Poverty and the political: wresting the political out of and into social work theory, research and practice

ABSTRACT

This article explores the relations between social work theory, research and practice in regard to poverty, arguing for the need to bring the political back into these three dimensions of the discipline/profession. Throughout the last decades, social work has been treating practice as a discrete technology, and left outside questions stemming from different theoretical approaches regarding the desired relationship between social workers and service users. This trend has divorced practice from its political dimensions. In this article I suggest to bring the political into social work, and specifically to exemplify the implications of using the context of power imbalance as an analytical framework for theory, research and practice with people in poverty. This move is illustrated through the example of a developing paradigm – ‘Poverty Aware Social Work Paradigm’.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical perspectives
• human rights/social justice
• practice/theory/methods
• values/ethics
• poverty

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Michal Krumer-Nevo is associate professor at the Spitzer Department of Social Work, and the director of the Israeli Center for Qualitative Research of People and Societies, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel