Reflective Journal

Article

Intersectionality as a Useful Tool: Anti-Oppressive Social Work and Critical Reflection

Tina Mattsson1

Abstract This article introduces intersectionality as a usable tool for critical reflection, which as a part of the critical social work tradition aims to challenge oppression and inequality. It is argued that in critical reflection, oppression and injustice are often understood in general terms and that oppression and inequalities related to gender, sexuality, class, and race therefore risk being neutralized and undetected. The suggestion is made that by using an intersectional approach, which focuses the interplay and complexity between gender, sexuality, class, and race, critical reflection gets the capacity to keep central power relations in urgent focus.

Keywords anti-oppressive social work, critical social work, critical reflection, intersectionality, oppression

Introduction: Oppression and Critical Social Work

Critical and radical social work has been occupied with oppression and the ways through which

social structures shape social work practice since the 1960s. It criticizes traditional social work for

maintaining and reinforcing oppression and inequality, as social problems are usually understood as

an effect of the individual’s lack of ability to cope with everyday life. By the view of critical social

workers and researchers, social work should be a practice with an ambition to challenge inequality,

marginalization, and oppression at a structural level by using structural understandings of social

problems (Adams, Dominelli, & Payne, 2002; Bailey & Brake, 1975; Dominelli, 2002; Pease &

Fook, 1999; Sakamoto & Pitner, 2005).

The interest in critical and anti-oppressive social work has increased during the last decades, and

several critical social work theorists have stressed the need for critical perspectives in a world

affected by and dependent on globalization and market economy (Dominelli, 2002; Fook, 2002;

Lewis, 2001; Morley, 2004; Stepney, 2005). Globalization creates economical standardization and

increasing economical dependency between states. At the same time, it increases Western, industria-

lized countries’ monopolies of technological, financial, communications, and weaponry resources.

1 School of social work, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

Corresponding Author:

Tina Mattsson, School of social work, Lund University, Box 23, SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden.

Email: [email protected]

Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work 2014, 29(1) 8-17 ª The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0886109913510659 aff.sagepub.com

Within this context, governmental power is eroding and democratic control over policy is decreased

as transnational corporations and international banks are becoming stronger (Dominelli, 2002; Fink,

Lewis, & Clarke, 2001; Fook, 2002; Lewis, 2001; Morley, 2004; Stepney, 2005). Neoliberal prin-

ciples have become dominant and affect the conditions of social work practice as the welfare states’

services are minimalized. For example, in Sweden, the public monopoly of welfare services has been

replaced by freer forms and has been exposed to competition between social services producers. The

social security system is confined and excludes a growing number of people. These changes are

hardly unproblematic, as they result in increasing social exclusion, poverty, and marginalization

(Höjer & Forkby, 2011; Schierup & Ålund, 2011). For critical social work practice, which aims

to challenge oppression and injustice, these changes implicate growing demands on usable tools for

critical practice and for the critical social worker in Sweden, as well in other Western societies.

Critical reflection has been developed as part of this need and aims to bring knowledge of how

social structures affect social work practice (Brookfield, 2009; Dominelli, 2002; Fook, 2002).

Critical theorists have introduced reflection as a way for the social worker to develop awareness

of how she and social work practice uphold oppression as part of an unreflective, everyday practice.

By understanding oppression as a result of ordinary people’s unconscious thoughts and feelings, it is

possible to emphasize how oppression and injustice are upheld not first and foremost by outspoken

racism, homophobia, or sexism, but by actions, thoughts, and feelings in everyday life (Essed, 1996;

Young, 1990). For example, as Young (1990) explains, oppression might be understood as:

. . . the vast and deep injustices some groups suffer as a consequence of often unconscious assumptions

and reactions of well meaning people in ordinary interactions, media, and cultural stereotypes, and struc-

tural features of bureaucratic hierarchies and market mechanisms—in short, the normal processes of

everyday life. (Young, 1990, p. 21)

For social work practice, this implies that a social worker might uphold and reproduce social

structures and oppression even though they might just be doing their job with good intentions.

