The Rank and File Movement: The Relevance of Radical Social Work Traditions to Modern Social Work Practice

Social work, like many fields, has sometimes suffered from an inadequate and distorted understanding of its own history. A profession\u27s inattention to its past is an unfortunate thing. As Clark Chambers has noted, the study of social work history provides models for social work practice and yields insights into social processes (31 11-22). Works like Cloward and Piven\u27s Regulating the Poor have demonstrated the rich potential of the social welfare case study for social analyses (4). In addition, examination of goals and motivations of specific social workers in the past have served to further our understanding of professional issues and problems of the present (see for example, 16, 21)