The Story of Eleuterio: A Case Study for Reflecting on the Notions of Discourse, Practices, and Representations in Social Work

Abstract

The Story of Eleuterio is a qualitative research study based on a case study. The latter constitutes a complex instrument that requires the researcher to have a broad and deep command of the theories that support the research. In this sense, the contributions of the theory and methodology of Social Anthropology, as well as those of Sociology, Social Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and contemporary Philosophy, are foundational for understanding the framework of the “social space where people live their living conditions, and which gives meaning to and reconstructs the meanings of what is different and unequal” (Karasik, 1994).

The central axis of this research is the discursive practices of the real from a disciplinary perspective. These practices contain fragmentations, contradictions, and ritualizations that should be reconsidered in order to consolidate new forms of clarification and/or interpellation of what takes place in opacity.

It has not been easy to decide on the operability of the method, because research activity in case studies within the practice of Social Work has been placed on the margins of scientific rigor. This involves referring to the process of social intervention and its three moments—research, diagnosis, and problem solving—which includes knowing how to go on.

There is resistance and a crisis of representation of a self that represents others who have no voice, but which clearly indicates from where and how it is enunciated. The crisis thus posed has reconstructed the revelations of the initial questions, which become visible in the rupture of the closed compartments of the process of knowing how to go on.

For this reason, The Story of Eleuterio is not merely a story. Its objective is to respond, through the mediation of critical reflection, to how disciplinary practices reproduce forms of suppression and invisibilization of subjects. To achieve this objective is to move through discourses, practices, and representations, “three notions that made it possible to renew reflection in the human and social sciences” (Chartier, 2001).