation, Responsibility and Choice
Social dignity for marginalized people in public healthcare
Social Rights and Human Welfare
Reclaiming Social Work
Dignity and health
Everyday ethics in professional life
The dignity circle
The personal is political
Benefits broods’
Exploring the history of social work as a human rights profession
Moral Laboratories
New Labour’s citizens
A Genealogy of Dependency
Shame on Us
Heaping blame on shame
Deciding to Discipline
The feckless mother
Rethinking the sociology of stigma
Grounded Theory and Sensitizing Concepts
Evidence from the 'Frontline'? An Ethnographic Problematisation of Welfare-to-Work Administrator Opinions
Conceptualizing Stigma
The Consequences of Welfare Reform
It's Not a Pattern of Behavior
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,67 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2025 (3) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |