Lifeworld orientation

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Lifeworld orientation is a term coined by Hans Thiersch in social work . Today it is an integral part of theoretical and practical discourses in social work . The term is derived from the concept of the lifeworld of philosophy ( Edmund Husserl ) and sociology ( Alfred Schütz ).

The increasingly arbitrary use of the concept of lifeworld in the area of social work, for example by Peter Fuchs and Bernd Halfar , came under fire . In dealing with this criticism, Björn Kraus develops a systemic-constructivist perspective of the lifeworld orientation.

After analyzing bibliographies in social work science publications, Jochem Kotthaus comes to the conclusion: “There, names like Alfred Schütz, Jürgen Habermas and Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (in a sociological understanding) and Hans Thiersch and Björn keep appearing on the topic of» Lebenswelt (orientation) « Kraus (in the context of social work) can be found - for good reason. These are absolutely indispensable in order to be able to work on the living environment (orientation). "

Environment-oriented social work

The concept of lifeworld orientation was first introduced at the end of the 1970s in Thiersch's concept of "lifeworld oriented social work". Thiersch tries to define the essence of a professional socio-educational self-image and a structure of institutionalized help. Lifeworld orientation means, turning away from classic - medically shaped ( anamnesis , diagnosis , therapy ) - forms of help, taking into account the individual social problems of those affected in their everyday life as well as the self-interpretations and problem solving attempts of those affected with respect and tact, but also with benevolence -to counter critical provocation in the target horizon of a "more successful everyday life". Here it becomes clear how Thiersch understands his lifeworld orientation in terms of everyday life according to Schütz. Such understood and structured "lifeworld-oriented" help is initially embedded in the social structures at the personal / local level, but also interferes - in a kind of legal role for the affected people - in the socio-political shaping of the social problems that cause social problems.

The mentioned respect for other people's lifestyles and their acceptance make it difficult to standardize work processes in social work. A high level of critical and reflective evaluation of their work and their role in the environment of those affected is expected from the skilled workers .

Thiersch's concept of "social work oriented towards the world of life" is an attempt alongside others (cf., for example, the concept of systemic social work by Peter Lüssi or Mario Bunge) to theoretically justify social work . However, the theoretical discussion in Germany in recent years has completely swung into his concept, continued, elaborated, deepened and supplemented it. Since the Federal Government's Eighth Youth Report (BmfJFG 1990) at the latest, the “lifeworld orientation” has been a central paradigm of child and youth welfare for which it was originally developed. At the turn of the century, the concept of lifeworld orientation was taken up in theory and practice in many fields of social work (assistance for the disabled , drug assistance, assistance to the homeless, psychiatry ...) and is in constant use. This illustrates the versatility and sustainability of the concept. The concept of lifeworld-oriented social work has repeatedly been heavily criticized. There are three main reasons for this.

  1. It was understood in a trivializing way and implemented accordingly weakly in practice and thus led to little theoretical and practical reorientation.
  2. It left some areas (e.g. business management) completely underexposed because it had to be developed under great time pressure.
  3. There was an inflationary use of the term.

According to Björn Kraus, this goes hand in hand with a "conceptual fuzziness, not to say arbitrariness." Peter Fuchs and Bernd Halfar also criticize the use of the terminology of lifeworld orientation:

“The term 'lifeworld' was taken up without thorough contact with its phenomenological and language-analytical contexts. Now he is battered and emaciated, only suitable to suggest that one would have said more if one spoke of his or her life world instead of the 'life' of a young person. "

Hans Thiersch and Björn Kraus discuss their approaches to the everyday world and lifeworld orientation in social work - 2014 in Freiburg

In dealing with this criticism, Kraus develops a systemic-constructivist perspective of the lifeworld orientation, which is intended to counteract the “conceptual fuzziness” through the contrasting juxtaposition of living situation and lifeworld. An extensively documented discussion with the two theorists took place in 2014 on the differences and connections between the lifeworld theories of Hans Thiersch and Björn Kraus.

