This article critically reads a social encounter in which a social worker and a middle-aged man with learning disabilities are implicated. To do so, I draw upon ideas and approaches associated with ...anthropology and the sociology of everyday life to expose invisible, or invisibilised, dimensions of social interaction which may, otherwise, be obscured, backgrounded, and perhaps even concealed by virtue of their 'thereness'. Through the prisms afforded by these disciplinary lenses, a seemingly ordinary, and unspectacular, social encounter may be regarded in the context of everyday life alongside learning disability, as registering/generating multiple forms of language, and as being inescapably saturated in multifaceted forms of power. Because these disciplinary tools may help map not only the particular social encounter to which this article is concerned but also social interactions more generally, they constitute useful resources, to be cultivated, or crafted, for ethical social work practice.
In this article, we draw on two clinical ethnographies to explore how mundane social practices, affective processes and cultural materials (re)produce divisions and forms of in/exclusion. By treating ...everyday life and routines as serious categories of analysis, we identify how power relations are accomplished and how persons/future persons – namely the 'dysmorphic' child or the foetus who has or may have Down's syndrome – are constituted as un/valued or in/excluded. In relation to dysmorphology, we show how the living dysmorphic child is given shelter but future reproductions of such children are enacted negatively and as to be avoided. With reference to Down's syndrome, we capture how the condition is made absent in the antenatal clinic and constituted as a negative outcome. In sum, we recognise how exploring the micro and everyday reveals who/what is valued and how particular ways of being in the world are threatened, denied or effaced.
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