Critical reflection deals with this challenge and focuses on the social worker and her unconscious

assumptions and actions as part of reinforcing and maintaining oppression. By critical reflection, the

social worker is getting knowledge and insights of how social structures work in everyday life, and

therefore becomes capable of working against oppression and injustice (Brookfield, 2009; Domi-

nelli, 2002; Fook, 2002; Fook & Gardner, 2007; Mattsson, 2010; Morley, 2004; Pitner & Sakamoto,

2005). In this article, I will argue that critical reflection is an important but challenging approach to

social work. In the tradition of critical reflection, oppression and inequality are understood and

explained in general terms, and gender, sexuality, class, and race are not emphasized as central cate-

gories of oppression and injustice. They therefore risk being unrecognized and neutralized when

critical reflection is used in practice, especially since it is often particularly challenging to visualize

oppression and inequality that relates to the social worker herself, her professional role and her

private life, and not just to the client’s vulnerability and exclusion. As a critical and anti-

oppressive practice, social work needs a usable tool to be able to stay focused on gender, sexuality,

class, and race to be able to visualize and understand oppression and injustice. Combing critical

reflection and intersectionality might be a useful premise for this purpose.

Intersectionality: Oppression as Complexity

Intersectionality might be explained as an analytical ambition to explore gender, sexuality, class, and

race as complex, intertwined, and mutual reinforcing categories of oppression and social structures

(Davis, 2008; de los Reyes & Mulinari, 2005). The background of intersectionality is found in fem-

inist theory, which started to work with this complex understanding of gender to capture women’s

Mattsson 9

different experiences of oppression during the 1990s. A main point for feminists was the ability to

capture inequality and oppression within groups of women, and not only among women and men

(Collins, 1989, 1990; Crenshaw 1991; hooks, 1989; Lorde, 1984; Rich, 1993).

Intersectionality has become a central way for feminist research to understand how women are

positioned in patriarchy as well as within other systems of oppression, for example, those of class

and race (Davis, 2008). Although the perspective is quite well used, it is also conceptualized and

used inconsistently. For example, intersectionality has been described as a theory, a method, a per-

spective, a concept, and a framework (Carbin & Edenheim, 2013; Davis, 2008; Mehrotra, 2010).

Different understandings and uses of intersectionality argue that the perspective might be used as

a way to understand individuals’ multiple identities, interlocking systemic inequalities at the level

of social structures or multiplicity of social, historical, and cultural discourses (Chang & Culp,

2002; Davis, 2008; de los Reyes & Mulinari, 2005; Lykke, 2010; McCall, 2005; Yuval-Davis,

1997).

In social work, intersectionality has been used as an analytical approach during recent years and it

has been a way to understand both complex identities and how social structures affect people’s living

conditions (Eliassi, 2010; Fahlgren, 2013; Fahlgren & Sawyer, 2005; Grönvik & Söder, 2008;

Mattsson, 2005, 2010; Mehrotra, 2010; Murphy, Hunt, Zajicek, Norris, & Hamilton, 2009; Pease,

2010; Sawyer, 2012). Mehrotra (2010) argues that intersectionality is usable in social work and that

different intersectional approaches in analysis strengthen the field. Drawing on McCall’s (2005)

typology, she describes different approaches in intersectional analysis usable for social work: an

intercategorical approach that aims to understand how different social groupings are affected by

structural inequalities and how identity is determined and shaped by social structures. Intracatego-

rical approaches focus on diversity within social groups and illuminate lived experiences, multiple

identities, and standpoints of people who are situated in the intersections of numerous oppressions.

The third approach, the anticategorical, are generally aligned with a poststructuralist feminism that

challenges the idea of social categories such as gender, sexuality, class, and race, and problematizes

categories as real, fixed, homogenous, and bound by social structures (McCall, 2005; Mehrotra,

2010).

Using intersectionality, critical reflection might be understood as a mix of the different

approaches (cf. Sandberg, 2013). A central aim for the reflection should be to understand the com-

plexity of categories and power relations. At the same time, it must be stressed that the aim is to

disclose and challenge social structures and oppression, which is why the anticategorical approach

should be combined with an intercategorical approach which stress structural inequalities between

different groups and how identity is shaped by social structures.

Critical Social Work and Critical Reflection

A dilemma for the critical tradition in social work during the 1960s and 1970s was the difficulties in

using the structural understandings of social problems in clinical social work on an individual level.

A structural understanding of social problems tends to be far away from the client’s everyday life.

