Postmodern Social Work

How should social workers adapt to a time of widespread instability and uncertainty? How can social work practice account for the ever-increasing infiltration of technology and media images into our daily lives and mental states? In this book, Ken Moffatt turns to postmodern philosophy’s grappling with late capitalism and the omnipresence of technology in order to develop a new approach to reflective social work practice and critical pedagogy. Postmodern Social Work attempts to reconcile postmodern thinkers with the realities of teaching social work to diverse student populations in a precarious era. Moffatt advocates an ideal of reflective practice that allows social workers to combine direct experience, social welfare, and social justice. Through a series of interlocking essays focused on the theoretical underpinnings of reflective practice in the context of social work education, he explores the implications of postmodern theory for social work practice. Drawing on thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Julia Kristeva, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari, Moffatt lays out a path forward for reflective social work, providing new ways of thinking that collapse old categories and integrate direct practice with community engagement and social analysis. Postmodern Social Work offers an approach to practice and teaching that considers the shifting landscape of social change while remaining true to social work’s primary concerns of inclusion and justice.

Globalization challenges social work with constant social change, making a social worker's job and the task of social work education more complex and uncertain. Post-modern thinking suggests that social workers must learn to cope with complexity in ways that are in tension with the increasingly managerialist organization of the social services. The authors explore and question the concepts of 'postmodern', 'international' and 'global' in light of growing interest in international social work in the early 21st century. Emphasizing the importance of critical reflection, they argue that educational colonization can be challenged and effective anti-discriminatory and pro-equality practice and education promoted. Each chapter provides direct examples of how students and academics can apply these ideas in practice and in their learning, and how they can respond to and influence the challenges and changes that are taking place. The authors also examine educational and practice issues arising from attempts to incorporate international understanding into national practice and education systems. The book is designed to be stimulating to academics interested in international social work while remaining accessible to practitioners and students without international experience.

Transforming Social Work Practice shows that postmodern theory offers new strategies for social workers concerned with political action and social justice. It explores ways of developing practice frameworks, paradigms and principles which take advantage of the perspectives offered by postmodern theory without totally abandoning the values of modernity and the Enlightenment project of human emancipation. Case studies demonstrate how these perspectives can be applied to practice.

Transforming Social Work Practice shows that postmodern theory offers new strategies for social workers concerned with political action and social justice. It explores ways of developing practice frameworks, paradigms and principles which take advantage of the perspectives offered by postmodern theory without totally abandoning the values of modernity and the Enlightenment project of human emancipation. Case studies demonstrate how these perspectives can be applied to practice.

This book provides an in-depth and very modern approach to clinical social work with clients in mental health settings. This is a revision of a book originally titled Clinical Social Work Practice in Community Mental Health. The "community mental health" approach is now dated, and this revision features "behavioral" mental health, which is a newer and "postmodern" approach. The postmodern perspective is client-oriented, and helps the practitioner to be aware of underlying biases. This perspective is explained in Chapter 1 and is included in every chapter by featuring clients' "voices," particularly at the beginning and end of the chapters. Important new topics include managed care and measurement of outcomes, both of which are woven throughout and featured in Chapters 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, and 13. For social work practitioners specializing in mental health.

Postmodern ideas have been vastly influential in the social sciences and beyond. However, their impact on the study of social policy has been minimal. Postmodernity and the Fragmentation of Welfare analyses the potential for a postmodern or cultural turn in welfare as it treats postmodernity as an evolving canon -from the seminal works of Baudrillard, Foucault and Lyotard, through to recent theories of the 'risk society'. Already disorientated by globalisation, new technologies and the years of new right ascendancy, welfare faces a significant challenge in the postmodern. It suggests that, rather than universality and state provision, the new social policy will be consumerised and fragmented -a welfare state of ambivalence. With contributions from authors coming from a variety of fields offering very different perspectives on postmodernity and welfare Postmodernity and the Fragmentation of Welfare also keeps social policy's intellectual inheritance in view. By exploring ways in which theorisations of postmodernity might improve understanding of welfare issues in the 1990s and assessing the relevance of theories of diversity and difference to mainstream and critical social policy traditions, this book will be and essential text for all students of social policy, social administration, social work and sociology.

Appraises key issues in the contested fields of postmodernism and feminism, focusing on applications in relation to practice, research and education in social work.

Postmodernism, Religion, and the Future of Social Work discusses the benefits and disadvantages of the postmodern philosophy as a foundation for social work and human service practice. Social work students and practitioners will learn about the developments that have shaped postmodern thinking as they pertain to society in general, as well as to the profession of social work. By exploring this increasingly popular philosophy, Postmodernism, Religion, and the Future of Social Work provides you with methods and theories that help you evalute contemporary problems more effectively, resulting in better services for your clients. Challenging traditional social work practices, Postmodernism, Religion, and the Future of Social Work examines postmodernism in terms of a world view that is emerging along indeterminate and ambiguous lines. With the goal of helping you provide more helpful and relevant services to your clients, Postmodernism, Religion, and the Future of Social Work discusses many themes related to postmodernism, including: understanding how principles of postmodernism are characterized by ongoing change, indeterminacy, and relativism reviewing the historical movement of a postmodern perspective and its present implications on social work practice supporting the strengths perspective through a postmodernist approach discussing some unintended and potentially negative consequences of postmodernism that arise from uncritically adopting postmodernistic principles analyzing the nature of social work and social welfare in Britain and the Western World to gain insight into how social theory is associated with postmodernity, postmodernization, and post-Fordism exploring the postmodernistic relationship between institutionalized religions and social services provided by religious auspices Although postmodernism offers a new and different way of understanding social problems and of structuring social work practice, this text urges you to be critical in the evaluation of its aspects and outlines some possibly negative outcomes in certain situations. In evaluating postmodernism and its relevance to social services and social problems, Postmodernism, Religion, and the Future of Social Work offers theories and research into methods that go beyond traditional practices to assist you in providing effective and relevant services for your clients.

Ritzer's long-awaited text in Postmodern Social Theory is a readable & coherent introduction to the fundamental ideas & most important thinkers in postmodern social theory.

By using a series of studies of contemporary mainstream Hollywood movies - Blue Velvet, Wall Street, Crimes and Misdemeanors, When Harry Met Sally, sex lies and videotape, Do the Right Thing - Norman K Denzin explores the tension between ideas of the postmodern, and traditional ways of analyzing society. The discussion moves between two forms of text: social theory and cinematic representations of contemporary life. Denzin analyzes the ideas of society embedded in poststructuralism, postmodernism, feminism, cultural studies and Marxism through the ideas of key theorists (Mills, Baudrillard, Barthes, Habermas, Jameson, Bourdieu, Derrida and others). He relates these ideas to the problematic of the postmodern self as e