Protecting children in new times: Child protection and the risk society

Ferguson, Harry

Abstract

This paper examines the nature of late-modern child protection by placing it in the context of the paradigm of `risk society'. It traces out a structural transformation in the relationship between expertise and lay people that has occurred since the 1970s which resulted in the emergence of child abuse inquiries and new public disclosures of professional ‘failures’'. The dynamic and empowering features of social developments are identified in how institutions, professionals and lay people re-appropriate power, knowledge and reskill themselves. Traditionally repressed problems like child sexual abuse have gained recognition in a context where abused women and children – like all late-modern citizens – are reflexively engaged in constructing their own biographies and using expertise in the planning of their life projects. A radically new professional risk consciousness in child protection is traced to late-modern existential crises associated with death and sexuality and the emergence of manufactured risk, which is known and experienced by social workers as risk in the context of radically uncertain futures for children. Drawing on the work of sociologists of ‘reflexive modernity’, the paper aims to advance our understandings of social work and child protection beyond the one-dimensional focus of post-modernist critics on power, control and bureaucracy to recognize the new opportunities, as well as the dangers, involved in child protection in risk society.

Citation

Ferguson, H. (1997). Protecting children in new times: Child protection and the risk society. Child and Family Social Work, 2(4), 221-234. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2206.1997.00064.x

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Nov 1, 1997
• Journal: Child and Family Social Work
• Print ISSN: 1356-7500
• Electronic ISSN: 1365-2206
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 221-234
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2206.1997.00064.x
• Keywords: child protection, risk society
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1101858
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2206.1997.00064.x