Foreword

Stanley Witkin, whose career path has led him from the ideological and methodological inclinations of positivism and modernism to the penchants of social constructionism, has put together a book that begins with that journey but quickly branches out into a rich and compelling accounting of what social constructionism means for social work theory, practice, and pedagogy. A central constructionist notion is that words, images, and ideas constitute the world for us; words do not reflect what is “real,” as modernists and positivists would have it. In that spirit, Witkin makes it clear at the outset that disparate theoretical and ideological allegiances and preferences will value different kinds of information, concepts, and ideologies and will, therefore, lead to different kinds of talk and practices. In the case of social constructionism, however, what practitioners do in their routines, how they relate to clients, and the “tools” they use are always emerging from the dialogues, the conversations, and the interactions with individual clients and colleagues. That assumption, he says, gives us “greater freedom to respond to the nuances and particularities of the situation” (see Chapter 1).

Importantly, and clearly within the purview of a social constructionist ethos, Witkin writes in a style that is accessible and conversational. The late pedagogue of freedom, Paulo Friere, wrote of the contrast between “banking education” whereby the oppressor, however well-intentioned, stifles true engagement and conceals the students’ power and wisdom from them through the use of foreign or strange concepts and theories. Liberating education, on the other hand, regards “dialogue as indispensable to the act of cognition which unveils reality” (Friere, 2001, p. 83). It is in this spirit that Witkin has compiled this book. He has brought together contributors to this volume who know the importance of discourse and dialogue, and it is reflected in their writing, their teaching, their practice, and their understanding of social work.

Over the years, Jerome Bruner (1990) has written of the critical distinction, both in professional discourse and in ordinary conversation, between the paradigmatic and the narrative, or, more simply, between theory and story. We know a lot about the paradigmatic; it reigns supreme in our education, and professions, including social work, aspire to it. In its most developed form, it is a logical, scientific, formal, even mathematical system of explanation. But books like this one bring to social work a much needed corrective to the paradigmatic ambition, and help put practice, research, and teaching in social work back in the niche where it can acknowledge, appreciate, affirm, and, most importantly, act in the daily world of clients. The significance of this book to the social work profession cannot be overstated. Students, teachers, and researchers will find here an abundance of ideas and practices to leaven the work that they do on behalf of clients and in the service of social justice.