Social theories in social work - Essay Example

Social theories in social work Social theories are key tools exploited by scholars for an analysis of society. Certain theoretical frameworks are employed to analyze social structures and phenomena. This is a vast and interdisciplinary field drawing ideas and contributing to various disciplines. Origin of social theories could be traced back to ancient Greek. Social theory thus constitutes an interesting discipline. Etymologically, social is derived from the Latin word socius and theory from the Greek word theoria. From time eternal Social work had had an ambivalent and ambiguous relation to social theorists. Social work is a discipline that involves the application of social theory and some research methods. The purpose of which is to improve the overall quality of living of society at large. Social work incorporates and uses other social sciences in order to improve the human conditions. Social work is thus a profession committed to attain social justice and an enhanced life style. Social work deals with and resolves almost every major social issue. Social workers are involved in analyzing the root causes of various social problems and developing ideal solutions for the same. They may work with individuals, groups or the society. Social work as a profession evolved in the early nineteenth century. This was initiated by the problems created in society by the industrial revolution. It was triggered by the vivid application of scientific reasoning and theories to various studies. Numerous educational institutions accepted social work as a discipline and began to offer courses. In the twentieth century, the social work as a profession began to depend heavily upon research and various evidence based practices. This led to an overall improvement in the professionalism of social work. At present social workers are obsessed with myriads of pursuits in solving societal problems. Professional social workers usually hold a professional degree in social work and may even have a license or are professionally registered to certain accreditation agencies. The social workers of modern times are well organized into various professional bodies contributing their best to the field of social work. The empiricists hold that all of our knowledge is ultimately derived from our senses or our experiences. They therefore deny the existence of innate knowledge while the rationalists hold that at least some of our knowledge is derived from reason alone, and that reason plays an important role in the acquisition of all of our knowledge. Alternative practices to rational practice had always had a strong impact on social theories. Practice wisdom and professional change agents have enabled us to develop rich learning environments that promote capability, confidence and commitment. Competence, confidence and commitment are essentials to development of contextualized practice wisdom. The effective professional change agents require a teaching and a learning environment, which recognize a personal need for development of just not competences, but of personal confidence, self-efficacy and a sense to control over personal commitment levels. (Shepperd) It is possible to encapsulate the three elements namely social work, social ideas and practice in terms of the idea of social work. Social exclusion is a subject of major importance in contemporary social work and has been a core feature of social policy developments in the past decade. The issue of social exclusion lies at the very heart of social work. There is a wide range of key topics in social work including: Social work values and knowledge, empowerment, need, authority, choice, evidence-based practice, judgment and decision making. Even though the term 'social exclusion' is of recent origin, it provides a framework for understanding the enduring themes of social work. As for the idea of social exclusion, it is ironic that a term of relatively recent origin should be deemed as a key notion of social work. The term had been widely used only in the past twenty years. Social exclusion has been identified as a topic of major importance in the field of social work. It had been the core of various social developments world wide. Michael Sheppard claims that the issue of social exclusion has been prevalent in each and every social work. He concludes such a position in both theory and practice. Sheppard had meticulously observed the issue of social exclusion from various perspectives. Social exclusion also encapsulates the elements of inequality and being disadvantaged. (Sheppard) Social exclusion thus acts as the basic foundation on which social work is built upon. Considering the construction of social work, it is associated with some areas of concern and not others. In case of a concern with social exclusion that places social work amidst marginalized and mainstream, we need to have an in depth analysis of related aspects of social work that provide it with social location. This necessitates examining of social work on the cusp of various areas of social life. Usually these cusps run amidst public and private spheres. Through it is sought to establish both social work focus and location. To attain a deeper understanding of social work we need to move on to consider some themes as having become of major importance. A key issue concerned is the extent to which we can consider social work to have an enduring and real status. This necessitates a need to consider the issue of postmodernism. Postmodernism is an appropriate way of viewing the idea of social work. The idea of postmodernist social work seems to be incoherent. This leads us to a wider recognition of the centrality of some objectivism