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Identity and Empowerment:

Resistance to Institutional Discourse

in a Human Service Organization

Donyale R. Griffin

Katrice Townsend

Shuhui Sophy Cheng

ABSTRACT

Human Service Organizations (HSOs) have historically provided much needed assistance to the unemployed, underemployed and other individuals who have fallen victim to harsh economic times. These organizations, particularly beneficial to women during times of great economic crisis, are sites of identity formation and often sites of resistance (Trethewey, 1997). Using the LuellaHannaan Memorial Home (LHMH) Collection, Box 14, Case no. 133, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University as a case study, this article revisits communication scholar Angela Trethewey’s 1997 work, which argues that HSO clients come to understand who they are discursively through negotiated exchanges with case workers who play a major role in deciding on the extent of their care. This article explores the socio-historical positioning and “imaging” of elderly women in America and how those images are reified and resisted rhetorically by the women of the LHMH. We examine the double-edged nature of resistance, where clients are often simultaneously victims and agents, negotiating institutional discourse in order to alter and maintain their circumstances.

Introduction

Human Service Organizations (HSOs) have historically provided much needed assistance to the unemployed, underemployed and other individuals who have fallen victim to harsh economic times. These organizations, particularly beneficial to women during times of great economic crisis, are sites of identity formation and often sites of resistance (Trethewey, 1997). During the social case treatment experience, “the worker and the client participate actively and consciously”, but while each influences the experience, power ultimately rests in the hands of the organization, which takes on the role of decision-maker in its rationing out of resources and public support (Fenlason & Huff, 1938, p. 372).

The work of communication scholar Angela Trethewey (1997) is particularly key in framing this discussion. In her article on resistance and identity in a human service organization she argues that while women are the majority of recipients of welfare benefits, their displacement from mainstream society marginalizes them, placing them in a cycle of desperately needing services from “typically underfunded” agencies (p. 282). In the book, The Feminist Case Against Bureaucracy, Ferguson (1984) argues that HSOs reinforce the socially accepted view of clients as submissive and dependent on social support. In this role, clients are, as Fraser notes, “recipients of predefined services rather than agents involved in interpreting their needs and shaping their life conditions” (Fraser, 1989, p. 174). Through their exchanges with Visitor, we come to better understand how “organizational discourses create and recreate power structures” and how clients attempt to alter and maintain their circumstances by negotiating their needs and desires (Trethewey, 1997, p. 282).

This article explores the double-edged nature of resistance, further testing Trethewey’s premise that clients are often simultaneously victims and agents in power systems. Using the Hannan Foundation archive, we undertake an in-depth exploration of one case to capture the unique forms of resistance present in one woman’s case experience over a number of 16 years. We use the following questions to guide our analysis:

  1. What unique forms of resistance first outlined by Trethewey are apparent in the exchanges between the client and the Visitor?
  2. What do these exchanges reveal about the nature of resistance within this context?
  3. What links can be drawn between power, resistance, and empowerment? In other words, what was the client able to accomplish through resistance?

Conceptualizing Resistance

Karl Marx is quoted often based on his concept that the very presence of power opens the door for resistance. Foucault (1980) echoes this with his premise that people either relate to power by making themselves subject to it, being complicit in their own domination, or they struggle against that power in order to bring about a sense of empowerment. The latter introduces the notion of resistance. Ultimately, power and resistance are dialectically connected. Mahoney & Yngvesson (1992) assert that explanations of resistance emphasize dominant cultural discourses “and shy away from theorizing about the way relationships of power (whether based on class, gender, or legal entitlement) are constructed psychologically and reproduced through everyday practice” (p. 44).

Through the detailed exchanges recorded by Hannan Foundation case workers of their clients, we are able to witness the unique ways in which power was manifested through the “confessional” interviews by the Visitor. In her article “Self-denial or self-mastery”, Besley (2005) defines confession as “a deep-seated cultural practice in the West that involves a declaration and disclosure, acknowledgement and admission of a fault, weakness or crime and is expected to be the ‘truth’ that discloses one’s actions and private feelings or opinions” (p. 369).

“Confession then is both a communicative and an expressive act,

a narrative in which we (re)create ourselves by creating our own

narrative, reworking the past, in public, or at least in dialogue with

another.” (Besley, 2005, p. 370).

Besley goes on to assert that the confessional requires an audience “that will hear, understand, possibly judge and punish and maybe accept and forgive as they reflect back to us who we are”, and in the case of the client of LHMH, what her needs are. During the confessional we manage the tension between revealing our selves to “the other” and keeping our true self hidden. It is in this intrapersonal negotiation that resistance begins to form, as clients consciously recreate themselves discursively.

