McDonaldization Of Social Work Under Technological Governance

In order to prevent and reduce illegal crimes,Shanghai has taken the lead in establishing the three official social organizations to promote the development of social services since 2003.It has been 14 years to be a pioneer in the government's purchase of social work services.This study aims to research the operation and development of the three official social organizations for many years.Through participatory observations and field interviews with 25 social workers,we find that the three official social work organizations are led and promoted by the government,with stability and order as the political development goals.Under the government's purchase of service project system,social work service and management have the following characteristics:Increasingly precise management,manifested as responsibility to people,inspection routine and tracerism;Professional practice and technicalization,manifested as service process stylization,service content standardization and service result digitization.Its core features coincide with George Rizer's "McDonaldization",which is "efficient,computable,predictable and controllable" However,unlike George Rizer's and Western social work,which is characterized by market determinism and excessive negative tendencies,"McDonaldization" of the three official social organizations is dominated by administration,and there exists extreme contradictions and tensions behind the rational development.On the one hand,the strategy of "McDonaldization" promotes the standardization and specialization of social work.On the other hand,under the guidance of the dual regulation of bureaucratic rationality and technical rationality,the value rationality of institutions and social workers is challenged,and their autonomy and independence are restricted,which brings a seies of unintended consequences for the profession:administrative rather than professional efficiency,difficult-to-quantified pressure,and uncontrolled professionalism.The concept of "McDonaldization" in this paper is different from George Rizer's.It is developed in the context of contemporary technological governance and reflects the characteristics of the current development stage of Chinese social work,that is,the"McDonaldization" under the leadership of the administration is the current state and characteristics.The introduction of "McDonaldization" means not using the Western concepts to explain the Chinese experience of social work,but trying to make a discourse with some theories such as administrative contracting system and project system under the current technical governance.Finally,faced with a series of unintended consequences of rationalization,social work needs to consider how to balance the practical discourse between instrumental rationality and value rationality,and how to better safeguard the "society" while maintaining professional character.