Classification of Social

Work Theories

SW1 History and Perspectives of

Social Work
Importance of Theory in and
for Social Work
• Theories help guide our behaviour.
• Knowledge in social work is essential – as it
enhances the practitioner’s ability to
become aware and gain mastery over the
environment.
• `…what is seen and done will depend on
the explanatory framework held’.
• example: juvenile delinquency, wife-
beating –our framework will guide our
interventions
• Studies of social work practitioners show that social
workers do not recognise the role of theory in their
practice.
• They claim that ``they have left behind theory in
class!! They are working intuitively..’’
• Authors also have suggested difference between
implicit and explicit theory.
• However, this only reinforces the social workers’
``touch-me-not’’ attitude towards theory.
• 1982 Corby’s study of social work in a team revealed
that most social workers could not explain how they
solved problems.
• Remained descriptive; didn’t have clear strategies
and means
• Craig (1984) : “we need to declare our position so
that others, particularly those with whom we work,
can see what we are about and where we want to
take them….if we can use our theories to find out
about the world, then our range of effective action
increases, we become more free..’’
 7 stages for social work
theorisation
• Investigation (at turn of century)
Mary Richmond’s social work as ``art of
helping’’.
We were ``doers’’ not ``thinkers’’.
Used commonsense in uncommon
situations.
Social worker as collector of facts; as
investigator
• Psychoanalysis (early 20s and 30s)
– The only theory used
– Shift from practical and material to
psychological and therapeutic
– Said to have been adopted by elite psychiatric
social workers
• Diagnostic and functional schools (1930s)
– Jesse Taft and Virginia Robinson under
influence of Otto Rank – beginnings of client-
centred therapy: active relationship with client
– Significance of helping relationship – tool in
problem-solving
Early 50s: Diagnostic and Functional
Schools

– Diagnostic (psychoanalytic) school: deterministic;

behaviour explained in terms of past events; early
childhood experiences; need to gain insights into
own psychological past. Centre of change in social
worker.
– Functional school: focus on the present; realities
of current situation which includes function of
responding agency (Rankian theory); importance
of experience of client and social worker
relationship in its own right; tool to facilitate and
enable client to enhance growth potential. Centre
of change in client.
 Acquisition

• Increase in number of theories in 60s:

learning theory, sociological theories
• Intellectual space occupied with
multitudinous theories
 Taking an Inventory
• Short fourth phase as realisation that
needed to list out theories and assess
relative worth of each item
• Roberts and Nee (1970) compiled the most
important theoretical items
• Includes psychodynamic approaches,
behavioural techniques, crisis
intervention and concept of
socialisation.
 Common purpose and
unification of theory (1970s)
• Common concept around which theories weaved:
social functioning
• Effort to develop unified theory as belief that common
to all social work theories were common concepts,
skills and principles
• Thus evolved Systems theory (success in biology,
ecology and engineering)
• Also rise of radical theories and resurgence of client-
centred, person-centred, subject-focused,
experientially flavoured practice.
 Classifying social work
theories
• Social work knowledge base was complex and
one unified theory did not provide all the
answers to work with people in context of their
social realities
• Leonard (British author) 1975 recognised two
major types of paradigm: physical sciences and
human sciences paradigms and four possible
positions for social work explanations..
Physical Sciences Paradigm

Position A: Position B.
Social sciences to become like General similarity between PS
physical sciences in objectivity and SS in objectives and
and measurement. methods. Stress on
Public knowledge determined inexactness of PS.
by sensory data. Importance of Probability in
both sciences.

Human Sciences Paradigm

Position C: Position D:
Subjective understanding SS are socially determined.
crucial in SS. Questions value- Ideological influences are
laden and answers relatively central. Important to study
value-free. socio-economic context of
theories.