Social workers works and adapts in relation to organizations and bureaucratic rules, managers

demands, and sometimes also to community cultures. In this context, it’s easy to feel powerless and

without personal responsibility and it is sometimes hard to hold on to ideological and political ideals

focusing structural change (Brookfield, 2009; Fook, 1993, 2002; Fook & Gardner, 2007; Mclaugh-

lin, 2005; Morley, 2004; Stepney, 2005). Critical social work aims to challenge these problems and

in recent years important works has been done by Jan Fook, who has also been working together with

Fiona Gardner (Fook, 2002; Fook & Gardner, 2007). Fook (2002) might be understood as develop-

ing critical social work by changing the focus from how social structures affect people’s living

conditions, to focusing on how social structures affect social work practice, and the social workers’

10 Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work 29(1)

ideas, emotions, and reactions. Fook argues that critical social work needs to be a critical reflection

which helps the social worker to develop her professional role in relation to an understanding of

social structures and the globalization context. She argues that critical reflection is a way to bring

practice and theory together in a way that develops awareness of the ability to contribute to social

change (Fook, 2002; Fook & Gardner, 2007; cf. Brookfield, 2009; Dominelli, 2002; Mattsson, 2010;

Morley, 2004; Pease, 2006; Pitner & Sakamoto, 2005; Sakamoto & Pitner, 2005).1

The critical reflection that Fook introduces aims to deconstruct our experiences and knowledge in

a way that gradually illustrates how we are part of and sustain social structures and oppression

(Fook, 2002; Fook & Gardner, 2007). To reflect critically means to focus on a chosen event or sit-

uation and to analyze the feelings, thoughts, and actions it involves in a way that opens up alternative

ways of understanding. By the new ways of comprehending, it is possible for the social worker to

become more aware of how social structures affect her, the client, and social work practice. The

reflection gives alternative and more dynamic ways to comprehend, and therefore develops more

complex understandings of social problems, the client, the social workers’ positions, and the inter-

action with the client. By using a complex way of thinking, the social worker not only can develop an

understanding of her own assumptions and conceptions, she might also in time change her way of

thinking and acting as a result of her increasing knowledge (Brookfield, 2009; Fook & Gardner,

2007; Pitner & Sakamoto, 2005; Sakamoto & Pitner, 2005). By this process, a possibility to chal-

lenge social structures and oppression is created, as the social worker develops an ability to work

in ways that might challenge social structures and stereotypical images of clients. The critical

reflection, therefore, is seen as a potential for social work to be a profession which actually changes

society, since the social worker is able to change her actions when she understands how social

structures affect social work practice.

In Fook’s critical reflection, gender, sexuality, class, and race are implicit, but not in focus. She

opens up the space for working on power and oppression related to, for example, gender and race;

yet, she does not put them in the foreground, as she uses general understandings of power and

oppression (also see Fook & Gardner, 2007; Morley, 2004). I would like to argue for taking one

more step by using critical reflection with the specific ambition of analyzing and changing gender,

sexuality, class, and race oppression. My argument is that critical reflection with the ambition to

explore and disclose social structures and oppression needs to stay focused on gender, sexuality,

class, and race, since these are elementary power relations with respect to marginalization, oppres-

sion, and injustice. It is also important to stress how these power relations tend to be habitual and

taken for granted, which makes them particularly hard to make visible and keep in analytical focus;

this is why it is especially important to work with a clear ambition to recognize them in critical social

work practice.

An intersectional analysis aims to explore oppression and inequality focusing the interplay

between different categories of oppression. The approach is based on a key understanding that gen-

der, sexuality, class, and race are intertwined and reinforced ‘‘in and through relation to each other’’

(McClintock, 1995, s. 5, emphasis in original). No structure or category is homogenous, and the

intersection between gender, sexuality, class, and race creates oppression and inequality both within

and among groups (Davis, 2008; de los Reyes & Mulinari, 2005; Lykke, 2010). Intersectionality is a

usable approach for critical social work since it highlights gender, sexuality, class, and race and

makes it possible to understand and problematize the unequal relation between the social worker and

the client in a complex way.

Theoretical Points of Departure

The critical tradition in social work has traditionally found its theoretical framework in structural

theories. When developing the theoretical base for critical reflection, Fook finds her theoretical

Mattsson 11

framework in postmodern and poststructural theories. She argues for the possibility of using these

approaches, as they manage to dispute and deconstruct the presupposed in a way that opens up for

variations, subordinated narratives, contradictions, and complexities. The poststructural approach

brings an understanding of reality to be a reflection of both external and internal structures of think-

ing. This places power relations situated in both external and internal structures—an understanding

which opens up for the individual as a bearer and reproducer of social structures. Postmodernism

calls the production of knowledge into question and understands knowledge as socially constructed.