Pringle (1988) asserts that power relations are processual, not static. They involve “strategies and counter strategies” (p. 96). Borrowing from the work of Oakley (1981), we frame resistance beyond mass acts of protest and social movement, instead choosing to look at “isolated acts or gestures” (p. 7). We are concerned with the “‘private’ acts of resistance that allow women within the HSO to redefine themselves against what has already been defined for them within the system. In their study, Grenier and Hanley’s (2007) findings reveal “how older women exercise resistance in complex ways, both consciously subverting and coopting the notion of ‘frailty’ on an individual and collective level” (p. 211). While research chronicling older women’s resistance is scarce in academic literature, with some exceptions, including Grenier & Hanley, 2007; Marchand, 2003; Woodward, 2003; Tulle-Winton, 1999, negative images that depict older women in Western society are pervasive. Typical depictions include the ‘little old lady’, images of frailty and weakness, mild mannered women who are polite, small in stature, passive and ultimately powerless (Grenier & Hanley, 2007). Those women who best fit this description are often the model candidates for public service support.

Methodology

Given the aim of understanding the old woman’s attempt to alter and maintain her circumstances within a human service organization, this study has primarily adopted anarrative analysis approach. More importantly, given the institutional discourse focus of this research, an important issue concerns the generative mechanism for an old woman’s resistance. As such, this study uses the LuellaHannaan Memorial Home (LHMH) Collection, Box 14, Case no. 133, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University as a case study. Florine Reynolds’s (pseudonym) case is selected based on her strong resistance to social service system. This case is unique because of what she revealed about the phenomenon and what it might represent, given that “resistance is a complex and often subtle phenomenon; as such, it cannot be reduced to a list of public behaviors, such as revolt, uprising, rebellion, or insurrections” (Trethewey, 1997, p. 284).

In this study, we employ a narrative analysis to uncover the experiences, attitudes and feelings behind Mrs. Reynolds’s resistance to the discourse of the Hannan Foundation. According to Okely (1991), “through careful examination and in the telling, we can discover that specific moments in individual lives inform us about both dominance and points of resistance” (p. 10). From the CD-ROM of case files, we initially reviewed the entire case of Florine Reynolds, consisting of 374 pages covering a period of 16 years, and then compiled narrative summaries from intake data, case notes of Visitor, letters from friends and associates in support of her petition for aid and various personal correspondence. Second, we retrieved relevant quotes from the narrative summaries and then interpreted the case file in terms of the resistance pattern. Trethewey’s (1997) forms of resistance (i.e., fighting bureaucracies, playing games, breaking rules, refusing confessional practices, bitching,) are used as a launching point to identify patterns of resistance in this study. Fighting bureaucracies is about how the clients overtly resist the social service agencies. In addition to engaging in overt struggles with bureaucracies, clients also play game to work the system in more covert ways. Further, clientsmightresist by breaking the rule. Confessional practices include counseling interviews, medical examinations, psychoanalysis, and social work interventions. Clients might refuse to participate in these practices. “Bitching” another form of resistance is complaining about the problem. Trethewey’s work demonstrates how women in a human service organization used various patterns of resistance to exploit the contradictions of the system and attempt to shape the formal bureaucratic procedures that commanded their positions as clients. More specifically, she suggests that all the forms of resistance were grounded in the dependent, power-laden relationships clients had with their Visitor. Yet, within the context of these relationships, clients were able to satisfy their own, individually-articulated needs and desires within the constraints of the HSO bureaucracy. Similarly, in this study we examine the unique forms of resistance used by one woman in particular to both reject the status quo of the HSO and maintain her identity within its context. As such, this study focuses on Mrs. Reynolds’s efforts to establish spheres of autonomy in an environment where she had limited control over her circumstances.

Background

Florine was born in a small country town near Jamestown, New York, in 1858, and was one of a family of three, all of whom were dead at the time of her application for a pension in 1929. Her father was a graduate of the Law School of the University of Michigan, and practiced law in Michigan. Her mother died whenFlorine was six years old, and her father remarried, moving to Saginaw, Michigan, from Pennsylvania. Florine attended elementary school in Saginaw until 15 years old, when her parents took her from school on account of poor health and had a tutor for her at home. In 1882, Florine married William Reynolds. They did not have children. In 1916, Mrs. Reynolds came to Detroit after the death of her husband and had since sold real estate, but several deals that she entered did not involve a salary or commission. Later, when she was 72 years old, she was informed that she was too old to work, and had to give up the real estate business because she did not have carfare and money to buy the clothes she needed. Her former employer wrote that: “Mrs. Reynolds is honest, industrious and frugal;” that she is, as he understood, “dependent solely upon herself for support;”and that “her age alone was the only reason why he could not retain her on his staff” (LHMH, Box 14, Case 133, WSU). According to the Visitor notes, “She (Mrs. Reynolds) was determined to find employment. She was proud and did not wish to have help, but found it necessary” (LHMH, Box 14, Case 133, WSU).