Theoretical background

  1. Phenomenological roots
  2. Systemic-constructivist perspective
  3. Hermeneutic - pragmatic educational science
  4. Critical Everyday Theory
  5. Analysis of social structures

Phenomenological roots

Here, too, the starting point is everyday life . This is the excellent reality for people and is structured by the subjectively experienced time, the experienced spaces and the experienced social and cultural references. In coping with everyday life, patterns of interpretation and strategies for action are formed, meaningful and insignificant are distinguished. In this respect, everyday life shapes people, but people also shape everyday life.

Systemic-constructivist lifeworld orientation

The systemic-constructivist concept of the lifeworld takes into account its phenomenological roots (Husserl and Schütz), takes them up and continues them within the framework of relational-constructivist theories (whereby the systemic-constructivist lifeworld orientation is an essential basis of relational social work ). In doing so, an approach is designed that not only takes into account the perspective of an egological concept of the lifeworld, but also the u. a. is able to take into account the relevance of social and material environmental conditions emphasized by Habermas . The basis for this is the central assumption at Kraus of a fundamental double bond in human structural development.

"On the one hand, the reality of every person's life is their subjective construct; on the other hand, this construct is not arbitrary, but - with all subjectivity - due to the structural coupling of the person to his environment - influenced and limited by the framework conditions of this environment."

Building on this understanding, a separation can be made between individual perception and social and material framework conditions. For the purpose of systemic-constructivist concretization of the lifeworld concept, Kraus takes up the concept of the living situation and contrasts both concepts. In doing so, Kraus uses the constructivist distinction between reality and reality .

“One is the subjective construction under the conditions of the other. In other words: The lifeworld is just as much the subjective construction of a person as reality and this subjective construction takes place under the conditions of the living situation or reality. "

This contrasting comparison provides a conceptual clarification of the lifeworld orientation and enables a differentiated use (and thus a reorientation of the practice.) In the first step, the subjective world of experience of the clients can be conceptually differentiated from their material and social conditions, and then in a second step the Take into account the relevance of these conditions for the subjective construction of reality.

However, the question arises as to how one can orientate oneself to a person's lifeworld if this is their subjective construction ? At best, the situation in life is accessible to an outside observer. But precisely this insight represents a decisive advantage - it prevents hasty judgments and the idea that one can only recognize and understand a person's subjective reality (life world) by grasping the living conditions of a person (life situation). This knowledge is profitable for social work, which should be as interested and unbiased as possible in a person's world. However, arbitrariness is not required. However, there is still the possibility of showing the addressees options for action or presenting ideas about a more successful lifestyle. But in the area of ​​help, decisions can no longer be made for, but only with the addressees. According to this understanding, the clientele is an expert in their own right.

However, Kraus points out that this does not apply in the area of ​​control ( security office of the state ), since in this case the attitude of neutrality has to end. “It is important to achieve social consensus” . However, it must not be forgotten that this decision does not correspond to an objective truth, but is based on consensual agreements as a result of communicative negotiation processes. (The examination of the limits and possibilities of interpersonal influence within such a model leads Kraus to develop a systemic-constructivist approach to power in which he differentiates between “instructive power” and “destructive power” .)

Hermeneutic-pragmatic educational science

Pedagogy ties in with everyday life and the individually interpreted world of people with the aim of better understanding this everyday life and people in their coping actions, in order to be able to help the addressees more appropriately through this deeper understanding . Since the “realistic turn” associated with Heinrich Roth, pedagogy should no longer be understood and practiced only as a theoretical-philosophical science, but should be underpinned by empirical research.

Roth's assistant Klaus Mollenhauer finally heralded the “critical turn” in education and formulated emancipation as the primary goal of education: to help the addressees to emancipate themselves from traditional conditions.

Critical Everyday Theory

The critical everyday theorists emphasize that one must not romanticize everyday life just because everything somehow works at first glance. Rather, everyday life is ambiguous: on the one hand, pragmatic routines relieve the burden, offer security, enable productivity, but on the other hand they also create narrowness and narrow-mindedness, immobility and hinder human life in its basic needs and possibilities. On the one hand, there are struggles for better living conditions, motivated by needs, dreams, hopes or anger, on the other hand, people also despair from grief and resignation.