It recognizes the importance of context and highlights how knowledge is mediated by cultural,

political, and social assumptions. The scientific idea of external, objective reality is problematized,

as knowledge is understood as intimately connected with subjective values and judgments. Facts

become facts as they are constructed as parts of historical, social, and political interests. For post-

modernism, the aim is to open up for different experiences and to give them place and legitimacy

in a way that gives room to question dominating truths and knowledge (Fook, 2002, s. 11ff; Fook

& Gardner, 2007, s. 33; Morley, 2004). This approach is useful and important for critical reflection

since it provides space for reflection which manages to question dominating ways of understanding

social problems, clients, and the social work profession.

Fook (2002) starts with the postmodern understanding of knowledge and then she develops a

splendid theoretical framework for critical reflection. She uses poststructural understandings of lan-

guage, power, and discourse in a way that brings understanding of how social structures affect social

workers at an individual level. Without a doubt, when her theoretical approach is used in critical

refection, the reflection surely becomes a way to bring theory and practice together in a way that

can make oppression and power relations visible. Even though, there are two problems with Fook’s

theoretical framework worth discussing. One is the incapacity of postmodernism to handle power

relations. The postmodern aim to open up and investigate alternative knowledge and experiences

in a way that is not interested in what is true or more accurate, also opens up for relativism where

all knowledge and experiences are equally truthful. Postmodernism is focused on the deconstruction

of the truth rather than to actually investigate and illustrate power relations and social structures. If

critical reflection aims to explore and change social structures, postmodernism is not unproblematic

since it bears the risk of falling into relativism. Fook’s solution of this problem is to combine her

postmodern approach with Foucault’s theory on power (Fook, 2002; Fook & Gardner, 2007). Even

though I really do like this solution, I see a problem in that Fook stays with an understanding of

power which does not emphasize the specific aspects of social structures related to gender, sexuality,

class, and race. This is the second problem in her theoretical framework; that is, gender, sexuality,

class, and race are not highlighted as central social structures and forms of oppression.

Using intersectionality as a basis for the reflection would take the critical reflection one step fur-

ther. Understanding intersectionality as a way to explore how power relations are created and rein-

forced by the interplay between gender, sexuality, class, and race, it is possible to keep them in

urgent focus. In theoretical practice, this means to combine postmodern thinking and poststructural

theories on gender, sexuality, class, and race. As intersectionality is not a theory in itself, there is a

need for developing a theoretical framework. It is possible to use the same general understandings of

how structures, power, and identities work and affect our lives as Fook recommends, but with the

difference that specific theories which explain aspects of gender, sexuality, class, and race

structures, are necessary. Intersectionality gives a specific ambition to hold on to and understand

interaction between gender, sexuality, class, and race as a basis for—and upholding of oppression

and inequality (cf. Davis, 2008, p. 73). By using an intersectional approach and, for example, post-

structural feminist and postcolonial theory, the reflection would be based in a tradition of under-

standing how social structures affect people’s living conditions which also emphases gender,

sexuality, class, and race (cf. Carbin & Edenheim, 2013). This would solve both the problem with

the postmodern relativism and the problem with the risk of neutralizing or making aspects of gender,

12 Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work 29(1)

sexuality, class, and race invisible when not emphasizing them in the theoretical framework. Gender,

sexuality, class, and race are crucial categories for understanding oppression and injustice. At the

same time, they tend to be normalized and invisible, which makes them challenging to recognize,

explore, and transform (Dominelli, 2002). Critical reflection needs a powerful understanding of the

relation between oppression and the intersection of gender, sexuality, class, and race. A reflection

carried out without that kind of understanding risks reinforcing oppression and injustice.

Intersectionality in Social Work Practice

Following is a structure in three steps for how to critically reflect on a specific incident: (inspired by

Fook, 2002, p. 43, 89ff; Fook & Gardner, 2007; Mattsson, 2010; Morley, 2004).

Step 1: Start with identifying a critical incident and describe it with as much specific details as

possible. It could be any practice experience that made you stop and think, and react on what

have happened. Write down your description, as writing is a good way to think the incident

through, and to actually remember it and its different parts. It is natural that your description

develops as you are writing it.

