Adventures in German Social work

… ist die Frage, die im autonomen Seminar “Soziale Arbeit und Social Media” immer wieder auftaucht. So eine ungefähre Vorstellung hat man ja und denkt dabei an StudiVZ, Wikipedia, Delicious, Blogs und so weiter. Aber gibt es vielleicht auch eine genaue Definition, auf der sich weitere Untersuchungen aufbauen lassen?

Auf den ersten Klick ist das Problem ja leicht zu lösen: man muss ja nur “Social Software” bei Wikipedia nachschlagen.

“Soziale Software (englisch social software) ist ein Modewort für Software, die der menschlichen Kommunikation und der Zusammenarbeit dienen … Eine einheitliche Definition existiert nicht, je nach Auslegung wird die soziale Software enger oder breiter gefasst.”

Wikipedia wird ja oft als unseriöse Informationsquelle bezeichnet, aber manchmal, wie in diesem Fall, kann man an den Informationen einfach nichts aussetzen. Denn dass keine einheitliche Definition von Social Software existiert, ist mir ja auch schon aufgefallen. Da mir Wikipedia hier allerdings nicht mit den Auskünften hilft, die ich haben wollte (und mich damit tröstlicherweise auch nicht falsch informiert), muss ich mir was Anderes einfallen lassen.

Okay, wir schauen einfach mal nach, wie andere Menschen, die sich mit dem Thema beschäftigen, den Begriff “Social Software” definieren. Thomas N. Burg meint dazu:

“Nach den Großrechnern, den Personal Computers (PCs) und den in diesem Kontext geschaffenen Softwaretools, die der individuellen Produktivitätsoptimierung gewidmet waren – wie z.B. Textverarbeitung, Buchhaltung, Grafik, etabliert sich zunehmend Software, deren Hauptaugenmerk auf der Verbindung von Menschen mit Menschen und Menschen mit Maschinen liegt. Diese, eine der wichtigsten rezenten Entwicklungen an der Schnittstelle Softwareentwicklung/Multimedia und Mensch, fasst man unter dem Schlagwort “Social Software” oder “Social Computing” zusammen.”

Während „klassische“ Software also von einzelnen nicht miteinander zusammenhängenden Akteuren bedient wird und deren individuelle Produktivität erhöht, erlaubt Social Software die Verbindung von Akteuren untereinander bzw. von Akteuren und Maschinen. Wie funktioniert jedoch diese Verbindung? Ulises A. Mejias erklärt:

Social software is „software that allows people to interact and collaborate online or that aggregates the actions of networked users.“

Deutlich wird also, dass Social Software online – also mit Hilfe über das Internet verbundener Computer – funktioniert und es so den Nutzern erlaubt ein Netzwerk zu bilden, dass zur Interaktion und Zusammenarbeit genutzt werden kann.

Was genau macht Social Software aber zu einem Phänomen, dass von Millionen von Menschen während ihrer Freizeit genutzt wird? Wollen diese Leute wirklich zusammenarbeiten? Wenn ja, weshalb? Jan Schmidts Social Software-Definition aus dem Bereich der Kommunikationssoziologie liefert einen Erklärungsansatz:

„Social software assists information-, identity- and/or relationship management by making connections between texts and people visible, at least to partial publics.“

Damit ließe sich erklären, warum sich Menschen die Mühe machen bei StudiVZ ein Profil zu erstellen oder bei Wikipedia Artikel zu editieren: die Verwendung von Social Software hat für den jeweiligen Anwender scheinbar einen ganz individuellen Nutzen. So kann man sein soziales Netzwerk in einer Art und Weise aufbauen und managen, die ohne eine Seite wie StudiVZ nicht möglich wäre (Beziehungsmanagement). Bei Wikipedia widerrum kann man das eigene Wissen in bis dato völlig unbekannten Formen teilen, überprüfen, vertiefen und sogar noch Anerkennung dafür bekommen (Wissensmanagement). Blogs widerrum werden oft genutzt, da sich mit ihnen Aspekte der eigenen Identität (Ideen, Ereignisse) präsentieren lassen (Identitätsmanagement). Offenbar ist es für den Nutzer/die Nutzerin von Social Software sehr attraktiv ein Online-Profil zu erstellen oder einen Blog einzurichten da ihm/ihr dadurch Möglichkeiten eröffnet werden, die er/sie sonst nicht hat.

