Agency, Community, and Profession: Methods and Materials for Researching Diverse Social Work Histories

The decades-long decline of historical research methods within social work PhD programs has left a vacuum in many scholars' skillsets (Abramovitz et al, 2021). To revive these skills and to build research capacity within our profession, this workshop presents strategies for systematic historical research with a focus on appropriate materials and methods within three common domains of social welfare history investigation: agencies, the profession, and community-based approaches.

Agency Domain: Drawing upon examples of historical work relying on case records (e.g., Gordon, 1988) and work with 1930s-era records of a Detroit-based social welfare agency that provided economic support to older adults, the first speaker will present strategies for accessing case records, as well as for assessing the promises and limitations of using case records to illuminate client experiences and past social work practices. Recognizing that detailed narratives written by caseworkers are a rich source of information, she will discuss approaches to using this information to account for the biases and professional agendas present in these narratives.

Professional Domain: The second speaker will share her method for investigating the history of the social work profession. She will highlight the interactive process of developing research questions and determining research methods. She will also emphasize the importance of "periodizing" the work: the process of contextualizing the political-economic, social, intellectual, and public discourses of the era in order to understand events. The importance of definition of terms, theorized explanations, and evidential materials will be presented. She will present examples of congressional debate analysis, professional journal analysis, and mixed materials to thoroughly examine historical questions in this domain.

Community Domain: The third speaker will present methods for researching social work efforts in local communities. She will demonstrate looking at local archives and newspapers to find evidence of Progressive-era social welfare experiments. Using an example from Georgia, she will help researchers think about locating early social welfare interventions--in this case, efforts to help women and children working in cotton mills--through searching the archival records of Women's Clubs and public schools. Realizing that local archives often primarily store the papers of prominent white families, the speaker will provide an example of how selected documents can be read "against the grain" (Benjamin, 1973) to illuminate the agency of marginalized individuals. The importance of oral history and genealogy in understanding mutual aid efforts in poorer communities and communities of color will be highlighted.

Participants and conveners will work together, using online archival and community resources, as well as their imaginations, to experience the iterative process of methods and research question development. They will investigate available public and digitized material, as well as locate places to find relevant material. Participants will leave with methods and materials to further investigate their own research questions.

REFERENCES Abramovitz, M., Curran, L., Harty, J. S., Toft, J., & Tomczak, S. M. (2023. Bringing history back into social work education. Journal of Social Work Education, 1-7. Benjamin, W. (1969). Illuminations. Schocken Books. Gordon, L. (1988). Heroes of their own lives. Penguin Books.

--Abstract 16281 modified by 76.195.74.49 on 4-13-2025-->