Abstract: | via e-mail: paul.garrett{at}nottingham.ac.uk Summary Harry Ferguson (2001), referring largely to Britain and Ireland,maintains that social work should be committed to a newway of thinking which is rooted in life politics.This idea, uncritically grounded in the ideas of Anthony Giddensand Ulrich Beck, fails to convince because: the assertion thatwe are now living in a post traditional orderis undermined by the resilience of key historical forms of regulationand control which continue, for example, to limit women's choicein the sphere of reproductive rights; identified changes inthe texture of family relations are not evidenced by research;the life politics perspective places too greatan emphasis on human agency, choice and volition and not enoughon structural constraint; the structural location of the lifepolitics proponents is not interrogated; the analysisis too stridently dismissive of the idea that emancipatorypolitics should be social work's primary orientation. |