In the master’s thesis we investigate the workings of power in the historical and contemporary development of social pedagogy. To this end we first follow the origins of modern forms of power. French philosopher Michel Foucault termed them as “biopower”, which he thinks has taken hold of the (re)productive forces of life. We present the emergence and development of social pedagogy as a story about one of the power mechanisms, which through its persistent expansion of the pedagogical and caretaking landscape strives to manage the cultural and social reproduction of the society. We focus especially on the paradoxical phenomena of the reciprocity between progressive or reformist aspirations and the strengthening of control mechanisms, which has accompanied social pedagogy from the very beginning. In the last part we investigate the potential power effects of life-space oriented approaches in social pedagogy on the example of flexible support to families. We consider this as one of the most contemporary reformist projects in the Slovenian context of social pedagogy. We have found that an anti-institutional attitude doesn’t exhaust the critic of power, nor are non-institutional forms of work apriori democratizing. We believe that new fields of work are expanding the landscape of social pedagogy interventions and therefore deepen the grip of power. At the same time they open up new fields of political confrontation. This enables us, through recognizing the workings of power, to invent new ways of struggle and solidarity with the marginalized and excluded, which is perhaps a minor, but nonetheless constant flow of thought and action in social pedagogy.
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