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The Queer Utility of Narrative Case Studies for Clinical Social Work Research and Practice

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Abstract

The author uses a queer critical lens to analyze the marginalization of case study research in the evidence-based practice model of clinical social work. He argues that narrative case studies are necessary for the production of context-dependent knowledge about social work practice and asserts that the method offers particular utility in conducting queer inquiry. The method is explored in relation to its capacity to describe non-normative phenomena and the impact of normative cultural pressures on queer subjects. An abbreviated case study by the author is included to demonstrate these capacities.

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Notes

  1. Stern (1990) describes a clinical approach from a psychoanalytic perspective in which the analyst embraces uncertainty about and curiosity towards patients. He refers to this process as “courting surprise”.

  2. Readers unfamiliar with phenomenological methodology may find works by Russon (2003) and Gallagher and Zahavi (2012) to be helpful introductions to the philosophical study of lived experience.

  3. Tosone (2013) provides a thorough analysis of the missing relational components of the EBP approach and summarizes research that shows “that relational factors account for as much as 75% of success in treatment while models and techniques account for only 25% of success” (p. 252).

  4. Flyvbjerg primarily references studies by Bourdieu (1977) and Hubert and Dreyfus (1988) on the development of practice expertise. See Dreyfus (2014) for an extended study of different kinds of expertise acquisition.

  5. Butler (1993) uses the phrase “weakness of the norm” (p. 237) in her queer analysis of gender performativity. While gender and EBP are obviously different discursive domains, I find her theory on subversive practices to be pliable for this analysis of the anti-normative potential of case study knowledge in EBP.

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Correspondence to Eric Hartman.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Hartman, E. The Queer Utility of Narrative Case Studies for Clinical Social Work Research and Practice. Clin Soc Work J 45, 227–237 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10615-017-0622-9

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