Environment-oriented social pedagogy must therefore respect everyday life and resources , but also criticize narrow-mindedness and procedures constructively and reveal hidden opportunities. To do this, she has to find the right balance in contradictions - with the goal of a more successful everyday life.

Analysis of social structures

Everyday life takes place in the lifeworld: This lifeworld has always been shaped by society , the lifeworld is like the stage in a theater on which life takes place, whereby life on the stage is determined by the specifications behind the scenes (e.g. B. role models of women and men). In the living environment, objective social demands and requirements meet subjectively personal and individual patterns and needs. The lifeworld represents, as it were, the intersection in which there is what is possible in a given life.

Therefore, the required Social Work for their actions extensive knowledge of material, social, ideological resources for. B. the world of work, gender roles , migration culture , poverty / wealth etc. and about the individual way of dealing with it. Social work receives this knowledge through empirical research .

Image of man

Man finds himself in an already existing, before him influenced by other people world before:

  • He does not experience this world directly as it is, but colored by the already existing and predetermined patterns, "world" is conveyed to him ( symbols and materialization of values), in everyday life: as open versus closed spaces, as ordered versus chaotic time, as reliable versus fragile, as well as supporting, promoting versus stressful and oppressive relationships and cultures.
  • People want to live their lives, meet their needs and dreams, try to prove themselves in the various tasks and somehow master them, are always relatively skilled at it (regardless of what is understandable or reasonable), but sometimes they lag behind theirs Opportunities and those in the world around him.
  • Because that is so, social work oriented towards the world of life must be critical: it must generally show respect for people's arranging achievements, but also see misery and tabooed power and strategies of suppression and stimulate and provoke changes (this balancing requires tact ).

Work and self-image

The working and self-image of the concept is mainly characterized by the following considerations:

1. sees itself as acting professionally and self-critically
  • Professionally , because volunteering alone is no longer sufficient to cope with social problems, but in that
  • always suspicious of institutional and professional developments, because these tend to become independent and alienate from everyday problems .
  • That means, social work oriented towards the world of life is always self-critical and emphasizes again and again that one has to build on the experiences, the self-image and the coping tasks of the addressees.
2. aims at social justice
  • Social justice means that the chances of participating in society and its possibilities must be distributed fairly (everyone must be able to participate and have a say),
  • what that means has to be negotiated in each case, but is not arbitrary, but oriented towards the goals of solidarity , productivity / creativity, meaningful life and autonomy .
3. interferes in the design of the framework conditions
  • Because what happens on stage is determined by the specifications behind the scenes, social work can not only tinker with the front and, so to speak, "repair the actors", but also have to go behind the scenes and intervene and change conditions.
  • Lifeworld-oriented social work is political .
4. Balances respect and provocation, is partisan for the addressees
  • Lifeworld-oriented social work shows respect for life-coping achievements, even if these - from the point of view of the "normal citizen" - seem unusual and delicate,
  • shows respect for the life interests of individuals,
  • out of this fundamental respect, it provokes, criticizes, opens it to changes in the interests of the addressees,
  • First and foremost, it helps the addressees in the problems they have for themselves and not society in the problems it has with the addressees.
  • Environment-oriented social education is the advocate of its addressees.
5. works with the medium of negotiation and negotiation
  • Because the world is “ever my world”, because life today is freer than it used to be and offers more opportunities, the type of cooperation and the goals of the interventions must be discussed, one cannot determine beyond the addressees. Because the world of the social pedagogue is only his world and his view of things is only his own and therefore not better, more correct, more valuable than that of the addressees.
  • Environment-oriented social education does not work on people, but with people.
6. methodically strengthens the position of the addressees
  • Because addressees are not always the most competent in negotiating or have to comply with organizational forms that put them in underprivileged, intimidating positions through the form of the organization alone, social work must ensure that the addressees are self-interested and self-image really comes up, and not just the perspective of the professionals, which buries that of the addressees.