Einen wichtigen Aspekt berücksichtigen die obigen Definitionen jedoch nicht. So wird in der Diskussion um Social Software nur am Rande bemerkt, dass der Wert der Social Software

„vor allem in den durch das System geschaffenen, gesammelten und kategorisierten Inhalten” [1]

liegt. Natürlich muss man dabei anerkennen, dass es nicht das System ist, welches diese Inhalte schafft, sondern dessen Nutzer. Social Software jedoch dient den Nutzern dabei als Werkzeug zum Sammeln und Ordnen von Inhalten und zur Herstellung weiterer Werte, die wiederum einen Nutzen für andere Akteure haben können. Kurz: Mit Hilfe von Social Software lassen sich Kollektivgüter herstellen, d.h. Güter, die nur durch gemeinsame Anstrengungen mehrerer Akteure geschaffen werden können.

Während dem Konzept “Social Software” in den bisherigen Definitionen lediglich Funktionen der Vernetzung von Menschen sowie der Interaktion und Zusammenarbeit und des Identitäts-, Beziehungs- und Informationsmanagements zugestanden werden, lässt sich feststellen, das mit Hilfe von Social Software über diese individuellen Nutzen hinausgehende Werte geschaffen werden können.

Man könnte sagen, dass Social Software dabei hilft, soziale Dilemmata zu umschiffen. (Ein soziales Dilemma ist z.B. wenn jeder einen sauberen Stadtpark will, aber keiner Lust hat nach dem Grillen im Stadtpark seinen Müll aus dem Stadtpark wieder mit nach Hause zunehmen. Eine klassische Hilfe zur Umgehung sozialer Dilemmata sind Normen und Gesetze, die verhindern dass jeder seinen Müll einfach auf die Straße schmeißt.)

Den oben zitierten uneinheitlichen Definitionen des Begriffes “Social Software” möchte ich nun meine hinzufügen:

Indem Social Software einzelnen Akteuren Werkzeuge zu deren Identitäts-, Beziehungs- und Informationsmanagements bietet, macht es die Verwendung von Social Software für diese Akteure attraktiv. Neben den dabei für die Nutzer entstehenden individuellen Vorteilen werden bei der Anwendung von Social Software Kollektivgüter geschaffen. Somit kann Social Software als Kollektivgut zweiten Grades betrachtet werden, welches soziale Akteure dabei unterstützt Kollektivgüter ersten Grades zu erstellen.[2]

After I read how social networks can sometimes undermine themselves (see below), the idea came to my mind that social software like Wikipedia or social networks like Facebook or StudiVZ, can be seen as facilitators of the production of public goods, as the design of the underlying software provides second-order public goods. A second-order public good is a system that solves social dilemmas, e.g. by rewarding people who contribute to the production of public goods or by punishing free-riders. By providing such a second-order public good, social software increases peoples willingness to cooperate in providing public goods.

How social networks undermine themselves

Sociologist Jan Schmidt describes in one of his recent contributions how networking platforms sometimes happen to undermine themselves. He watched that users of StudiVZ (a German version of Facebook) use this network to formulate their oppositions towards the introduction of new ‘terms and conditions’ for the StudiVZ network. The protests arose some months after StudiVZ had been bought by one of the bigger German publishing houses, the Holtzbrink-Gruppe for 85 million Euros and, in order to get some of the money back, decided to make the StudiVZ users sign new ‘terms and conditions’ that should allow the company to sell user profiles to third parties. Since there seem to be enough companies and institutions some users wouldn’t want to let know too much about their addresses, former employers or political attitudes there were some negative remarks by users about the new terms and conditions. What Jan Schmidt finds so remarkable in here is, that the unwillingness to turn transparent in StudiVZ was expressed within the StudiVZ network. Groups like “New StudiVZ terms and conditions - I am out!!” or “Stop the data stealing! Acting against new terms and conditions!” were created by the means of the network and used to express and publish dissense with the new “privacy sell out” terms and conditions. And indeed: the new terms and conditions that should have been imposed on the users had to be modified and the operators of the service had to clarify that users private data were never meant to be sold. Schmidt watched similar phenomenons on other social networking sites like “Facebook” or “Xing” after their owners tried to impose changes in the privacy policy of the networks. There is nothing new about people expressing their likes or dislikes via Internet, so what is the excitement all about?

