Under the Cover of Kindness: The Invention of Social Work.

By Leslie Margolin (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1997. xiv plus 216pp.).

Leslie Margolin's title encapsulates the thesis of the book. The emergence of a major profession in the United States occurred under the guise of credible, altruistic motives that diverted both practitioners and clients alike from what was really going on. Relying heavily on what Foucault described as the "carceral network" and C. Wright Mills called "the vocabularies of motive," Under the Cover of Kindness has a two-fold purpose: "on the one hand, an examination of how social work uses power; on the other, an attempt to analyze the mechanics of social work language, to show how what is said to be in clients' interests, in their language, is really in social work's interests, in social work language" (p. xiii).

Margolin divides his analysis into three parts. "Basic Social Work" identifies and illustrates how social workers between the 1890s and 1930s sought to gain access into poor people's private homes, to mask the intrusiveness of their interviews by trying to gain the trust of people they were monitoring, and to write up their results in a manner that conformed to the social-science standards of the era. "Before social work, poor people were mainly vulnerable to starvation, disease, homelessness; with the advent of detailed recordkeeping, however, they became vulnerable to judgment" (p. 43).

In Part Two, "Aggressive Social Work," Margolin turns to the postwar era (1950-1975), when, he argues, social workers became more aggressive and insistent in their characterization of the underclass as socially impoverished. The rise in Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) amidst prosperity, scandalous stories of "chiseling" and other data outraged middle-class Americans. "Victims blaming reached an entirely new pitch" (p. 97), which justified social workers' intervention in order to uplift and rehabilitate the needy.

In the final section, "empowering social work," social workers reversed tactics. They talked about family preservation and characterized longstanding problems such as child abuse in new psychodynamics. Their clients had access to files under the Federal Privacy Act of 1974. Social workers, especially those suffering from burnout, thus tried to perpetuate methods and reinvent their reputation for openness and friendliness. If the case for social work were made as it had been in the past, insiders reckoned that the profession no longer would be acceptable. For during the past two decades, social workers have known that they were operating in a cultural clime that was openly questioning "official" codes and challenging experts' presumptions of authority.

Under the Cover of Kindness is part of a prestigious set of books published by the University Press of Virginia that is devoted to "Knowledge: Disciplinarity and Beyond." Like others in the series, this work critically examines the language of professional discourse in an effort to reveal implicit assumptions and inconsistencies. Margolin is provocative, and his book worth reading, but I am more impressed by his rhetoric than persuaded by his evidence.

Most of the examples come from social-work textbooks. Such works are designed to teach neophytes how the profession operates. Analyzing this genre, Margolin presumes, offers an insightful entry into the thoughts and language of, presumably, the best teachers in the field. Yet at (too) many instances, the reader is asked to take the author at his word. I was very suspicious about the way Margolin interpreted the case study with Mrs. Sullivan (pp. 26-8). Similarly, on p. 44, I cannot tell whether readers simply are not being given the entire transcript or whether we are being invited to make inferences confirming the "essential inadequacy of the family," which is based on evidence that does not appear in Under the Cover of Kindness. And I need more information about how teams of experts interacted in deciding who needed a lobotomy in the 1950s (pp. 107-110) before I would attribute too much credit or blame to social workers.

In sum, Margolin might have made a more effective, revisionist case if he had critiqued other social-welfare histories of social work in presenting his argument. Recent scholars, for instance, have focussed more on issues of race and gender that shaped social workers' thinking about problems than occurs here. There is no question that Under the Cover of Kindness raises some disturbing and fascinating issues. We need a fuller context, however, in which to judge Margolin's indictment.

W. Andrew Achenbaum

University of Michigan