4 positions for any social work

explanation
(Leonard 1975)
 Objective and subjective
approaches
• Objective approach:
– Social and physical world is external to individual
– Direct and deterministic bearing on development and
circumstances
– Search for order, regularity and causal links between social
phenomena which are external and real
– Eg. Emile Durkheim’s `social facts’ like customs, institutions,
beliefs. ``Suicide was socially determined’’ (study of suicides
across several European countries).
– Nature and nurture determine human nature for the objectivist
(Hollis’s `Plastic Man’ (1977): can be programmed and
condtioned a human nature is malleable and predictable in
certain situations).
 Subjective Approach
• People’s minds create sense and order in natural objects
and people’s behaviour for the subjectivist.
• Knowledge gained through personal experience
• No natural regularities in people’s behaviour or social
affairs.
• Meanings generated through interactions with people.
• Eg. Suicide describes some deaths and not others based
on how it is viewed by different people (Atkinson 1971
and 1978).
• With the subjective approach, human
nature enjoys free will; Hollis’s self-
determined individual ``Autonomous
Man’’: person who interprets, reflects,
plans, decides, acts intentionally and is
responsible for his/her choices.
 Order-conflict debate
• Attention on degree of equilibrium of a social
system
• Two opposing views: of regulation and of social
change – alternate models to analysing social
processes
• Burrell and Morgan (1979) have reviewed the
debate and reformulate the contrast in terms of:
sociology of regulation and sociology of radical
change.
 Sociology of regulation
• Refers to work of theorists who explain society as
hanging together and not falling apart due to a coherent
and cohesive unity of parts.
• Analogy with the natural and mechanical world
• Society functions like the body, organically: structures
refer to the complex whole; the way the parts are strung
together’
• Functions refer to what the individual parts do in relation
to each other.
• Emile Durkheim’s ``structural functionalism’’ represents
this style of social analysis.
• The system through its laws and welfare agents
seeks to return the individual to a proper state of
social functioning.
• Any deviance from societal norms and standards
of conduct, self-care and financial independence
would lead to social control from social workers,
police, courts, and other officials in society.
• If the individual fails to respond and
`malfunction’, he/she is socially isolated –
will lie in jail, mental hospital or fringe
communities.
• They threaten the values and assumptions
built into everyday ``normal’’ life.
 Conflict and social change
• Strife is a major feature of social life.
• While differences, divisions and
inequalities are said to hold the society
together in the functionalist model, they
threaten to pull it apart in the conflict
model.
• The powerful rule and oppress the weak;
feelings of injustice and inequality fuel
conflict and result in social change.
• Radical analyses reveal:
– Who is benefiting from established
arrangements
– Trace how domination is sustained
– Suggest what needs to be done to shift the
balance in power, interests and resources.
 Sociology of change

Radical Radical
Humanists: Structuralists
The raisers of :
consciousness The
revolutionarie
s
Subjecti Objecti
ve ve
Interpretivist Functionalists:
s: The seekers The Fixers
after meaning
Sociology of regulation
Social work theories for each
paradigm
• The Fixers: Integrated Social Work Practice
and Ecosystems Perspective/
psychoanalytic and behavioural
• The Seekers after Meaning: Strengths
perspective/ client centered approaches
• Raisers of consciousness and the revolutionaries: Radical
Practice and Feminist Social Work
• Radical Humanism (Feminist Theory and Practice):
– Mixes humanism with politics (personal is political)
– Appreciation of individual’s subjective condition set
against a society in conflict
– RH critiques society as it affects people’s state of
mind. Many of the problems are understood in terms
of dehumanising features of modern society.
 Radical Practice
– RH wants to also act: release full potential of the
human spirit, freeing it from distorting effects of
societal inequities within capitalistic system.
– Use Paulo Dreier's conscientisation processes for
greater class consciousness.
– Ivan Illich claims that expert-imposed answers are
alien. He calls the doctors, social workers and other
professionals as `disabling professions’ as they
perpetuate the client’s oppressed condition.
 Radical Structuralism

• Social arrangements are created by the society’s

economic arrangements. The state is a mechanism
for one class to dominate over another: thus explain
social problems in terms of consequence of capitalist
mode of production.
• To understand the material world, need to
understand the underlying economic structures or
conditions
• RS sees society changing and evolving not
through cooperative efforts but conflicts of
interest, power and resources.
• Groups with varying interests interact and
through conflict lead to a changing economic and
social order. (eg. of Marxist practice)
 Conclusion

• Theories for social work and Theories of

social work
• Theory of social work implies theory for
social work as it informs practice.
• Entry points multiple
• Not on continuum
• Eclectic
 Reference

• Howe, David (1987): An Introduction to

Social Work Theory. Making Sense in
Practice. England: Wildwood House Pvt
Limited.