Exploring Ethics in the Practice of Public Welfare Professionals

Abstract

How do public welfare professionals—client managers—approach their task of both applying the law and taking care of the client? As a lecturer of ethics in a socio-legal context I am interested in the ethical development of professionals in these fields, and in its basic dilemma between ethics of law and ethics of care. My initial research question read as follows: What do client case discussions reveal about the dilemmas that public welfare professionals face, and does the distinction between law and care illuminate these dilemmas? (Part 1) To inquire into ethics in public welfare practice I attended case conversations in which client managers discussed whether to choose a law abiding approach or a tailor-making approach. Tailor-making appeared to involve extra risks for the client manager. It is more time-consuming and complex. You cannot appeal to the law to back you up in accounting for a tailor-made decision. Moreover, it will always result in a dilemma regarding the demand of equal treatment. Following rules seems the safe way out. My question became: How to keep the route of tailor-making open and invite ethical decision-making? However, I hardly found a starting point in the empirical material, as the case discussions offered little explicit proof of an ethical perspective (Part 2). In the third part of this thesis I explore the social science metatheory of relational constructionism, that allows new perspectives based on its relational ontology. The relational constructionist discourse shifts interest from knowledgeable facts about a singular, independent reality towards relational processes of reality construction, thus recognizing multiple co-existing realities. Next to “hard” subject-object relations an exploration of “soft” self-other constructions becomes possible. My inquiry into relational constructionist literature reconstructs “soft self-other differentiation” as a central ethics concept. Therefore, the question central to the third part of the thesis is: How might ethics as soft self-other differentiation be theorised and practiced in a socio-legal context? A possible answer appeared to be a structural dialogue among professionals, like case conversations, based on relational responsibility, which emphasizes: - openness to other and otherness; - listening, being present; - suspending judgements; - reflexive attention to the relational processes; and - power to/with other, rather than power over other. Together these five orientations are called “soft self-other differentiation” (Hosking). I further develop this concept by comparing it with Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics (1929) and with Varela’s concept of ethical know-how in Ethical Know-How (1999). Wittgenstein’s concept of absolute ethical value supports the exploration of how ethics as soft self-other differentiation relates to a space beyond conceptual language. Varela’s concept of ethical know-how adds to that the importance of ethical development, culminating in the paradox of “non-action” on the basis of an awareness of the self as an “empty, virtual self”. Finally, a practical application is offered by McCown’s co-creation of an “ethical space” of relational sensibility. The qualities of this ethical space seem to indicate that practising ethics as soft self-other differentiation could benefit the proceedings of case conversations among (public welfare) professionals.