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Schedule:
Sunday, January 14, 2024
Independence BR C, ML 4 (Marriott Marquis Washington DC)
* noted as presenting author
Background and Purpose: There is a growing interest in historical social work research as a means of broadening and deepening our knowledge of the individuals and institutions that shaped our professional history, analyzing ways in which social work research and practice reproduced hierarchies of domination and exclusion, and better understanding the historical conditions that gave rise to the present. Considering this, how do social work scholars mobilize historical evidence? And which methodological approaches are best suited to the production of social work history?
Methods: I began by conducting a historiographical analysis of historical articles published in social work journals and book-length manuscripts published between 1960 and 2020. In this analysis, I note the types of sources used by scholars, as well as the methods used to analyze different materials from the social work archive. Then I turn to a few of the most widely used methodological and theoretical approaches to historical research to identify which methods and approaches are best suited for social work research.
Results: There is a substantial literature that approaches the history of our field in a biographical and monumental mode. This method positions historical individuals as inspiring figures for present-day audiences, drawing upon our “founding mothers” as a point of pride or source of shame varies depending on how past actors’ work, politics, or personal qualities resonate in a contemporary political context. Moving forward, social work historians should explore methods of social history, or “history from below,” which attempts to reconstruct the past in a way that centers the lived experiences of historically marginalized people.
Conclusion and Implications: We should move toward a critical model of historical social work research that, following the core tenets of social work practice, prioritizes a sensitivity to context and lived experience. As we look toward the next decades of social work research, our approach to social work history should be guided by a historiographical approach that positions social work not in terms of individual achievements, but as a disciplinary and professional formation that is always embedded in a broader social, intellectual, and political context. This set of methods will guide research into complex historical questions: How can we read archives against the grain to see the agency of clients, who in some moments co-produced social work knowledge and practice, and in other moments resisted domination and hierarchy? How have social workers negotiated their range of political commitments, theories of change, and ideas about the state’s responsibility for social need? How were certain types of individuals constructed as social workers, while others—active in similar and sometimes overlapping political and social spheres, engaged in similar forms of practice—not identified as such? What forms of labor and practice were excluded from the formation of social work? How does this relate to categories of race, class, and gender? Critical historical research along these lines will allow us to see things about the past that can shape how we approach our work in the present.
Methods: I began by conducting a historiographical analysis of historical articles published in social work journals and book-length manuscripts published between 1960 and 2020. In this analysis, I note the types of sources used by scholars, as well as the methods used to analyze different materials from the social work archive. Then I turn to a few of the most widely used methodological and theoretical approaches to historical research to identify which methods and approaches are best suited for social work research.
Results: There is a substantial literature that approaches the history of our field in a biographical and monumental mode. This method positions historical individuals as inspiring figures for present-day audiences, drawing upon our “founding mothers” as a point of pride or source of shame varies depending on how past actors’ work, politics, or personal qualities resonate in a contemporary political context. Moving forward, social work historians should explore methods of social history, or “history from below,” which attempts to reconstruct the past in a way that centers the lived experiences of historically marginalized people.
Conclusion and Implications: We should move toward a critical model of historical social work research that, following the core tenets of social work practice, prioritizes a sensitivity to context and lived experience. As we look toward the next decades of social work research, our approach to social work history should be guided by a historiographical approach that positions social work not in terms of individual achievements, but as a disciplinary and professional formation that is always embedded in a broader social, intellectual, and political context. This set of methods will guide research into complex historical questions: How can we read archives against the grain to see the agency of clients, who in some moments co-produced social work knowledge and practice, and in other moments resisted domination and hierarchy? How have social workers negotiated their range of political commitments, theories of change, and ideas about the state’s responsibility for social need? How were certain types of individuals constructed as social workers, while others—active in similar and sometimes overlapping political and social spheres, engaged in similar forms of practice—not identified as such? What forms of labor and practice were excluded from the formation of social work? How does this relate to categories of race, class, and gender? Critical historical research along these lines will allow us to see things about the past that can shape how we approach our work in the present.