Reinventing Critical Social Work :: Challenges from Practice, Context and Postmodernism

Although a critical tradition has existed in the social work profession since its inception more than a century ago, a distinct and internally diverse critical social work canon emerged only in the 1960s and 1970s. Substantial structural changes over the past four decades, including the rise of globalisation and market driven approaches to the management of human services, already threaten the continuation of critical practice traditions in social work. Indeed, some critical social workers have declared the halcyon days of activist practice have now passed. The paper reviews contemporary contests from within the critical tradition to the core assumptions of critical practice theory. These challenges arise from practice, from critical analyses of the changing environment of public administration and from postmodern analyses. It is argued that these contests provide sites for the reinvention of critical practice theory towards more collaborative and open ended approaches to activism in social work. By recognising the challenges from within, critical social workers can strengthen and diversify their capacity to forge critical approaches relevant to social work in the 21st century