in social work. Social work practices raise another issue with its concern on human beings who have the decision making capability. Other issues involved are those of authority and choice. It is noteworthy that both these issues are of major importance. One of the major concerns of social work is that of empowerment. Examining this idea meticulously we find it to be extremely problematic and grandiose, even though it is popular and widely spread. Alternative concepts, some of the less popular ones, involve maintenance, social functioning and coping. Some of these appear as more robust forms for use in social work. Social work has two key players, judgment and decision making. These lead us to the most updated issues such as reflexivity and process knowledge. This makes the study of social work as a matter of practical reasoning, a demanding task and requiring practical intelligence. The core elements of social work demand close examination of humans as purposive, social beings having conscious, subconscious and preconscious states. It is necessary to identify social work as an academic discipline separate from but existing along with other social sciences like politics, sociology and psychology. It is not just a simple practice form. Some visionaries have even sought to suggest that social work is an ambiguous thing and is subject to change. There may be situations faced by social workers that may seem to be ambiguous from time to time. Social theory and the knowledge of the service user lead to dilemma whether it is a conflict or a sincere collaboration. Usually service users don’t get systematically involved in social work. Various movements such as the one for the disabled, mental health service users and users of other services have been developing knowledge in their own ways based on whatever experience they could gain. Such users have created their own framework and bundles of theories. They face certain fundamental problems in social work trying to interpret service user knowledge. Such drastic developments result from involvement of users in social works. The presence of severe practical, philosophical and political arguments for introducing knowledge and theories is seen in the process of social work theory building. This necessitates an inclusive approach to social work theorizing. There has been an increasingly high importance of users and organizations being included in theorizing social work. Enormous support and chances would be needed in order to create a separate social work theory. (Service user’s knowledge and social work theory - Conflict or collaboration) Social work needs evidence based practice and decision analysis. Stephen Webb had been a leading pioneer of this idea. Till date no detailed attempts have been made to formulate a systematic implementation framework for evidence based practice in social work. The flourishing of various evidence based practices is dependent on a larger social context involving development of new expert systems that contribute to radical reshaping of practice in social work. With the shift towards actuarial practice, direct involvement with service users has become increasingly ignored. The two key approaches to evidence based practice in social work are the experimental and pragmatic perspectives. (Webb) According to David Howe, the unity in theory and practice that was once present in social work along with policy and organization is being abandoned. Social work has reached a post modern world uncertain if there were any key principles that define the essence of its characteristics. This necessitates the study of modernity in contrast to post modernity. Social work evolved from modernity and has been increasingly influenced by post modern ideals. (Howe) Liberalism has advanced to such an extent that social work has been subject to various emerging configurations. It becomes necessary to analyze the nature of social work and welfare with postmodern perspectives under consideration. Such approaches have been highly successful and appropriately understood as portraying the nature of the present. Evidence based practice comes to play a major role in social theorizing. The evidence based practice actually originated in health care. In the initial phases of development it evolved as an alternative to authority based practice. Gray suggests the origins to be the study of service decisions, clinical practice, gaps between what was done and practice related research, economic pressures, knowledge revolution, description of flaws, peer reviews and the web revolution that had increased the accessibility of information and routine updating of systematic reviews. Evidence based practice is thus appealing to clients or users and clinicians or practitioners. The evidence based practice offers the practitioners and philosophy administrators a compatibility with obligations described in our professional ethical code and accreditation policies and standards as well as an evolving technology for integrating ethical and practical issues in practices. The interconnections among evidentiary, ethical and application concerns in the decision making process and provides various steps that could lead to a possible decrease in gaps among all professional venues that include social practice and policy, research and personal education. Honesty regarding the service status and transparency are hallmarks of this philosophy. The uncertainty in decisions is not hidden but made more clear and highlighted. The social workers and researchers have the choice as to how accurately define and describe new ideas and concerned technologies. The major problems that are currently faced are the gaps amidst ethical, evidentiary and application