Assembling Violence: Social Work's Complicities with Fashioning Ideas of the Unworthy and the Erasure of Need

Abstract

This thesis grapples with the inadequacies present within the function of contemporary social work, which fosters a practice that conceptualizes idealized visions of ‘those in need’, rather than attending to the real needs of those accessing social work programs. Specifically setting out to examine these institutional failings as they relate to the growing number of individuals experiencing homelessness across Canada, the paper introduces a guiding theoretical and epistemic framework, termed the ‘Assemblative Process,’ centred primarily on unpacking the constitution of ‘assemblative bodies.’ This work progresses through the three stages of this framework, first engaging in a critical genealogical historiographic study of social work’s development from the Enlightenment to our Colonial-Capitalist present, culminating in a technology capable of exerting state power over members of our community. It then utilizes this foundational understanding of social work to engage in a hybridized comparative policy analysis rooted within critical narrative/discourse to constitute a ‘point-in-time’ representation of the ‘assemblative body’ as it exists within both the 17th to 19th century Vagrancy Acts and Hamilton, Ontario’s Encampment Protocol, which was rescinded in January 2025. The final aspect of this analysis involves a ‘diffractive analysis’ of the findings across both the first two parts, leading to a discussion which suggests that perhaps our critiques of contemporary social work practice may be better oriented to other facets of the profession.