The census and women's work in Rangoon, 1872–1931

The colonial census was a bureaucratic device which provided an essential abstraction from social reality, a ‘statistical fix’ designed to map individual social groups in space. This paper considers the contradictions associated with colonial knowledge systems as reflected in the census grafted onto Burmese society in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It attempts to chart the general adoption and adaptation, in the Burmese context, of a classificatory scheme which categorised labour as either productive or unproductive. Colonialism introduced new attitudes towards work and labour which reinforced patriarchal values which contrasted with more egalitarian Burmese socio-economic systems. The paper suggests that a simple classification of women workers as either productive or unproductive in the Burmese census between 1872 and 1931 resulted in the devaluation of their status as workers. This devaluation was a function of both real economic transformation taking place in the empire and changes in census classification, reflecting a gendering of occupations that undermined the cultural norms of Burmese society. The material result was that women became statistically less visible as economically productive workers. Such ascriptions of value to women workers were largely informed by moral considerations originating in England.

Shaping the Future of Mental Health Policy and Legislation in Northern Ireland: The Impact of Service User and Professional Social Work Discourses

This paper explores the complex interrelationship between service user and professional social work discourses and provides a critical commentary on their respective contributions to the recent review of mental health policy and legislation in Northern Ireland. The analysis indicates that dominant trends in mental health care, as mediated through service structures and institutional identities, have tended to prioritize the more coercive aspects of the social work role and reinforce existing power inequalities with service users. It is argued that such developments underline the need for a ‘refocusing’ debate in mental health social work to consider how a more appropriate balance can be achieved between its participatory/empowering and regulatory/coercive functions. Whilst highlighting both congruence and dissonance between respective discourses, the paper concludes that opportunities exist within the current change process for service users and social workers to build closer alliances in working together to reconstruct practice, safeguard human rights and develop innovative alternatives to a traditional bio-medical model of treatment.

Identifying families with multiple problems: Possible responses from child and family social work to current policy developments

In the development of family policy under New Labour there has been a growing tendency to identify groups who are likely to be high in lifetime costs to the state. Investment in such groups is seen as crucial. Whilst the economic case for current investment is compelling, idenitiying one of these groups, ‘families with multiple problems’ raises complex research problems and ethical issues. Reseach indicates that families with multiple problems may be identified on the caseloads of child and family social worker and there are claims that key events such as the registration of a child on the child protection register may indicate such multiple problems. This offers new opportunities for child and family social work to embrace less incident based ways of working in favour of longer term provision of services to address longer term risks.