Lordship and bondage in the dialectics of social work: regulation and professional autonomy

This article provides an innovative reading of the relationship between social work and the regulatory bodies mandated to register and regulate it, which has hitherto remained largely untheorised. It achieves this by utilising Hegel’s illustrative tale of ‘lord and bondsman’. This narrative outlines the development of consciousness through dialectical struggle. We argue that the relationship of domination and servitude that has developed between the profession and the regulators is incapable of delivering a satisfactory self-consciousness for either. For the social work profession, consciousness is limited to an enforced ‘being-for’ the regulatory bodies, which appropriate the ends of practice through the labour of the profession. For both to achieve full self-consciousness, each must transcend itself and the other through a dialectical movement in which each is simultaneously ‘negated’ and ‘preserved’. The article highlights ways in which social work can more courageously address its own historical development within such a struggle.