Poor Marx
| Published date | 01 September 1991 |
| DOI | 10.1177/026455059103800314 |
| Author | Robert Harris |
| Date | 01 September 1991 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
’Probation Work’
Ten years on
A decade after the publication of ’Probation Work:
Critical Theory and Socialist Practice’ (Basil Blackwell, 1981)
by Hilary Walker and Bill Beaumont, three commentators
assess its original appeal and lasting merits. Hilary
Walker takes a self critical retrospective view.
Poor
Marx
class analysis, for example, the book
Awarded by Robert Harris,
unfashionably plays down the more
Professor of Social Work
contemporary preoccupations with
at Hull University
gender and race); partly because the
I
vagueness of its practice recipes com-
must declare from the first that Pro-
bation Work is
pares unfavourably with the specifici-
not the kind of book
I like. By the normal
ty which characterised much of the
canons of
scholar-
ship in particular it falls well short of
applied criminal justice literature of the
the desirable. Its three
1980s; and partly because recent world
parts (’Probation
Work’, ’Critical Theory’ and ’Socialist
events have suggested that the con-
tradictions of late
Practice’), though they sound sensible
capitalism are less
dramatic than those ’of late
enough, do
Marxism.
not fit well together, main-
ly because of the authors’ failure to
Fundamentally, however, the book’s
solve the technical problem of in-
problem is that the authors fought their
battle and lost. Much of what
tegrating the second, theoretical sec-
they
tion, into the mainstream of a
repudiate in Probation Work is
practice-oriented
mainstream
text. The Marxist
thinking in criminal justice
theory is often superficial, vulgar and
circles today.
undialectical and the book analytical-
The book’s undoubted popularity
ly inferior to
with students in the
many of the MA
disserta-
1980s stemmed,
tions I regularly supervise in this field.
I think, from three main factors.
But the book’s problems are not
Firstly, the book is absolutely entre
just theoretical. Today it has a very old-
nouns - probation officers telling other
fashioned feel. This is...
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