Reflection Paper: Weeks 5 & 6
I did not imagine learning in India would flip-flop everything I thought I knew, and leave me feeling unsure how I would take my education and career forward. Over the course of these six weeks, I have been left with more questions than answers. What king of social worker do I want to be? What work can I do that will be meaningful and un-projected by White middle class feministic ideals? How can I help lead the conversations revolving around social work instead of just being part of the conversation? I have concluded I need to expand my understanding of the world and social work by divulging into more unfamiliar subjects. Class has taught me to be more skeptical and inquisitive especially regarding my education. I want to challenge more of my professors’ teachings. I want to critically question the curriculum Penn places in front of me. I want to learn from the community rather than a textbook. In an attempt to apply this new mindset going forward, I used the themes discussed in class to critically reflect on what field placement with the Salvation Army means.
Behind the mission of “Doing the Most Good” the Salvation Army leads several initiatives including the New Day Drop-in Center in Kensington, Philadelphia where I will be placed this fall. The Salvation Army drop-in center’s main objective is to provide a safe space that is free of judgment for women who suffer from sex trafficking, as well as, providing access to specialize psychological, social, emotional, and physical needs (The Salvation Army, n.d.). The Salvation Army and their reach is renown, but their practices and history hints of the same hegemonic agency we discussed in class.
In Democracy and Economic Transformation in India, Partha Chatterjee (2008) discusses the accumulation of capital in two types of society – political society and civil society. Civil society institutions exercise great influence and leadership over political society groups, and many non-profits, including the Salvation Army, are found in this sphere. One notable instance was the Salvation Army’s hand in the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 which sought to protect women and girls from the suppression of brothels and other forms of exploitation by raising the legal age of consent to 16, raising legislation against sex work, issuing magistrates the power to administer search warrants for missing girls, and extended the power of sodomy laws (The Criminal Law Amendment Act, n.d).
The act was later amended, but none of the changes addressed the notion of what Nivedita Menon (2004) calls “unfreedom”. Menon (2004) touches upon the differentiating wills that are produced by the state, and those that are punished by the state. The Salvation Army’s mission of “Doing the Most Good” seems authentic because their values are considered not to be hegemonic in society, but who’s idea of good are they accomplishing? Ratna Kapur (2012) highlights the driving force of today’s legal campaigns by feminists and other anti-trafficking groups are powered by analogous stereotypes that turn the portrayal of non-white middle class women as the never-ending victim of trafficking, violence, and death by culture; therefore, fueling the need for their rescue by their liberated “feminist sisters” (p. 343). Although not explicitly stated, many organizations claiming to do the “most good” remove the complete autonomy of choice from the populations they are claiming to help. As argued by Menon (2002), a person’s self, resides in their capacity to choose. The state considers this capacity fulfilled so long as the person can choose freely, regardless of the ways in which a person’s ability to choose is constrained by the state (p. 31).
While interviewing with the Salvation Army, the office supervisor explicitly expressed that the Salvation Army’s philosophy does not support the decriminalization, legalization, or compensation of sex workers’ rights and work. It is their belief that all pleasurable acts committed by a woman are exploitative, and they are working towards the complete abolishment of sex work. They are partnered with many other civil society branches (the Philadelphia Police Department, the District Attorney, the FBI, and Homeland Security) in which they try to develop strategies to combating human trafficking within Philadelphia city and suburb. The biggest observational issue I have seen thus far is there are no sex workers or pleasure-entertainment workers involved in any of their anti-trafficking initiatives. If you want to stop trafficking, why not ask a sex worker? By removing sex workers from the conversation, the debate over how to overcome communal challenges, like trafficking, leaves the decision making to those in civil power (the Salvation Army and the American government) and keeps the affected political communities disenfranchised and unrepresented. As a result, all measures used to combat these communal issues are more treatment rather than preventative; because the root of the issue is never properly identified or addressed, an unending cycle of harm is created.
Having field with the Salvation Army places me in the heart of what Menon (2004) discusses as institutionalized feminism. Her critic on the professionalization of feminism and the lack of self-reflective criticism within our own notions of feminism is spot on. Because American-feminists do not see their feminism as hegemonic, this completes the issue by adding corporatization to professional feminism. As seen in the Salvation Army, all work completed by the drop-in center is run by and organized by white middle-class women, non-of-which have every experienced the real issues of a sex worker. By adding corporate influence on feminism, half of the women affected in the field of sex work immediately become in eligible to engage in the conversation of possible solutions because of the educational or work qualifications demanded by the professional sphere – most of which are poor women of color.
This class has really opened by eyes, to the mechanisms at play in the field of social work. I have asked “are those who claim to do “the most good” actually are when they ignore the leadership and expertise of the populations they are working with?” From what I have seen and learned, I don’t believe the Salvation Army isn’t doing “the good” that is needed to effectively alleviate human trafficking and exploitation in Philadelphia women. Whether my observations and the principles taught in class are true to this instance, will be revealed this upcoming fall semester.
References
Chatterjee, P. (2008). Democratic and economic transformation in India. Economic and Political Weekly, April 19, 53 – 62.
Loomba, A. & Lukose, R. (Eds). Kapur, R. (2012). South Asian Feminisms. Durham: Duke U Press.
Menon, N. (2004). Recovering subversion. Feminist politics beyond the law. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
The Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885. (2014, March 11). https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-criminal-law-amendment-act-1885.
The Salvation Army. The Salvation Army Greater Philadelphia. (n.d.). http://pa.salvationarmy.org/greater-philadelphia/NewDay.