Wait and read what Schmidt observed:

“Users utilize the tools of the actual platforms for expressing their attitude and for mobilizing like-minded persons. This applies at most to opponents of the changes but also to their advocates and to the ‘indifferent’… The owners of social network sites give networking and communication tools, which actually can be used against themselves, into the hands of their users. In opposition to protests via e-mail or feedback-forms such groups and forums are (platform-) public and can thus gain a stronger impact. … The use of platform utilities in order to protest against decisions of the owner is an expression of a certain creative potential, it represents a form of unintended use. (emphasis in italics by me - T.P.)“

So what is said here is, that social networking sites provide people with tools they can use to create certain things even if these tools were not made for the creation of those things in the first place (what Schmidt calls unintended use). In the case of StudiVZ the tools that were made available to the users were not used only for intended use like “to make real friends online and furthermore to find out who the friends of their friends are and what interests they have” (citation from StudiVZ) but for empowerment, emancipation and for self- and peer-provision with certain resources, like information or inspiration, that are important for these processes. Consequently the users grew above the heads of the people who gave them exactly the tools they needed for that.

What interests me most here is the potential of a social networking site to facilitate the creation of things it actually should not facilitate a) because it has never been intended to facilitate the production of those things (so let’s call them side-products) and because b) the owners and producers of the social networking side have to suffer a direct loss due to the production of those side-products (so let’s call them unwanted side products then).
I think the pressure that was put on the company to take back their new ‘terms and conditions’ is such an unwanted side product and I am curious how it could have been produced under such unfavourable circumstances. As I will try to show, those circumstances will get even more unfavourable, cause according to the “Logic of Collective Action” it is close to impossible that a group as big as the StudiVZ-users can produce anything than frustration. So what is “The Logic of Collective Action” about?

The Logic of Collective Action

In 1965 Mancur Olson’s first edition of his evergreen theory in economy has been published: “The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups”. In this book Olson describes how certain groups use to fail to produce so called public goods while others manage to produce such things.

So Olson has found out that a big group of pacifists can for some strange reason not produce the public good of a lobby that has similar strength and influence like the lobby of the few casual warmongers. Another example for failing production of a public good is, how consumers won’t manage to oppose or fight tendencies of some companies towards monopolisation or forcing up of prices.

In sociology and economy the results of a groups work, like influence on political decisions or prevention of excessive prices, can be called public goods, if those products 1.) they cannot be kept back from others (e.g.: in case the pacifists should manage to talk politicians into destroying all weapons of mass destruction, all people and not only pacifists would live without the big bombs,) and 2.) the consumption of the product won’t make it smaller (e.g.: how much ever I enjoy the fearlessness due to luck of atomic bombs doesn’t decrease other peoples chances to feel the same fearlessness.). Now what is the problem behind that inability to create public goods for certain groups? According to Olson it is the size and the structure of the groups. In small groups where everybody knows everybody you can be made responsible for your actions, whereas in big groups you can’t.

Suppose for example you are in a group of let’s say 25 students that aims at forcing all cafeterias on your campus to sell fair traded coffee additional to the regular coffee.
Now in that group of 25 people your fellows could hardly oversee if you were actively dedicated in the coffee campaign or if you were a rather passive potato who hardly showed some interest in the whole project. So the knowledge that the others know if you were busy or lazy, creates moral pressure on you to rather become active than staying passive. And exactly that “knowledge that the others know what you have (or haven’t) done” is one of the advantages smaller groups have over bigger ones and the secret of their success in actually achieving what they aim for.

Suppose, on the other hand, you belong to a group of 300 students of medicine. To make their exams easier, that group wants to collect all information that are relevant for their and their fellow students exams in a big folder. In order for that folder to become reality, every student has to deliver questions he has been asked about the human skeleton, muscles and so on by examiners into a letterbox. Now this group of 300 students would be - according to Olson - that big that nobody knows no one and so nobody can be identified and judged by her/his contributions. Not to speak of getting the respecting looks or other rewards one would deserve for giving his share of knowledge or disappointed looks if one doesn’t. Another obstacle the big group faces in gaining the desired product: compared to the big aim of the whole group, individual contributions are so small that giving them or not has no noticeable effect on the big aim. Putting your questions and answers in the letterbox - it’s just like a drop into an ocean, so don’t you worry too much about it!

