Notes in Support of a Relational Social Work Perspective: A Critical Review of the Relational Literature with Implications for Macro Practice

Abstract

The authors review the literature that calls for the incorporation of relational theory into social work practice. Two strands of relational theory are important to developing a relational social work perspective: the psychoanalytic and the feminist. Based on a feminist understanding of relationality, Dorothy Smith has provided an alternative sociological perspective that can inform social work practice on the macro level, which she has termed institutional ethnography. In looking at ways that relational theory can inform macro practice in social work we can begin to formulate a more general relational perspective—beyond the clinical—in social work.

Keywords:

• relational psychoanalytic theory
• feminist theory
• institutional ethnography
• macro social work practice