Zicht op sociale complexiteit. Over het belang van wetenschappelijke perspectieven in sociaal werk

Sociaal werk is een kunde, vergelijkbaar met gezondheidskunde en onderwijskunde. Dat wil zeggen een interdisciplinaire integratie van kennisontwikkeling en praktijkverbetering vanuit een eigenstandige focus. Belangrijke toeleverende disciplines voor sociaal werk zijn met name economie, ethiek, gezondheidskunde, kennistheorie, pedagogiek, psychologie, recht en sociologie. Als onderdeel van een landelijk project gericht op het vaststellen van de gemeenschappelijke theoretische kennisbasis voor sociaal-werkopleidingen interviewden wij, de auteurs van dit artikel, academische specialisten over toeleverende disciplines. De geïnterviewden benoemen niet alleen een onderscheidende disciplinaire blik die relevant is voor sociaal werk, maar onderscheiden binnen zo’n blik ook meerdere paradigmatische perspectieven. Daarbij valt op dat wel vaker één perspectief binnen de disciplinaire blik een bijzondere positie inneemt. Redenen daarvoor zijn dat zo’n perspectief een meer omvattend karakter bezit (maatschappelijk, historisch, internationaal, intercultureel), de grenzen van het vakgebied overschrijdt (interdisciplinair) en/of een expliciete (ethische, politieke) stellingname insluit (engagement).

Sociaal werk is gericht op het bevorderen van de sociale kwaliteit van samenleven door het verbeteren van het sociaal functioneren van individuen, systemen, groepen, netwerken en gemeenschappen. Onderscheidend voor sociaal werk als kunde is de blik die min of meer samenvalt met het sociaal model, en de daarin onderscheiden leefgebieden. De uiteenlopende blikken en perspectieven van toeleverende disciplines zijn voor sociaal werk van belang om binnen de kaders van het sociaal model greep te krijgen op sociale complexiteit. Het scala aan blikken en perspectieven stelt sociaal werkers in staat vanuit meerdere gezichtspunten en met enige afstand en diepgang naar de sociale werkelijkheid te kijken. Hierdoor kunnen zij meer aspecten van de complexe realiteit waarnemen dan binnen een enkel referentiekader mogelijk zou zijn. Hun inzichten en analyses, hun aanpakken en interventies zullen daarmee completer en rijker zijn, maar ook complexer. De diversiteit aan disciplinaire blikken en paradigmatische perspectieven vervult dan ook een onmisbare rol in sociaal werk praktijken en opleidingen.

An insight into social complexity. On the relevance of scientific perspectives in social work practice

Sometimes researchers find something they were not actually looking for. Horace Walpole coined the term “serendipity” for this phenomenon (Van Andel, 1994), and the discovery of penicillin by Ian Fleming may be the most appealing example of such serendipity. This article deals with such an unexpected discovery, albeit of a more modest nature, which came about as the result of a nationwide research project aimed at establishing a shared knowledge base for social work education in the Netherlands.

We, the authors of this article, formed the project group for this design-oriented research. A Delphi approach was used, consisting of three rounds: a digital survey and two expert meetings. The study was supervised by an advisory board, on whose advice we also interviewed several academic specialists about specific disciplinary viewpoints: economics, ethics, health science, law, pedagogics, psychology, sociology (and, additionally, social work). As a simple starter for these semi-structured interviews, we asked whether a specific disciplinary viewpoint (for instance an ethical one) could be discerned and, if so, what this boiled down to and whether it was relevant to social work practice. Not surprisingly, all respondents affirmed the existence of such a viewpoint and its relevance to social work.

However, our unexpected discovery was that all the interviews somehow revealed that a disciplinary viewpoint consists of several paradigmatic perspectives: each discipline encompasses multiple approaches, each of them based on more or less stable and consistent presuppositions, such as the psychodynamic and cognitive approaches in psychology. Between the academic discipline on the one hand and its knowledge that is relevant to social work on the other, there appears to be a layer of paradigmatic perspectives that are relevant to professional performance.

A further unexpected discovery was that most of the interviews demonstrated a hierarchical ordering between more limited and more transcending perspectives. The transcending nature of a paradigmatic perspective turned out to be threefold:

The perspective can be more encompassing than the other perspectives, for instance because of its societal, historical, international and/or intercultural approach (macro aspect);
The perspective exceeds the traditional boundaries of the discipline to which it belongs (interdisciplinary aspect);
The perspective encompasses an explicit ethical and/or political stance (engagement aspect).

