The Nexus of Social Progress and Economic Inequality: Implications for the Grand Challenges for Social Work

ABSTRACT

In its extended history, social progress has become a metanarrative of the western world, one that has been both extolled and more recently pervasively dismissed. This review examines this history, including efforts to resurrect the concept, both through global research and within social work. Specifically, the advancement of social progress is incorporated as a central rationale of the Grand Challenges for Social Work. The problems inherent in the concept, particularly its nexus with economic inequality, as well as the many documented advances in social progress, form the basis for several implications for the Grand Challenges that are reviewed here. These include the need for a clearer conceptualization and expansion in the challenges to explicitly include quality of life, economic and racial justice, and mental health issues, and a more systematic integration of empirical methods into the initiative itself, such as a monitoring of the success of its 12 challenges. In addition, addressing the Grand Challenges will require the continued development of an array of social work practices aimed at both individual and systemic change.

KEYWORDS:

• Social progress
• social development
• economic inequality
• grand challenges for social work
• enlightenment
• human development
• great convergence

Professional interests

• Mental health policy: financing, state mental health, administrative decision making, psychiatric deinstitutionalization

• Relationship between mental illness and socio-economic status, including role of poverty, income inequality, and isolation

• Chaos, self-organization, and complex systems theory; nonlinear dynamic modeling

• Homelessness, policy and epidemiological research; Best case management practices

• Managed care outcome research; offset effect of psychiatric care on medical utilization

• Applications of expert systems, simulations, and related technologies in the human services

• Application of structural equation modeling and other multivariate statistical methods to problems in social policy

• Linking epidemiology of mental illness with allocative decision making in mental health policy

• Applications of complex systems and self-organization in human behavior theory

• Spirituality and social work

• Geography of mental health/psychiatric epidemiology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ As of Jan. 2, 20,20, partners involved with the development of the GCSW initiative include the: National Association of Social Workers, Council on Social Work Education, Society for Social Work and Research, Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education in Social Work, National Association of Deans and Directors in Social Work, and the St. Louis Group, as well as numerous universities.

² Variations of this saying have been attributed to several other historical personalities, in addition to Winston Churchill, including Elbert Hubbard, Frank O’Malley, and Mark Twain. Its original source is debatable.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christopher G. Hudson

Christopher Hudson, Ph.D., DCSW, first entered the field of social work as a community organizer on two Indian reservations at the tail end of the War on Poverty. Shortly after that, in 1974, he obtained his masters in social work from the University of Chicago. During the remainder of that decade he worked as clinical social worker in mental health and family service settings. He then completed his Ph.D. in social work at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1983, specializing in mental health policy and administration. He initially taught in MSW programs in Illinois, North Carolina, and since 1987, with Salem State University in Massachusetts. In addition to his responsibilities at Salem State, he has recently served as the elected president of the 7,700 member Massachusetts Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers (2013-2016). He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the NAMI-MA Research of the Year Award, and two William J. Fulbright Senior Faculty Awards, one in Hong Kong (2002/2003) and the other in Prague, CZ (2017/2018). He has also taught and conducted research in international mental health at universities in Auckland, Hong Kong, Jerusalem, and London. Dr. Hudson retired from Salem State in 2019.