'Anti-Oppressiveness': Critical Comments on a Discourse and its Context.

This paper identifies and aims to explain an apparent dissonance between the dominance in Britain of `anti-oppressive' social work discourse and the socio-political con- text surrounding its use; a context often claimed to feature excessive regulation and control. Pursuing this, some politically radical aims associated with `anti-oppressiveness' are spelt out, and the difficulty of achieving these in an unconducive climate is discussed. Then, a distinction made by Robert Merton between `latent' and `manifest' functions is used to suggest that the manifest radicalism of `anti-oppressive' discourse can helpfully be distinguished from some latent largely unrecognised consequences of its use not consequences with politically radical impact, but with a social meaning congruent with a climate of control. It is concluded that the `success' of anti-oppressive discourse might well be viewed as requiring more of the kind of critical analysis that the discourse itself was supposed to espouse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]