One could object that students usually are no ego-maniacs but easy going idealists. Well, Olson developed his theory on the assumption that everybody is a more or less (but in Olson’s case rather more) rationalistic homo economicus. The idea of the human as rational maximizer of self-interest and minimizer of self-cost is an axiom Olson’s theory bases on. This axiom is called “Rational choice” and basically it says, that people wouldn’t move a hand if they hadn’t their egoistic reasons for doing so. So, in the end most of the students have their reasons to think and act according to that rationalistic scheme and all you’ll find in the letterbox are two bats (one of them half deaf) and an old handkerchief, taken the case that the box has not been stolen yet ;)

One could think at first sight, that people in that big group would show more dedication in order to overcome the obstacles and prove those lazy “we always said, you can’t make it” rationalists wrong. But as mentioned before: in a big group no person has the reason for doing so, as the contributions of one person stay unnoticed by everybody else PLUS these contributions won’t be a significant step towards the public good.

As if that wouldn’t be a proposition bad enough for a big group to work, additional to the unlikeliness to mobilize it’s members, Olson has found out, that big groups have to do more administration work than small groups to get at least a bit organized. E.g. longer and more frustrating meetings must be held to coordinate actions, whereas smaller groups can do their organisational business more spontaneously.

One small shaft of light is there for big groups anyway: a big group can manage to overcome it’s lethargic defects by giving rewards to members who contribute to the wanted public good and by applying punishment to members who don’t. The problem is that finding, identifying and rewarding/punishing such members doesn’t happen by itself. In fact this process is a so called public good of the second order which must be produced before it can be used. And how “easy” public goods are produced in big groups has already been mentioned.

Social software as tool for producing public goods

Now what is the point? I think social software can make the production of certain collective goods easier for big groups as it would be without social software. Firstly because the software does certain group-specific administrative tasks that formerly some members of big groups had to do. In order to become a member of StudiVZ (or any other social network) you don’t have to have people sitting in offices all day long, welcoming new members and fill out admission forms with them. Instead everybody can just log in by himself and start to contribute to the product ’social network’. Secondly because the software helps it’s users to find a public, that values their contributions, that would be totally anonymous otherwise. In the case of StudiVZ the sheer membership in a group (which is a question of two mouse clicks) can be used to shine with being informed, interest in politics and social awareness in front of your friends. While this might not be the intended use of StudiVZ it gets people motivated to form and join groups. In a way, the software turns “getting involved” into a hip part of your lifestyle. Or as Schmidt wrote:

“According to my observations a large number of that groups is not used for discussing but serves as a possibility to complete ones own profile with further information that are important for that person. Identity management instead of relationship management.”

And although those groups didn’t even become very active, they gained some attention in the German blogosphere and mass media. So the sheer existence of groups with names as “Revolution in StudiVZ - against the new ‘terms and conditions’” with thousands of members, produced attention and public pressure on the owners of the network to take the most unacceptable conditions back. Both attention and pressure can be seen as public goods. This can be achieved when dedication in big groups becomes more attractive as it usually is. As social software can provide collective goods of the second order, that are so important in big groups to get people motivated, higher dedication is exactly what social software can accomplish.

Literature:
Mancur Olson: Die Logik des kollektiven Handelns: Kollektivgüter und die Theorie der Gruppen. 5. Aufl. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2004. (Originalausgabe: The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups 1965) ISBN 3-16-148504-1.

Open source and social psychiatry - what have these terms to do with each other??? Have I finally gone crazy?

While there is a relatively short answer to the last question, it will need a whole long posting to only try to outline a thought that brings open source and social psychiatry together. Instead of a foreword have a quick look at the above Wikipedia links to get a remembrance on what those both terms are about.

Ready? Okay, then let’s have a short look into history:
The phenomenon of the support groups (German: Selbsthilfegruppen) emerged in the so called western world in the 1960ies. Many people with similar problems managed to find each other, organise meetings and talk openly with each other about their sufferings as it never had been witnessed before. If you got cancer, finally you weren’t alone anymore (with a doctor and your family, that is). If you were an alcoholic who wanted to stop drinking, there was besides the drinking buddies you couldn’t talk to about that (in fact you couldn’t talk to them about much) suddenly another circle of people who were as ashamed as you about your habit and as determined as you to finally stop it.

