Walking & Talking: Abolitionist Praxis As a Doctoral Student

Social work has moved to embrace carceral abolition following the summer of 2020 and the “twin pandemics� of Covid-19 and antiBlack racism. This represents an important shift that breaks with the social work institution’s historical roots in white supremacy. Many scholars have highlighted that social work’s key role in the child welfare – or family policing – system is exemplary of these roots. Similarly, the emphasis on production, efficiency, and outcomes in social work research can lead to a favoring of extractive methods and reinforce white supremacist ways of thinking and being. Thus, there is a clear tension between this institutionally embedded white supremacy and the, in some cases, newly-adopted abolitionist perspectives.

Navigating this tension is difficult for all practitioners, particularly because of the challenging of holding a politic that is in direct opposition to the structure of the system in which one is operating. However, doctoral students are notoriously precarious, both in terms of their current positioning as (underpaid) labor for the university and the uncertainty of their future career. We argue, however, that this precarity offers an opportunity to critically engage abolitionist perspectives as not only theory, but also praxis. Because of their career stage, doctoral students are in the process of developing their pedagogical and scholarly stance and identity. Abolitionist doctoral students, then, are doing the messy and necessary work of navigating the tension between their political commitments and institutional white supremacy.

This roundtable session will speak to the dangers and possibilities of really living an abolitionist politic as a current doctoral student and future social work academic. The presenters will explore how abolitionist thinking can inform how scholars begin to set their research agenda, including areas of study, research design, implementation, and dissemination. They will also explore the emancipatory possibilities of abolitionist praxis in the academy, including working to re-negotiate our relationship with precarity towards possibility and away from the disciplinary power it typically wields.