Chinese Journal of Sociology ›› 2018, Vol. 38 ›› Issue (4): 100-132.

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Why Has Social Work Moved Towards “De-Social Reform”? An Analysis of a Hundred Years' History of American Social Work

LI Wei   

  1. Department of Social Work, School of Social Development, Yangzhou University
  • Online:2018-07-20 Published:2018-07-20
  • Supported by:

    This paper is supported by National Social Science Foundation Youth Project of China "The Study on the Identity Balance and Social Work Intervention of Persons Serving Sentences in Urban Communities"(16CSH066).

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Abstract:

Social work always insists on the person-in-environment perspective, in which both client and environment are the goals of intervention.In other words, individual therapy and social reform are dual missions of social work and they should be equally important to the profession. However, in practice, social work field suffers so-called "de-social reform,"a phenomenon that individual services are accentuated and social reform agenda isneglected. A combination of internal factors such as professionalization of social work and external factors such as political conservatism, economic marketization and managerialism, and cultural individualism is responsible for the "de-social reform."These elements promote scientism, social control, profit and efficiency, and individual freedom and responsibility.As a result, social change is regarded as unscientific, risky to government, unprofitable, inefficient and inconsistent with individualism. America saw the prevalence of these elements and "de-social reform" in the 1920s, between the middle 1930s and the 1960s, as well as in the 1980s. It should be understood that "de-social reform" in social work is the product of these external factors, among which individualism plays a leading role.

Key words: de-social reform, social reform, social work, individual therapy