Structure and action maxims according to Hans Thiersch

Hans Thiersch proposes a total of nine guidelines, on which social work as a whole should be oriented and developed. They were also published in the 8th Youth Report. He calls these guidelines structure and action maxims. In the following , they will be presented using the example of child and youth welfare :

Prevention

Offers of a world-oriented child and youth welfare service should be designed in such a way that serious conflicts and crises in the lives of children and young people do not even arise. To achieve this, child and youth welfare should be used

  • help to create conditions in Germany that are generally stable and enable a life worth living. And
  • Have preventive offers of help ready for such special situations that experience has shown to be stressful and develop into crises and can escalate (foreseeable transition phases in life such as entry into kindergarten or school enrollment, but also unforeseeable changes in the world of children such as B. divorce of parents or strokes of fate such as illness and death).

With all emphasis on prevention , however, it is of course true that help must be organized and made available for those children and young people and their families who, despite preventive work, have found themselves in difficult and stressful situations .

Regionalization / decentralization

Decentralization / regionalization

Environment-oriented child and youth welfare should

  • embed their offers and help more and more in the offers and possibilities that are already located and organized on site (i.e. in already existing homes , day care centers, but also associations, private initiatives and groups) and
  • Develop new on-site support options if it turns out that the existing offers are not sufficient.

It is therefore important to prevent or reduce supra-regional, central large facilities with a spacious catchment area in favor of smaller facilities on site (“small home around the corner”). To ensure that regional child and youth welfare does not weaken itself, it must, however, coordinate and network supra-regionally.

Everyday orientation

This maxim means five things:

  • Environment-oriented child and youth welfare must not only be available regionally (see above), but also be accessible in everyday life for children, young people and their families. This means that all barriers that prevent this easy access to child and youth welfare services (organizational, temporal, institutional barriers such as unsuitable and inflexible opening times, awkward registration rules, cold and impersonal rooms, ...) must be removed. So friendly, open, accommodating, so-called low-threshold offers must be created.
Systemic, holistic view
  • Child and youth welfare oriented towards the world of life sees the child as holistic and situation-related, d. H. not just the individual child / young person, but sees him / her intertwined in a whole network of interacting forces. So she expands her view from the individual to the whole " field " of interwoven individual, social and political factors. She sees the child / adolescent as a " symptom carrier ", i.e. someone who, through his ostensibly conspicuous actions (mostly unconsciously), to underlying, hidden problems and difficulties of the whole system (the family, the school, the community, the world of work, ... ) refers.
  • Everyday orientation also means that child and youth welfare services tie in their work with the individual, subjective and personal patterns of experience, interpretation and action of children and young people. Lifeworld-oriented child and youth welfare does not appear as a technically and professionally recognized "expert" ("know-it-all") who specifies and determines how situations and problems are " objectively correct" to interpret and "manage", but as a partner who gets involved with the feelings, opinions and world views of the children and young people and with what they can already do, with their strengths and skills .
  • Environment-oriented child and youth welfare is pragmatic . It is based on the small, the inconspicuous, the everyday, typifications and routines that ensure that you get to grips with everyday life.
  • In spite of all of this, life-world-oriented children and youth welfare are still critical of romanticizing explanations of everyday life. She knows that everyday life often "works" superficially, but on closer inspection it is unjust, oppressive, dull and much more. And that life that seems to be successful in everyday life falls short of what is actually possible. Lifeworld-oriented child and youth welfare takes life seriously in its stubbornness, but always aims at an even "more successful everyday life", i.e. H. it works to enable children and young people to lead a freer, more creative, more meaningful and more solidarity life.

Integration / normalization

Integration as a guiding principle means that all special offers and aids for children and young people who are at high risk of children and young people being displaced and segregated (homes and schools for the “difficult to educate”, “mentally disabled”, “learning disabled”) must be pushed back “, Special Education). In contrast, the normal aids and offers must be designed and equipped in such a way that children and young people with special problems or with so-called “special needs for help and support” can also be integrated into them.

