The Trouble with Harry: Why the 'New Agenda of Life Polities' Fails to Convince

Harry Ferguson (2001), referring largely to Britain and Ireland, maintains that social work should be committed to a 'new way of thinking' which is rooted in 'life politics'. This idea, uncritically grounded in the ideas of Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck, fails to convince because: the assertion that we are now living in a 'post traditional order' is undermined by the resilience of key historical forms of regulation and control which continue, for example, to limit women's choice in the sphere of reproductive rights; identified changes in the texture of family relations are not evidenced by research; the 'life politics' perspective places too great an emphasis on human agency, choice and volition and not enough on structural constraint; the structural location of the 'life politics' proponents is not interrogated; the analysis is too stridently dismissive of the idea that 'emancipatory politics' should be social work's primary orientation.