Social Visitors In The Industry: Creation Of A Field Of Experts In “The Welfare”, 1920-1950

Abstract

This article provides an account of the historical process of constrution of the professional field of the Chilean social workers in the realm work, particularly in the manufacturing sector during the period 1920 to 1950. During those three decades two processes developed simultaneously: on the one hand the first schools of social work were created, on the other, there was an increasing regulatory legislation concerning the rela- tionship between capital and labour. We sustain that social workers created a “field of expertise” through which they defined a modernizing identity and established the boundaries to their field of professional action, the content of their profession as well as the in methods of social intervention. Thus they situated themselves as “public agents” whose initial objective was the creation of a “virtuous relationship” between workers, employers and the State. Thus, although their knowledge and practice sustained disciplinary practices which were instrumental to extensive control in and outside the work place, they not only acted as an instrument of the “modernising elites”, but they also were an active part in the setting up of the limits and scope the policies, which they mainly did through their debates in which they sought to define their professional profile and field. From a methodological point of view the article is based on sources which give a direct testimony of the debates held by the social workers and which also were a means of socializing such discussions. For such purposes the analysis is focused on the publications by the school of social work of the “Junta de Beneficencia de Santiago” and those published by the “Elvira Matte de Cruchaga” school.

Keywords: Social visitors – Field of expertise – Industrial Work– Extensive Control.