Normalization means expanding the range for stubborn, different and sometimes also unusual life constellations and designs, i.e. ensuring that the extent of what is socially regarded as "normal" and consequently tolerated is expanded (cf. the article " Inclusive Education ”).

Participation / Democratization

Dimensions of participation

Lifeworld-oriented child and youth welfare aims to ensure that people can experience themselves as "subjects of their own lives", i. This means that people can experience and assess themselves as someone who can and is allowed to influence the shaping of their lives, who is, so to speak, the “director of their own life”. To make this possible, participation (i.e. being able and allowed to participate, participate and have a say) is indispensable. That is why the legal conditions for co-determination, including hard forms of democratic controls (complaints offices, shop stewards , professional chambers ) in the fields of work must be expanded and established. That is why participation must also be made possible at all informal levels.

Furthermore, child and youth welfare services must be careful not to “seduce” children and young people into voluntariness by means of hidden, subliminal possibilities without them noticing what is happening to them.

Networking / planning

Environment-oriented child and youth welfare must network and coordinate the diverse offers and fields of work that have arisen and are still to be developed in order to reduce coexistence and conflict, in which forces are unnecessarily worn out.

Interfere

In the course of its historical development and by the legislature, fields of activity and responsibilities have been and will be assigned to child and youth welfare. She must actively and constantly expand this and interfere in other areas of responsibility, if she wants to correspond to her self-image and her task of being a lawyer for children and young people.

Negotiate

Environment-oriented child and youth welfare takes care of all its tasks in dealing with children and young people primarily in the form of negotiation: problem interpretations, rules, solution strategies, forms of organization, etc. are developed in joint, partnership-based discussions with the children and young people. Negotiating sometimes also means discussing and arguing that is fair in personal dealings , but tough on the matter. There are, however, issues that can be negotiated to different degrees.

Reflect

All professional activities and omissions must be accompanied and monitored by a methodically secured (self-) critical reflection on the motives , goals and interpretation patterns as well as on the effects and side effects of professional action.

The essence of a world-oriented child and youth welfare service

If you ask yourself, what is it now in all these considerations, in all of these ideas or principles, the core or the essence of a life-world oriented child and youth services, then the answer would probably be: educators , social workers , educators , so all that try to act according to the idea of ​​"living environment orientation", see themselves as advocates for children, young people and their families . That is, like lawyers, they try to get the best out of their clients (for those who have entrusted themselves or who have been entrusted to them), even when everyone else is otherwise against those clients. That does put a different way, they are on the side of children, young people and their families and help them especially her to master life as it is the children and young people themselves think and they themselves need. And not in the way that others - politicians, employers, teachers, priests, journalists, judges, ... - expect them to do. They help the children and young people with the tasks and problems that they themselves have, and not with those that society has with the children and young people.

Web links

literature

  • Federal Ministry for Youth, Family, Women and Health (Ed.): Eighth Youth Report. Report on efforts and achievements of youth welfare. Bonn: Bonn University Printing Works 1990. ( PDF; 17.5 MB )
  • Grunwald, Klaus / Thiersch, Hans (Hrsg.): Practice of lifeworld-oriented social work. Approaches to action and methods in different fields of work. Munich, Weinheim: Juventa 2004.
  • Kraus, Björn: Orientation towards life instead of instructive interaction. An introduction to Radical Constructivism and its significance for social work and education. Research and teaching series, Vol. 8. Berlin: Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung 2000.
  • Kraus, Björn: Constructivism. Communication. Social work. Radical constructivist considerations on the conditions of the socio-educational interaction relationship. Heidelberg 2002.
  • Kraus, Björn: Lifeworld and lifeworld orientation - a conceptual revision as an offer to a systemic-constructivist social work science. Context. Journal of Systemic Therapy and Family Therapy. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Issue 37/02, 2006 pp. 116–129. Also in http://www.pedocs.de/frontdoor.php?source_opus=12387 for the first time in 2004 in the social work sciences portal.
  • Kraus, Björn: Recognizing and Deciding. Basics and consequences of an epistemological constructivism for social work. Beltz Juventa, Weinheim / Basel 2013
  • Kraus, Björn: Relational Constructivism - Relational Social Work. From the systemic-constructivist lifeworld orientation to a relational theory of social work. Beltz Juventa, Weinheim / Basel 2019
  • Thiersch, Hans: Lebensweltorientierte Social Work. Practical tasks in the face of social change. 6th edition Weinheim, Munich: Juventa 2005
  • Thiersch, Hans: The Experience of Reality. Perspectives of an everyday-oriented social pedagogy. 2nd, supplementary edition Weinheim, Munich: Juventa 2006
  • Thiersch, Hans: Lebenswelt and Moral. Contributions to the moral orientation of social work. Weinheim, Munich: Juventa 1995
  • Thiersch, Hans: Position determinations of the social work. Weinheim, Munich: Juventa 2002
  • Thiersch, Hans: Difficult balance: across borders, feelings and professional biography. Weinheim, Munich: Juventa 2009

