Theory: What's the big deal?

A quick personal reflection on the value of theory for our course on Social Justice and Social Change with Prof. Akin Taiwo

Theories underlie how people think about themselves and the world they live in, regardless of whether they’re aware of it or not. Working with theory allows us to reflect on, and name, the ways in which we understand the world. I have come to think of theory as a secret weapon, or perhaps a super-power, and here’s why.

For many years, in life and work, I have been around intransigent issues, and peoples’ thinking can be hard to shift. From racism, to women’s rights, to LGBTQ2S rights, to indigenous rights, to housing scarcity, to mental health issues, to current issues like #metoo and the minimum wage hike.

It’s very helpful to be able to categorize peoples’ arguments on the basis of theory, for example, order versus conflict theories. With theoretical awareness as your secret weapon, you are able to query someone’s “common sense” beliefs because you understand their logical extensions according to the underlying theory. Then you can help them expand on them through open-ended questions, like to describe and explain more about that theory/belief, or to predict how their theory/belief would play out in various situations, or to ask, “So, does that mean…?”

Often these lines of “wondering” questions help people begin to question their own beliefs. Making academic theory transparent in daily life is a passion of mine.

Working at end-of-life in a hospice setting, micro-level issues of theory are very pertinent as the dying person and their family members are actively engaged in meaning-making. I noted that Narrative Therapy, the theory which I often drew upon in hospice, is a conflict/change theory, which probably explains why I’m attracted to it.

Often the stories that are most valued at end-of-life are ones in which the dying person resisted – fighting in a war, being a refugee or immigration, going above and beyond in their career, supporting their families through difficult times. Affirming these narratives reminds people that they are not trapped in the everyday, that change is possible over a lifetime, that one person can make a difference.

At the macro level, hospice social workers are actively engaged in de-institutionalizing death – taking it out of a medical setting and making it person-centred, through raising awareness, research, policy development and political action. This focus, and these ideas, are finding their way into the institution of medicine, and causing open-minded physicians to query their own medical world-views, differentiating between the traditional disease-centred model, to the more holistic person-centred model. I am optimistic that even asking these questions might result in philosophical shifts in medicine, and even mental health.

With a belief that government should best serve the most vulnerable, and a belief in conflict/change theory as a “secret weapon” in their work, theory-driven social workers can create change to reduce the current suffering in this realm.