concerns. Even though the ethical codes and professional standards are interlinked, ethical and evidentiary issues are far apart. (Abbot) Academic writings in social science are scant and one can barely find original and systematic books on necessary topics. However the profession system is an exception. Professions form an interdependent mechanism or a closely knit network among each other. Each profession has its own activities under various jurisdictional types. There has been enormous growth in professions that compete for jurisdictions over work. There is another key theme in the form of constructive social work. Constructive social work insists on the development of a critical stance towards the ways of understanding the world. One should be uncritical of the idea that the observations of the world reveal its nature in a straightforward way. There are various variations prevalent in the social concepts. Particular forms of knowledge are not only the produce of history and culture and are artifacts of it but there are numerous forms of knowledge available. The knowledge of the world is developed amidst people in their daily interactions such that one should be centrally concerned with the social processes and can take a variety of different forms that invite the different kinds of action. The social world is a product of the various social practices and follows that there cannot be a given determined nature to the external world. Constructive social work is thus not just declaring that our cultural developments are products of the environment or social context. (Parton) It is highly impossible to deny that social theory is related to social practice. A number of arguments could be found in favor of theory in social work practices. The debate with the need for theory in social work has been going on for decades. This has led to two earnest questions to be kindled in any reviewer. One deals with whether theory improves quality and the other deals with if it improves the professional standing of a given workplace. The solution to this problem can be attained from modern literature. We cannot be ignorant of a social theory as it is equivalent to be ignorant of ways in which we perceive the world. People develop schemas to organize their own spheres of activity from as early as infancy. Such schemas constitute the concept of how we organize information. The philosopher Stephen Pepper says that man has limited memory but for which he won’t be needing hypotheses. The social psychologist Heider suggests that the human need to organize information is hyper functional. According to him humans develop a common sense to predict and finally control their surroundings. Thus the presence of social theories can be attributed to such a craving in the form natural cognitive process within us. (Singer) A theory reigns supreme when it comes to a practice. Theory can improve the quality of direct practice. Usually every human practice is guided by theory. Behavior, causation, prevention and intervention are such theories. In the absence of social theory all social work would seem to be a mere craft than a deep science. Theory enables the framing and screening of knowledge. Miller states theory to be an interpretation of practice. Thus social practice is a profession and doesn’t invalidate the necessity of theory. Instead of being the result of a social work, theory has become a tool of social profession. Social workers may not better their practice until they renounce theory development completely. It is evident that a strong theoretical base is essential to improve the quality of social work. A strong foundation in theory is the only means of developing research questions. Excellent questions tend to increase the quality of living of people. It takes enormous analysis and research to answer even some of the basic questions. Presence of theory alone doesn’t account to valuable results. They raises voice against the playful application of theory in research. Gottschalk claims that theories that provide empirical testing aren’t useful by themselves in contributing to improvements in social research. In order to be effective theory in social work must address professional values of socioeconomic justice. In social work only informed users improve their professional standing. Social research has been providing evidence of how social workers know what they are doing. Research with the middle-range theories gained acceptance as it used theories that could be tested and applied to the various real world situations. Some researchers agree that there is little harmony about the requisite essential knowledge for professional practice. Theory has been playing a key role in determining as to what social knowledge for professional practice is. The roles of social work in public would become evident only when the profession clearly implies associated knowledge. David Stoesz’s critique of the social work profession condemns social work for deriving its knowledge from other professions as a source. According to him social work is yet to generate theories complete with articulated variables, intervention methods and predicted outcomes. He refers to sociology as an exemplary profession thriving upon the creation of unique sociological theories. Sociology as a discipline evolved parallel to social work. Stoesz has thus briefed that social work should also develop its own theories. This may lead to a widespread neglect to the prevalent theories of various related disciplines that are more mature and sophisticated. Thus it may be deduced that social work should strive for theory application rather than theory development. Social work has absolutely no need to and should not waste time