Recognising the Other, understanding the Other: a brief history of social work and Otherness

Abstract

Recognising the Other, understanding the Other is an essential question in social work but it is an entangled one. I have chosen to highlight the multi-layered nature of the question of Othering in social work from a historical point of view and discuss current understandings and alternatives for social work’s implication in this question. From the beginnings of social work and the ‘social question,’ to categorical knowledge of groups and professional competencies that rest on a Self/Other division, contextualised structural knowledge and positions of social citizenship, an ethics of the encounter, and an understanding of particularities stemming from simultaneous multiplicity views that transform the landscape of the Self and the Other.

Keywords:

• social work history
• marginalisation
• Otherness
• transnationalism
• social work ethics

Notes

1. I wish to thank here the two anonymous reviewers who provided helpful comments to an earlier version of this text.