Thinking boxes, behavioural boys and the politics of love: ‘Doing’ post-qualitative social work research

Abstract

Post-humanist theories and feminist new materialism are a growing feature of social work scholarship. It is timely to explore how these theories inform qualitative social work research approaches. Drawing on post-qualitative methodology and Barad’s concept and method of diffraction, in this article we engage in a performative re-analysis of an account of school social work practice with a group of boys with behavioural concerns. We illuminate the interplay of neurological and behaviourist ways of knowing boys and social workers’ expertise and their linkages with the materiality of the place and space of the school-based group programme. Moving beyond merely representing these material-discursive happenings, this paper affirms new social worker identities and behavioural boys’ subjectivities which emerge within the entangled relations with non-human, material objects and things in schools. Doing post-qualitative inquiry, co-configures us as researchers actively involved in knowledge generation as we seek to make differences that matter in social work practice. Diffraction not only offers methods to engage with the material-discursive interface of social work knowledge practices, but also an ethical methodology for researchers to do justice in our engagement with research data.