新作坊 Humanity Innovation and Social Practice

Abstract

“Charity”legalizes almost all social intervention to other subjects，which also decides tension and direction of relationships． While charity has been specialized as“helping profession”, it becomes a part of authority governance. Eliminating political meaning of“do charity”and“be treated by charity”especially, the weak is marked and considered as particularly group only accepting national or personal kindness, then expected to“thank giving”and work hard to rejoin normal social life or even give back. The nature of charity is then to strengthen the existing social orders or ethics, and the one-way psychological governance or the mechanism to depoliticize.  Social work is actually relationship work. The limitation of social welfare services is often due to the limitation of the relationship. Our practices in Taiwan’s average communities is about de-structuring and re-structuring the traditional charities/social service, and moving towards social care. Charity work can also be the mechanism to overturn“helper-help receiver”relationship therefore each side can be political sensitive again.