SWN025 Chap.8 Identity and Difference in Organisations
Identity and Difference in Organisations
This chapter treats identity as a site of analysis in organisational practice. It contrasts fixed identities, a feature of modernist thinking, with identities that are relative and changing, and shows how labels in case records can stand in for a whole person.
It draws on the identity questions in the Week 3 lecture and tutorial deck, the Week 6 readings, and the moral-worth judgements discussed in Week 8, and it turns the analysis back on the student’s own position. Because the Week 6 slides could not be included here, the chapter relies on the set readings and on the identity material threaded through other weeks. It also asks you to place your own identity in the analysis.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Fixed versus relational identity
- 02
Labels in case records
- 03
Cultural identity, gender and class positions
- 04
Naming one person’s identity but not others
- 05
Deserving and undeserving judgements
- 06
The worker’s own position
- 07
Reconstructing identity in empowered terms
Worked example · free
Rewrite a case summary that fixes a person by labels
- 1List the labels: age, unemployed, gambling problem, lives alone, poor engagement, each presented as a fixed fact.
- 1Show the effect: together the labels build a deficit identity that predicts failure and hides other aspects of his life.
- 1Find the absences: his own description of himself, his history and the service’s role in engagement are missing.
- 1Reconstruct: describe him in terms he might recognise and treat engagement as a shared responsibility of service and client.
Key terms
- Fixed identity
- A fixed identity is an identity treated as permanent and defining, so that one label stands in for the whole person.
- Relational identity
- A relational identity is an identity understood as relative and changing, shaped by context and by relationships with others.
- Deficit label
- A deficit label is a description that defines a person by problems or failures, such as non-compliant or unmotivated.
- Moral worth judgement
- A moral worth judgement is a decision, often implicit, about whether a person deserves support, which can carry cultural bias.
- Worker position
- The worker position is the place a practitioner occupies in relation to service users and the organisation, including any privilege.
- Essentialised identity
- An essentialised identity is a description that assumes a person behaves in a fixed way because of the group they belong to.
Identity and Difference in Organisations FAQ
Why does the unit treat identity as an organisational issue?
Organisations sort people into categories in order to act on them. The Week 8 lecture, citing Ramsay, shows caseworkers judging moral worth through qualities valued by Anglo-Australian culture, so an identity recorded in a file can carry a cultural judgement that looks neutral.
What does it mean to reconstruct identity in more empowered terms?
The tutorial deck pairs a modernist notion of fixed identity with its reconstruction: identity as relative and changing, described in more empowered terms. In practice that means recognising the other identities a person holds and describing them in language they might use themselves.
Should my own identity appear in the essay?
Yes. The deconstruction questions ask about the privileged position of the worker and the cultural identity, gender and class of both the worker and the service user. Lectures in Weeks 5 and 9 also show students reconstructing their own identity as powerless students.
Which readings support the identity week?
The Week 6 preparation page sets Fook’s chapter on identity and difference, with QUT readings by Morley and Stenhouse on critical social work in mental health, Hyslop on neoliberalism and social work identity, and Sands on the elusiveness of identity from a postmodern feminist perspective. Read them directly before citing them.
How do I write about a service user’s identity without othering them?
Name the positions of everyone in the account, including your own, rather than marking only the service user. Use descriptions the person might recognise, show how identity positions shaped power in the incident, and connect that relation to what you did, instead of praising diversity in general terms.
Assessment move
Read Fook’s chapter on identity and difference first, then go through your initial account marking every identity label, including the ones you applied to yourself. Note which labels came from organisational records or professional language. In the essay, pick the label that did the most work in your incident and show how it shaped what you did; then show the identities it hid.
Keep a note of any moment in tutorials when a classmate’s question changed how you saw your own position; it is evidence of reflexivity you can cite in the essay. If your incident involved a record or referral, quote one line from it, with identifying details removed, and analyse the identities it fixes.
Working through Identity and Difference in Organisations in SWN025? Sia is AskSia’s AI Social Work tutor — ask any SWN025 Identity and Difference in Organisations question and get a clear, step-by-step explanation grounded in how SWN025 is taught and assessed. Read this chapter free, then take your hardest questions to Sia.
