Parton, Howe and Postmodernity: A Critical Comment on Mistaken Identity

In their contributions to the debate about social work, modernity and postmodernity Parton(1994) and Howe (1994) argue that the recent changes in social work practice can best be understood as features of, or responses to, the postmodern social order in which it is located. This has led, they argue, to an increasing fragmentation of the profession and an undermining of its formal knowledge base. We will argue here that, not only does such an argument oversimplify the nuances of the ‘postmodernity’ question, but it represents a misreading of the pressures affecting practice at this time, which are more properly attributable to the operation of the discourses and ideologies of a particular phase of late capitalism and high modernity.