A Study On The Identity Construction And Conversion Of Community Workers

The community is the foundation of the society, and its construction plays an important part of building a harmonious society. Community workers therefore are essential backbone of community construction. As economic reform and social transformation, the role of the community in people’s daily life becomes more and more obvious, and their demands for life have more and more diversities. And people’s sense of democracy increases gradually.However, current Community Work shows no consciousness of citizen, and Community Service is not able to meet people’s demands. It’s difficult for Community Workers to win people’s recognition, and their identity is now very awkward. Therefore it is urgent to make Community Work more professional, which is the problem that they have to face.From the perspective of "identity", this thesis studies Community Workers based on Community A in Beijing, using interview, observation, and literature methods, and tries to answer these two questions:1) How and what did Community Workers’ identity construct?2) How and with what methods can they transform from Community Workers to Social Workers?According to the point of view of identity theory and constructivism, Community Workers may be affected by others’different identities, relations and expectations in the community, and they may act accordingly to form their own identity, including a special part from individual imagination and a normal part from social structure. With the two influences, Community Workers use their experience as the foundation, management as the principal, and policy as the root and action logic to gradually construct their identities. The action logic is impacting on the conversion of the actor and the construction of his new identity. The action logic therefore is the key to Community Workers to transform to Social Workers in the following three aspects, i.e. transform from experience to professional as the foundation, from management to service as their main concern, and from policy to demand as the principal. In addition, this thesis puts forward three methods to complete the identity conversion of Community Workers:1) On theory:The key to complete the conversion is to enhance the training, not only need its content be systematic, but its ways has to be diversity.2) On practice:Based on the current Community Work, Community Workers can try to explore a Community Social Work pattern that use community activities as its carrier.3) On system:To actively explore and build a sound system for Community Social Workers.By researching the identity construction and conversion of Community Workers, it is good to make them more professional to improve the community services to meet people’s higher demands, including taking part in the development of their community and increasing their community awareness and belongingness. It can also speed up the process of professionalization of Social Work to alleviate social contradictions, maintain social order and its stability, and achieve development for people and society.