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Jochem Kotthaus 2014: FAQ Scientific work. Opladen, Toronto: Barbara Budrich UTB.
  2. ↑ Hans Thiersch has recently taken up this criticism in several articles and followed it up theoretically. Above all, however, he has specified and radicalized his concept in its fundamental demands.
  3. ^ Björn Kraus: Lebenswelt and Lebensweltorientierung - a conceptual revision as an offer to a systemic-constructivist social work science. Context. Journal of Systemic Therapy and Family Therapy. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Issue 37/02, 2006 pp. 116–129. http://www.pedocs.de/frontdoor.php?source_opus=12387
  4. ↑ Peter Fuchs, Bernd Halfar: Social work as a system. On the delayed arrival of the concept of system in social work . Sheets of Welfare Care 3 + 4 2000, p. 56
  5. ^ Björn Kraus: Lebenswelt and Lebensweltorientierung - a conceptual revision as an offer to a systemic-constructivist social work science. Context. Journal of Systemic Therapy and Family Therapy. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Issue 37/02, 2006 pp. 116–129. http://www.pedocs.de/frontdoor.php?source_opus=12387 , Björn Kraus: Recognize and decide. Basics and consequences of an epistemological constructivism for social work . Beltz Juventa, Weinheim / Basel 2013. p. 152.
  6. ^ Thiersch, Hans & Kraus, Björn (2014): Lebensweltliche Orientation. Two perspectives in conversation. ( Memento of the original from February 14, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.eh-freiburg.de
  7. ^ Björn Kraus: Plea for Relational Constructivism and Relational Social Work. in Forum Sozial (2017) 1 pp. 29–35 http://www.pedocs.de/frontdoor.php?source_opus=15381
  8. ↑ Björn Kraus: Recognize and Decide. Basics and consequences of an epistemological constructivism for social work . Beltz Juventa, Weinheim / Basel 2013, p. 66.
  9. ↑ Björn Kraus: Power - Help - Control. Foundations and extensions of a systemic-constructivist power model. In: Björn Kraus, Wolfgang Krieger (Hrsg.): Power in social work - interaction relationships between control, participation and release. 4. revised u. exp. Edition. Jacobs, Lage 2016, pp. 101–130. Available online http://www.pedocs.de/frontdoor.php?source_opus=12325
  10. ↑ Cf. Gerhard Roth: The self-referentiality of the brain and the principles of gestalt perception. In: Gestalt Theory Issue 7-1985. Pp. 228-244.
  11. ↑ Björn Kraus: Recognize and Decide. Basics and consequences of an epistemological constructivism for social work . Beltz Juventa, Weinheim / Basel 2013. p. 152.
  12. ^ Björn Kraus: Epistemological-constructivist perspectives on social work. In: Wolfgang Krieger (Ed.): Systemic impulses - theoretical approaches, new concepts and fields of application of systemic social work. 2010 p. 14.
  13. ↑ See Björn Kraus: Recognize and decide. Basics and consequences of an epistemological constructivism for social work . Beltz Juventa, Weinheim / Basel 2013. p. 126.