The Question of Social Justice in Social Work: A Systematic Examination
With increased longevity of all societies, the role of social work is evolving, and so is the conceptualization of its social justice goals. Although social work’s commitment to promote the social justice agenda is laudable, the kind of social justice that social work as a profession purports to champion is still debated. Inherent in this debate is the ongoing re-examination and exposition of who we are as a profession. While social work literature has addressed these definitional challenges, gaps remain in terms of conceptual consensus. Further, literature examining both conceptual and methodological construct of social justice is very sparse and fragmented. As such, our purpose were to explore: (1) how social work literature conceptualized social justice, (2) whether this conceptualization changed over time, and (3) how social justice was measured in social work.
Methods
We followed Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) method to conduct a systematic examination. For consistency and comparability, we limited the search within social work journals. The search strategy aimed at identifying empirical studies that addressed social justice theorizing, methods, and measures. Inclusion criteria were limited to studies 1) published in peer-reviewed social work journals in the last five years, 2) published in English; 3) sampled populations in the US, 4) conducted using qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods approach, and/or (5) conceptual piece of literature that extensively discussed social justice and social work interactions. The main topic criterion was focused on the conceptual and methodological domain of social justice. An initial database search returned 405,803 potentially relevant studies. The resulting sample for this study was composed of 34 studies published between 2008 and 2013. The PRISMA 27-item checklist and flow diagrams encompassing four phases were used for data analysis.
Results
Our results revealed that the definition and measure of social justice in social work is still very much an open question. In a broad sense, there were two central ideas that permeated within the social work literature in the social justice discourse, namely equality and fairness. While this simple statement ignores many significant and substantial debates about their definition, meaning, and application, and in doing so overlooks substantial debates, one or other, commonly, both of these terms appear in the debates within the general social justice literature and across the range of social science disciplines. These results further support the ground breaking case study by Longres and Scanlon (2001), which indicated that social workers appeared to lack a coherent sense of what constitutes social justice, sometimes equating it with Rawls's fairness model of individual rights or a call for equality between social groups.
Conclusion and Implications
We provide implications for social work research and policy. Focusing on the strengths perspective of social work, we compare Amartya Sen’s idea of justice on human development and capability to engage in evolving conceptual operationalization and measurement of social justice goals. We affirm that continual dialogue regarding social justice must proceed in the coming years if we are to move through this conceptual and methodological muddle.