And, though it became possibly not always quite obvious why, support groups did good to the people. Diseased people who participated in a support group were less afraid of their diseases, felt less depressed, more involved in the treatment, better prepared for special treatment or just better. The effectiveness of a professionally led support group for men with prostate cancer
By the time the Internetwas invented support groups even worked via that medium, also with success for their participants. Evaluation of an Internet Support Group for Women with Primary Breast Cancer

Support groups became in fact that successful and popular that discussions arose to make them part of professional health care. Selbsthilfe und PatientInnenorientierung im Gesundheitswesen – Abschied von der Spaltung zwischen Professionellen und Selbsthilfe?
Not to extra mention here that support groups heal their participants usually without receiving any moneys from health care insurance systems, and thus are extremely cheap from that insurance point of view.

Since support groups were so popular it wouldn`t be logical if there hadn’t been any for people with mental problems wouldn’t it? Of course, so there they were and those support groups were even more special than the usual ones. And though documentation of the existence of single support groups of that pre-Internet age is rare to be found online, it looks as if the first “mental health” or “users of psychiatry” support groups of Western-Germany started growing in 1970. Selbsthilfe für Patienten - Wie die Selbsthilfe entstanden ist

So what now is so special about those support groups? Let’s have a look at what they aim at: besides all the conventional good things that can be achieved by a support group (personal well being, health - see above), some mental health support groups started to demand a different treatment. Not only that, but a different point of view towards their unnormality. And not only by psychiatrists, doctors or other qualified personnel but by society in general. Some people who suffered on mental health problems thought that the worst single thing they were suffering on was actually the way other people treated them and that only the way they were treated in hospital was enough to call it a day or at least to avoid anything that made them go there again. Many thousand people who were considered mentally abnormal were killed by doctors during the nazi regime. And even in post war Germany users of psychiatry were kept in cage beds and forced medication was part of the therapy. To put it in a nutshell: psychiatric hospitals were a big mess until the 1980ies. Geschichte der Psychiatrie Some contemporary scientists were bright enough to find out about that, e.g. Goffman who coined the term of the total institution for psychiatric hospitals as well as for prisons.

So, in those support groups people with mental problems finally tried to change the policy that was directed at them and that was behind the bad treatment they experienced. They developed a very critical attitude towards psychiatry, often even an anti-psychiatric one. In fact by forming support groups they themselves developed a policy of how to act and react a) towards their unusual inner experiences and b) towards treatment from doctors, family members (who often felt not much less alienated facing the mental disease than the people actually suffering on it) and society. They demanded a status as experts for psychiatric problems. And: they did not only want to be cured - they wanted to cure anybody else as well.
So while e.g. cancer support groups tried to get a grip on the immediate problems that were linked with the cancer disease, many mental health support groups in Western-Germany tried to fight the treatment and the social stigma that was linked with being a psycho.

Imagine the Alcoholics Anonymous not only trying to get clean but asking the society for a better understanding and a broader social acceptance of their addiction. Imagine them demanding an un-stigmatisation of alcohol and alcoholism. They would try to change laws and maybe they would fight against laws that don’t allow kids to drink alcohol. Their argument could be that such a law makes people afraid of alcohol and of alcoholics from childhood on. Might be that the ones who take it very serious would ask for a “Do drink and drive” programme. But for sure many would work towards a society that respects their addiction and their dignity as alcoholics.

Sounds strange but that is exactly what the anti-psychiatric support groups for people with mental health problems did and do. And what is true for other support group also applies to them: they succeeded and they do their participants good: The situation in German hospitals has become better since cage beds are illegal and corridors have become broader and cleaner. But the point and main success of these support groups is that besides the hospitals there are finally other possibilities of getting help for those people in need.

There are e.g. the so called Weglaufhäuser (run-away houses) in many German cities. They are used by people who need psychiatric treatment but want to avoid a hospital since their past experiences in there were too bad. There they can receive alternative treatments.
Another great example of how the anti-psychiatric support groups have succeeded in dragging respect and dignity for people with mental disorders out of the society is the existence of the Psychoseseminar. This is a place where people with mental problems and mental problem professionals meet on equal height. The thought behind this is that only people who suffer on mental problems know what this is like and what could possibly help them to get better and by letting them narrate about those experiences and really listening to them a better understanding of what mental problems are can be achieved.
So. What has this to do with open source, now? I`ll explain, just let me add one more stroke of the brush to the picture:

By the time social psychiatry has embraced many of the advances those groups have worked for. In German social psychiatric health care there is a more diverse landscape today than 30 years ago. In fact there was hardly social psychiatry 30 years ago.