developing a unique theory for the purpose of social practice. The reason attributed to the needlessness of social theory is that social practice requires us to address issues that overlap the various divisions such as sociology, education, economics and politics. Almost all of these divisions have a longer tradition of theory development than social work. To shun these theories as they aren’t social work is to ignore the fact that social work shares its own domains with all other professions. Robbins notes that unlike other professionals social workers are expected to be a master of both person and surroundings. Social work has never come any close to developing a unique social work theory. If at all it had it had neither application in practice nor utility in research. Instead of separating away social work theories must include user opinions and their common sense for vivid reality. In case social work does borrow from the more sophisticated theories of other disciplines the users and researchers must critically examine such theories for necessary inclusions and deletions. This would be the most significant blend of social work and theory that ever was. The time saved from ceasing to develop a unique social work theory would enable doing the more important act of getting familiar with the more suitable and applicable theories available in other disciplines and developing ways to implement them in social work practice. This work is primarily carried out by academic social workers. The social workers in course of their practice actively integrate and produce information from various perspectives regularly. Active contribution is available from the side of academic social workers. Most of the social theories of the nineteenth century are now being considered as obsolete. There has been a move towards modern social theories. Some modern social theories symbolize the advanced version of pre-existing classical theories such as the neo evolutionism, sociology, theory of modernization, theory of post lingual society and various strains of Neo-Marxism. In recent years the social theory became closely related to academic sociology. Certain subjects such as the philosophy of history withered away and became a part of sociology. Social theory seems to be obtaining more acceptance as a classical academic discipline. Modern social theory has begun to stress free will, individual choice and reasoning. The social theory is thus becoming a complex institution. Some sociologists believe there are no great laws of history but smaller and efficient laws of society in action. The post-modern social theory is a movement of ideas arising from the critical elements of modernism. As a result of the wide use of the term there is a lack of the necessary distinction between the various elements constituting the same. This has led to the impression that modernism has some severe flaws in its system of knowledge. The term postmodernism was coined by theorist Ihab Hassan in his book The Dismemberment of Orpheus. The idea of practice provides a comprehensive analysis of the inter-relationship between social work and social exclusion. Much emphasis is laid on the fact that various areas of social exclusion belong to the areas of social work. This might seem to be a logical choice from the social work perspective; however, it is disappointing for those interested in social exclusion. Practical wisdom is thus a professional practice. It is noteworthy that a factor inducing low status and morale within the profession leads to severe failure of the practice. In view of all the above, social work is nourished as a profession. Profession is more than just doing a job. The social work has absolutely no necessity to develop a unique theory of its own while it can utilize the well nurtures theories of the various related disciplines such as sociology. To avoid the theories of various disciplines is wastage of time that could be invested in further developments in society. It also accounts to neglect of the more matured theories prevalent for ready use in various disciplines. REFERENCES: Abbot, A. The system of professions, An essay on division of expert labor, available at: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/17108143?tab=reviews#tabs [accessed June 21, 2008] Beresford, P. Service user’s knowledge and social work theory: Conflict or collaboration? British Journal of social work, available at: http://bjsw.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/30/4/489 [accessed June 21, 2008] Howe, D. Modernity, post modernity and social work British Association of Social Workers available at: http://bjsw.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/24/5/513 [accessed June 21, 2008] Patron, N. Constructive Social Work, available at : http://www.criticalsocialwork.com/units/socialwork/critical.nsf/982f0e5f06b5c9a285256d6e006cff78/c23d0f16f505847085256ea7005665b1?OpenDocument [accessed June 21, 2008] Sheppard, M. Social Work, Social Science and Practice Wisdom. Available at: http://bjsw.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/25/3/265 [accessed June 21, 2008] Sheppard, M. Social work and social exclusion, The idea of practice. Available at: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Social-Work-and-Social-Exclusion/Michael-Sheppard/e/9780754647683/?tabname=custreview [accessed June 21, 2008] Singer, J. Theory in Social Work, LCSW available at: http://www.pitt.edu/~jbs15/theory.html [accessed June 21, 2008] Webb, S. Evidence based practice and Decision analysis in social work: An implementation mode, University of Sussex, England available at: http://jsw.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/2/1/45 [accessed June 21, 2008] Read More