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Jennifer Donovan, David Rose, Marie Connolly, A Crisis of Identity: Social Work Theorising at a Time of Change, The British Journal of Social Work, Volume 47, Issue 8, December 2017, Pages 2291–2307, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcw180
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Abstract
Social work is a discipline innately engaged in and influenced by the political and social context in which it is practised. The disciplinary response to the constancy of social change, however, has demonstrated a profession continually dogged by issues of identity, legitimacy and direction. This paper compares the debates of the UK and USA as examples of very differing national responses, and suggest they are clear examples of how national responses to global change in political and philosophical environments are central to the identity dilemma and the form it takes. It presents Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social actions as a way of understanding both the disciplinary responses to change and the pervading sense of crisis that can accompany them. The paper argues that the crisis felt by the discipline can be seen as an expression of conflicting aspects of Bourdieu’s framework and that, in understanding this, it is possible to provide a range of points at which the discipline may act in order to reduce the sense of adversity, moving beyond the weakness of perpetual ‘crisis’ and closer towards a position of adaptive strength.