Step 2: Make a critical reflection on your description. Start with identifying power relations

operating in the incident. By using intersectionality as a base for the reflection, it is possible

to stay focused on gender, sexuality, class, and race as central categories of oppression and how

they actually work in and affect social work practice. When understanding how power relations

might affect the social worker, the client, and the social work organization, it is possible to

investigate alternative understandings and actions.

Step 3: Reconstruct and redevelop new and emancipating strategies for theory and practice which

are possible, as the social worker identifies and understands the means of social change and

recognizes her agency and her own construction of power.

The three steps give structure for critically working through an incident or situation. By making

reflections, it is possible to explore new ways of thinking and feeling about the chosen incident. It is

possible to find other ways to understand what has happened and the role the social worker plays in

the situation. The structure is important in doing the reflection, as its various steps are what keeps

focus on analysis and evolves new insights and understandings.

Step 2 is a crucial analytical part of the reflection, and using intersectionality as a tool especially

affects this step. It is in this step that intersectionality as an approach is practiced, and where analysis

and theory are in focus. Theory is important in critical reflection; without theory it is hard for the

reflection to actually bring new understandings of the incident, understandings that reveal the effects

of power in the situation. Power relations related to gender, sexuality, class, and race are difficult to

actually see, recognize, and acknowledge. For example, in Sweden, a gendered-balanced workforce

is often stressed as important in social work practice. Gender balance is understood as necessary both

according to gender equality policies and to an understanding of women and men as completing each

other in corresponding to what is perceived as males and females different needs in treatment.

Indirectly, male and female social workers come to represent femininities and masculinities that are

supposed to be heterosexual, middle class, and ‘‘Swedish.’’ As a result, they tend to uphold and

reproduce stereotype gender and class hierarchies, heterosexual norms, and white Swedish

supremacy (Fahlgren, 2013; Mattsson, 2005; Sawyer, 2012; cf. Lewis, 2001). By using feminist and

postcolonial theory which both use a critical approach to shed light on social orders that are usually

taken for granted and therefore reinforce and uphold oppression and injustice at the same time, the

critical reflection enables understanding power beyond the common sense that usually makes us

blind to it and its effects. The critical reflection with its focus on gender, sexuality, class, and race

Mattsson 13

brings awareness and knowledge on how power relations work and affect the social worker, and how

the social worker herself functions as a bearer of these structures. By using an intersectional

approach in critical reflection, the reflection will show how conceptions of social workers,

‘‘clients,’’ and social problems are constructed and upheld. It will do this by asking deconstructing

questions about used understandings and concepts: What is included and incorporated in the social

workers understandings of herself and of the ‘‘client?’’ What is excluded? What is visualized? What

remains unnoticed and invisible? How does this contribute to the positions of the social worker as

normal and the ‘‘client’’ as deviant? And most importantly, how does these constructs uphold con-

ceptions and power relations related to gender, sexuality, class, and sexuality?

By these kinds of questions, raised with poststructural feminist and postcolonial understandings

which are used when reflecting on the answers, critical reflection will give urgent answers on how

these constructions reinforces oppression and injustice in case of gender, sexuality, class, and race,

and it will make a more complex understanding of the social worker, the ‘‘client,’’ and of social

problems possible. The reflection becomes a usable tool to make the ‘‘unconscious assumptions and

reactions of well meaning people’’ (Young, 1990, p. 41) conscious and visible.

Step 3 in the critical reflection reminds us of the importance of the reflection being anti-

oppressive and challenging of power relations. It is at this point that the social worker can explore

alternative ways of handling different power relations. When understanding the effects of power

relations and how gender, sexuality, class, and race intersect and reinforce each other, the social

worker can develop an alternative thinking and alternative actions. By understanding, she can start

working in a way that challenges, rather than reinforces oppression and injustice. This work,

however, demands continuous reflection; there is no finishing or end point in doing critical social

work or in being a critical social worker. The critical social worker never knows it all.

