Review of: Fabian Kessl, Melanie Plößer (Hg.): Differenzierung, Normalisierung, Andersheit. Soziale Arbeit als Arbeit mit den Anderen. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften 2010.

Abstract

This textbook contains a wealth of current theoretical reflections and examples of empirical research on the subject of dealing with difference and otherness, a core topic of Social Work. After all, the assessment of normality and otherness is the historical, disciplinary, and political foundation of the profession resp. discipline. Furthermore, it is of current methodological-social scientific interest. Although binary thought structures have been replaced by difference theoretical, deconstructive, and intersectional approaches, the power of normalization as a maxim for Social Work approaches (to boundaries) is still valid. The interactive, i.e. socially produced doing difference (with its demand for integration) is opposed by the practices of normalization, the labeling approach, and marginalization. Just as in Gender Studies, there is the danger of difference-sensitive (gender-sensitive) attitudes leading to a reification of otherness (gender). As shown in the presented empirical contexts, Social Work has to face this dilemma in analysis, methodology, and attitude. Various difference theoretical perspectives are captured and critically refined in fourteen articles, while at all times, referring back to categories, concepts, and programs of differentiation, otherness, and normalization as well as related reflections on various differentiation and normalization practices in the context of Social Work. Following text book standards, the group Inter Kultur develops a series of questions in the introductory chapter. These questions can be used as a re- and deconstructive reading guide.