In retrospect, the material collected and selected from the interviews can be analysed as an (unintended) explorative study concerning the relationship between disciplinary viewpoints and paradigmatic perspectives with regard to social work practice. All interviewees gave permission to use the summaries of the interviews for this article, for which we are grateful.

Three interviewees made an explicit distinction between a narrower and a broader perspective within their own discipline, and all emphasized that both perspectives were important to social work practice. Within economics – literally: the laws of the household – Professor Arjo Klamer made a distinction between a narrower interpretation (accounting) that concerns housekeeping, and a broader interpretation (ethical and cultural) that focuses for instance on the true meaning of having a home. Similarly, Dr Quirine Eijkman made a distinction within law between a narrower perspective (juridical) concerning the prevailing legal and financial rules, and a broader interpretation (sociological) concerning the understanding of how law functions in societies. Professor Micha de Winter made a distinction within pedagogy between a narrower interpretation (empirical), focusing on the peculiarities of children and the effectiveness of interventions, and a broader interpretation (societal and ethical) based on the conviction that pedagogical reality is far more complicated than that. The broader conception focuses on “pedagogical coalitions” (parents, peers, schools, neighbourhoods), and on questions of childrearing, socialization, identity development and citizenship.

Two other interviews focused more directly on an overarching perspective, without going into much detail concerning the narrower perspectives. Professor Johan Polder talked about the concept of societal health, which is basically the concept of positive health as formulated by Huber et al. (2016), complemented with a societal dimension. Social workers need to be aware of how aspects like living and working circumstances, income and debts can influence a person’s health. Professor Jan Willem Duyvendak argued that sociology is basically about interdependence, and that a historical and international approach is essential in order to enable social workers to take a critical stance regarding the dominant political and cultural discourses. Several interviewees stressed the importance of the ability to reflect critically and distance oneself from contemporary neoliberal and managerial approaches.

Concerning ethics, Professor Paul van Tongeren made a distinction between teleological and deontological approaches, as well as between more individualistic and more collectivistic approaches, resulting in four different perspectives. In ethics, there is no transcending perspective, as that would be dogmatic, but this does not mean that “anything goes”, as that would be relativistic. The challenge for professionals like social workers is to be able to take a firm and persuasive stance and at the same time to acknowledge the relativity of that stance.

Professor Hans van Ewijk pointed out that there are multiple perspectives in social work, such as the cultural, structural and faith-based approaches. However, a conjoint discourse is lacking; there is no agreement on how to even classify all these perspectives. Nevertheless, in his opinion the distinctive viewpoint of social work can be labelled as the social model: analysing and furthering the social functioning of individuals, groups and communities in contemporary social complexity.

We consider this multiplicity of perspectives to be crucial to professional practice because of its complex character. Schön (1983) uses many words that refer to this complexity: uniqueness; indeterminacy; interconnectedness; uncertainty; dynamism; instability; ambiguity; conflicts of values, interests, goals, purposes; disorder; mess. In the Netherlands, Van Ewijk (2010, 2014) has drawn attention to the social complexity of our times. We live in a world of open horizons, multiple truths and many uncertainties. We are no longer part of a single community but participate in many. Challenges in social functioning can arise in many life spheres, such as health, housing, debts, work, personal fulfilment. Social workers have to deal with these challenges in fluid times (Bauman, 2011) and under ambivalent policy regimes (Lipsky, 1980). Paradigmatic perspectives can help to make sense of this complexity, and transcending perspectives are especially valuable for dealing with ethical and political issues. Furthermore, the social model and the paradigmatic perspectives can help to further structure the “ill-structured domain” (Spiro & DeSchryver, 2009) of social work and its knowledge base. For social work, the social model is the framework within which all disciplinary viewpoints and paradigmatic perspectives can be integrated, in order to further the social quality of living together by improving the social functioning of individuals, groups, communities, networks and societies (Landelijke opleidingsoverleggen in het sociaal domein, 2017). Within this framework, disciplinary viewpoints and paradigmatic perspectives play an indispensable role in social work practices and education programmes.

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