Critical Reflection and Intersectionality Challenges

Intersectionality practiced in critical reflection is probably best described as a combination of the

anticategorical and the inter-categorical approach (McCall, 2005; Mehrotra, 2010). The reflection

aims to understand and challenge the complexity of different categories which are intertwined and

reinforce each other. This also means that the reflection might end up in dissolution of gender, sexu-

ality, class, and race where it is actually hard to see or understand structural inequalities, as they

appear too complex and dynamic. I would like to stress the importance of understanding that using

intersectionality in critical reflection means to understand and analyze the intersection of gender,

sexuality, class, and race at maybe the most complex level. Observing the effects of social structures

is generally easier on a structural level than in a micro context or at an individual level where struc-

tural patterns easily become invisible in the complexity that tends to dominate. This is why it might

be fruitful to understand the use of intersectionality in critical reflection as a combination of the

anticategorical and the intercategorical approach, where the latter one stresses and focuses on struc-

tural inequalities between different groups and the effects of social structures on identity (cf. Sand-

berg, 2013). Otherwise, the reflection bears the risk of ending up unable to reflect on structures at all

(Pease, 2010). Once again, this also stresses the importance of using theory when reflecting; theory

is what gives the ability to go beyond the unconscious assumptions of everyday life that reinforce

and uphold oppression and injustice.2

Conclusion

The last decade’s increasing inequality, discrimination, and marginalization in Western societies has

created tensions and demands on equality and social justice, and an increasing interest in critical and

anti-oppressive social work (Dominelli, 2002; Fook, 2002; Lewis, 2001; Morley, 2004; Stepney,

14 Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work 29(1)

2005). Critical reflection, developed by those such as Fook (2002), for example, is part of this tradition

which aims to challenge oppression and change society as it brings awareness and knowledge of social

structures, inequalities, and oppression to the social worker. It focuses especially on how the social

worker reinforces oppression and social structures by her ways of thinking, feeling, and taking action.

The argument made in this article is that combining critical reflection with intersectionality is a way to

stress the importance of focusing on how social structures related to gender, sexuality, class, and race,

contribute to oppression of marginalized groups. Critical reflection tends to understand social structures

and power relations in general, rather than in specific terms, which risks neutralizing the power relations

of gender, sexuality, class, and race. To combine critical reflection with intersectionality is to create

space for work on power relations and oppression. It gives a tool to keep focus on gender, sexuality, class,

and race as power relations, and challenges the potential risk of neutralization.

Intersectionality is a useful way of thinking in social work and in critical reflection; it gives an ana-

lytical tool which is able to capture dynamic power relations and oppression in a way that is sensitive

to differences and oppression both within and among groups. This way of understanding social struc-

tures and power relations as complex and dynamic is a possible way to avoid stereotyping and simpli-

fying understandings of gender, sexuality, class, and ethnicity as homogenous and static categories. In

critical reflection, the understanding of these power relations as complex and dynamic, combined with

the ambition of understanding power relations, keeps social structures and oppression in focus.

Critical social work points out the need for a social work practice that contributes to equality,

social justice, and social change. By working with critical reflection using intersectionality as a way

of understanding and analyzing, it is possible for social workers to become more aware and

conscious of social structures and oppression in social work and within their own practice. By being

more conscious of how social structures affect social work and reinforce oppression and power

relations, it is possible for social workers to change both the way they think and act.

The development and use of critical reflection also carries the risk of critical social work

becoming reduced to an individual level only, which actually might result in a loss of the critical

dimension. Critical social work has raised important critiques of traditional social casework for

working on an individual level where social problems are understood as individual problems and

not as problems related to greater social structures and society (Adams et al., 2002; Dominelli,

2002; Fook, 1993, 2002; Pease & Fook, 1999). At the same time, critical reflection places critical

social work on an individual level and focuses on the social worker’s prejudices, conceptions,

thoughts, and actions. There is also a risk of critical reflection becoming a reflection work for social

workers, not addressing transformations of social structures and power relations. Critical reflection,

therefore, needs to keep reminding itself of the critical dimension in the reflection, as well as the aim

of working on power relations and oppression. Critical social work has to be working on several

levels of society: the individual, the organizational, and the structural.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication

of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

1. Sakamoto and Pitner (2005) define critical consciousness in a way similar to Fook’s critical reflection.

Critical consciousness is a reflection where the social worker becomes aware how she perceives difference

and power dynamics. Their thinking is very interesting, but they don’t present a method for reflection, which

is why I focus on Fook’s ideas in this article.

Mattsson 15

2. If interested in critical reflection Fook (2002), Social work Critical Theory and Practice, Fook and Gardner

(2007) Practicing critical reflection. A resource handbook, and in Swedish, Mattsson (2010) Intersektiona-

litet i social arbete. Teori, reflektion och praxis, are recommended.

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Author Biography

Tina Mattsson has a PhD in social work and is an associate professor in the School of Social Work, Lund

university, Lund, Sweden; e-mail: [email protected].

Mattsson 17

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