For those in need there are indeed different offerings they can choose from: day centres, ambulant psychiatric treatment, assisted living and so on. And there are the small, independent from the professional health care system, user-driven projects like the above mentioned Psychoseseminare or Weglaufäuser.

Now. What is the relation to open source? All right, all right. Let’s have a look again at how open source is defined:

1. The source code of the software must be public. This means that the know-how of the project must be published somewhere so that it is easily accessible and understandable.
2. The software and the source code may be freely copied, distributed and used.
3. The software and the source code may be freely changed and made accessible in it’s changed.

And as Eric Raymond wrote: Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer’s personal itch. Meaning they miss a certain function or tool or thy “suffer” under a malfunctional software.

And now compare ot to anti-psychiatric initiatives:

1. Those groups are open for others who are interested and joining them means that new members receive all the knowledge (the source code) that group has gained so far. From early stages on the psychiatry critic or anti-psychiatric initiatives tried to attract as much attention as possible on what they saw are their problems. This was and is only possible by an active information policy that happened via word of the mouth or flyer’s that were printed and given to interested ones. Nowadays many initiatives have a web page.
2. Everybody interested can join a initiative or support group, become personally engaged there and use the support and engagement of the others.
3. Thanks to the documentation of how to set up a Psychoseseminar, others can try to establish one in their town as well. So all achieved and documented changes to the system of psychiatry can be used for personal or other public interests.
   

And in addition there are more similarities between Open Source and Anti-Psychiatry (may I call it Open Psychiatry?):

• flat hierarchies
• if a contributor becomes unhappy about the project she or he co-works in he can just leave it and set up a new project, (which is called “forking” in software developers terms)

I am not saying that psychiatry or social psychiatry is in a very good shape in today’s Germany. Still it is very hard for people to get the treatment they need and want or a treatment at all. I am not saying that all stigmas and problems of people who are having unusual mental experiences are solved or will be by anti-psychiatric initiatives or support groups who are critic towards psychiatry. I am also not saying that all the small successes that we can see today compared to the situation 20 years ago have been achieved by those groups alone. No, of course also psychiatrists and other scientists have their share. And I am also not saying that there should or will be only anti-psychiatric groups in the future.

But I think as there is the giant Windows and there is the dwarf Linux there is psychiatry and there is anti-psychiatry. And similar to the way Linux is developed in the virtual world a more human view and approach towards mental health has been and will be developed in the real world. Both Windows and Linux are used by different people (though some people even use both for different tasks) and both have their flaws. But without Linux the danger to have only ONE monopolistic and bad operating system is very high. And I think the same would be true for a psychiatry without anti psychiatry.

Of course this theory is only a rough approach to the topic and needs deeper analysis and research, which this posting can only be a basis for.

So what’s up here? No more thoughts about … er what was it again … social movements, the liberation of music, my head and all the rest?

Yes exactly, this blog is moving on. It’s past topic has just become too specific and dull for me, so I’m changing it. Ain’t I clever? ;)

All right, so what means “Adventures in the German social work?” and what is this blog going to be about from now on? - “Adventures in the German social work” means that this is the name of that blog from now on, isn`t that meaning enough for you? Well, okay, it is an allusion to the song “Adventures in the Scandinavian skin trade” by Wimme Saari from Hectour Zazou’s wonderful album Chansons des mers froides. I just always liked the way the words of that title form a certain image of roughness, killing in order to survive and well, - since it is Scandinavian skin trade - social security in my head.
And there might even be similarities between skin trade and social work: social workers have to bow down towards the people who “suffer on social problems” as a trapper bows down over the fox that sits in his trap. But I’ll stop thinking in that direction for now.

Because the point of having that blog is for letting me reflect (and possibly discuss with others) the changes and transitions that I perceive are going on in the field of the “social work” in Germany. I think that those changes are indeed that huge that they are easily overseen.

To me as a student of social work it seems as if phenomenons filed under globalisation, the Internet, rationalisation of work or digital capitalism are seen as dangers and a threat to the people in general and the welfare state with it’s clients of social work in special. In fact those phenomenons are often taught to produce poverty and to solidify injustice. This is just typical for what I can learn at lectures and seminars in university.

Whereas those arguments are of course valid because they try to describe what is happening on on one level they seem to forget about other developments, on other levels. But I think that the Internet provides many a people with good chances for emancipation, education and fairer treatment.

So this blog will be about those “other developments on other levels”: about what good “the Internet” can do for social work or even for it’s clients.