Mrs. Reynolds had no relatives or means of support other than her own efforts. She applied to LHMH on June 11, 1929. The Visitornotes described thatMrs. Reynolds looked very much younger than a woman of 71 years. She was of medium height and had thick gray curly hair and brown eyes. She was evidently a person of refined habits and cultured tastes who had traveled extensively and lived for a number of years in England. She occasionally liked to attend an opera and a good play when she was able to manage financially. She died on June 25, 1945 at 87 years old. Mrs. Reynolds’s case file shows that she was well-educated and had lived among the middle class earlier in her life but found herself living near poverty in her later years.To a great extent this case reflects the dramatic decline in the American economy during the Great Depression and the challenges old women faced during that time.

Displays of Resistance and Power

Fighting bureaucracies and bureaucrats

By the time of her application to the LHMH, Mrs. Reynolds seemed to have acquired a much more practical outlook on life due to her declining independence. She was living in a very homelike little suite of hotel rooms, consisting of a living room, bedroom, kitchenette and bath, for which she paid $25 per month and had maid service. The Visitor wrote in her notes that Mrs. Reynolds “has never been so happy for many years and hopes that she can continue to live here until her death” (LHMH, Box 14, Case 133, WSU). By cooking her own meals, she was able to live nicely on her $50 grant per month. The Visitor notes described that “she is extremely grateful to the Luella Hannan Memorial Home for the assistance she is receiving and for the comfortable way in which she is enabled to live” (LHMH, Box 14, Case 133, WSU). On the other hand, she was not good with handling money and had a rather difficult time getting along financially. When questioned about what she had been able to save, she always replied that she had not been able to save according to her expectations. The Visitor cautioned her to live strictly within her income and make any necessary plans accordingly.

Often, Mrs. Reynolds overtly resisted the service arrangements provided by the Hannan Foundation. On one occasion, the Visitor asked her to cooperate with the agency in forming a budget and further told her that she was paying too much for her room at the hotel. However, she refused to move from the room and gave a long list of personal reasons. She said that she preferred to have the privacy of a hotel room even if it meant sacrificing the amount of food she ate. She further stated that she was absolutely sure she should be able to earn some money. Since she would not cooperate in letting them help her plan, she was not given any advance in money when she fell short in making her monthlybills.

Later, LHMH made efforts to locate a lower rate hotel to accommodate a few of their people. They informedMrs. Reynolds that one room was placed for her. However,Mrs. Reynolds immediately began to fume about this, stating that:

“The Board was not conducting the Luella Hannan Memorial Home in the spirit that Mrs. Hannan had intended. It would be a lot better to make a few people comfortable than to keep body and soul together for a larger number” (LHMH, Box 14, Case 133, WSU).

She said that she was not able to go to the Madison Hotel where she would have associate with all kinds of people. She stated that she was a lady and desired to associate with only ladies and gentlemen. She later agreed to go, however, but on the due date, she did not move into the hotel.

Playing Games

In addition to engaging in overt struggles with bureaucracies and bureaucrats, clients in human service organization also “work the system” in more covert ways (Trethewey, 1997, p. 292). Similarly, Mrs. Reynolds related how she played her own game, being strategic in maintaining her ends. In a letter to the LHMHdated September 25, 1934, she stated that she was in financial difficulties because of the increased cost of food. She mentioned that she had 30¢ in her purse at that time. The Visitor advised that if Mrs. Reynolds was unable to live on the allowance she would have to move from the hotel and go into a boarding home. The LHMH authorized an advance of $2.50 to carry her until the end of month. The Visitor then talked with Mrs. Reynolds about the advisability of leaving the hotel and living in a boarding home. She stated that “with an additional $5 per month she would be able to manage nicely at the hotel and be much better satisfied” (LHMH, Box 14, Case 133, WSU).

In 1933, Mrs. Reynoldsfell atthe hotel, losing her balance while attempting to keep her purse from falling. She was taken tothe hospital where it was discovered she had a fractured hip and knee and tests showed her to have an advanced case of diabetes. Mrs. Reynolds felt that since her accident occurred on the hotel premises and she refrained from making any trouble about it, that the organization owed it to her to let her remain “where she was happiest” (LHMH, Box 14, Case 133, WSU). The Visitor said that Mrs. Reynolds was quite disgruntled about being asked to move, referring again to the fact that she might have sued the hotel at the time of her injury but had refrained from doing so because she had been promised by someone (whose identity she could not name), that she could have a life residence at the hotel.