This article seeks both to highlight a current imbalance in approaches to social identity in social policy, and to make suggestions as to how this might be redressed in future work employing the concept.The concept of identity and specifically social identity is increasingly employed in the discipline of social policy as a theoretical device with which to bridge the individual/social divide. The argument presented here suggests that the concept is however, unevenly deployed in policy analysis and, therefore lacks the force of impact it might otherwise have had. The predominant focus of current analysis lies in policy change precipitated by groups of 'new,' active welfare constituents organised around differentiated and fragmented social identities, whereas the identities of welfare professionals also involved in policy making process have disappeared from analytical view. The current emphasis on the discursive context for policy formulation, perpetuates an unacknowledged misconception concerning the asociality of those involved in policy making, where their principal role is perceived as the maintenance of the status quo in terms of social policy responses to welfare constituents needs. Redressing this false dichotomy between those developing and those using welfare services might be avoided by further exploring the concept of relational identity.

No abstract

This paper challenges dominant analyses of policy documents and documentation practices as coercive welfare technologies. Instead it develops an interdisciplinary feminist psychosocial analysis which posits policy documents as material semiotic actors in the process of governance, produced through and productive of the social relations of public service provision. It uses an empirical case study from the author's experience in equalities policy making in education to develop an understanding of the multiple social relations constituted through document production. It applies the concepts of boundary object and transitional phenomena to understand the ways in which policy documents enable collective resistance to dominant constructions of otherness and alterity in equalities work and policy. The paper also considers how this sort of analysis highlights `uncomfortable truths' around the position of critical social researchers in document production for policy purposes.

PurposeThe paper has two purposes: to introduce a new perspective on power and resistance in equalities work; and to trouble either or theorisations of success and failure in this work. Instead it offers a new means of exploring micro‐practice.Design/methodology/approachThe paper applies/develops an “actor network theory” (ANT) analysis to a single case study of Iopia, a Black woman equalities practitioner working in a prison education context. It uses this to explore the ways in which Iopia interacts with a variety of human and non‐human objects to challenge racism in this context.FindingsIopia, from an initial position of marginality (as a Black woman experiencing racism) is able to establish herself (by virtue of this same identity as a Black woman combating racism) as central to a “new” network for equality and diversity. This new network both challenges and sustains narrow exclusionary definitions of diversity. Thus, Iopia's case provides an example of the contradictions, and paradox, experienced by those working for equality and diversity.Research limitations/implicationsIn the future, this type of feminist ANT analysis could be more fully developed and integrated with critical race and other critical cultural theories as these relate to equalities work.Practical implicationsThe approach, and, in particular, the notion of translation, can be used by practitioners in thinking through the ways in which they can use material objects to draw in multiple “others” into their own networks.Originality/valueThe article is one of the first to explore equalities workers via the lens of ANT. It is unique in its analysis of the material objects constituting both diversity workers and diversity work and thus its analysis of diversity workers and their work as part of a complex set of social and “material” relations.

SummaryThis paper draws on work conducted for a qualitative interview based study which explores the gendered racialised and professional identifications of health and social care professionals. Participants for the project were drawn from the professional executive committees of recently formed Primary CareTrusts. The paper discusses how the feminist psychosocial methodological approach developed for the project is theoretically, practically and ethically useful in exploring the voices of those in positions of relative power in relation to both health and social care services and the social relations of gender and ethnicity. The approach draws on psychodynamic accounts of (defended) subjectivity and the feminist work of Carol Gilligan on a voice-centred relational methodology. Coupling the feminist with the psychosocial facilitates an emphasis on voice and dialogic communication between participant and researcher not always captured in psychosocial approaches which tend towards favouring the interviewer as 'good listener'. This emphasis on dialogue is important in research contexts where prior and ongoing relationships with professional participants make it difficult and indeed undesirable for researchers to maintain silence.-2 - Negotiating Professional and Social Voices in Research Principles and Practice