VNSW xin trân trọng giới thiệu danh mục một số bài viết chính trong tạp chí Journal of Social Work, số tháng 4.2011. Quý vị cần đọc bài viết nào, xin liên lạc qua email: khamtv@gmail.com hoặc để lại lời nhắn (kèm email) ở đây

1. John Wallace and Bob Pease; Neoliberalism and Australian social work: Accommodation or resistance? Journal of Social Work April 2011 11: 132-142,

• Summary: Since the mid-1970s the Australian welfare state has faced a continuing crisis of resourcing and legitimation. Social work as a central entity within the welfare state has been challenged in terms of to its value base and relevance. As with much of the Western world, this challenge has been heightened with the rise of neoliberalism, which has pervaded most aspects of Australian society. Neoliberalism has consequently had a profound effect upon Australian social workers. The challenges to the Australian welfare state and social work are from without and within, by neoliberal ideas and its practices.

• Findings: While neoliberalism’s relationship to social work as a broad theme is explored in the literature, the complexity of marketization and inclusive aspects have not been considered in any detail in relation to social work. The evidence in the Australian context is even slimmer, and as a consequence the particularity of the Australian welfare state and its relationship to neoliberalism, and the consequences for Australian social work, remains largely untested. Furthermore, while there are some indications of the day to day impact on social work in the context of a post-welfare state regime, little work has been conducted on the capacity of neoliberalism to infiltrate social work through its new institutions of the social and thus become embedded in social work.

• Application: This article lays the foundations for a research project to examine the extent to which neoliberalism has become embedded in Australian social work and how social workers and social work educators are responding to these hegemonic influences. What are the ways in which social workers have become complicit in neoliberalism? Is Australian social work part of the neoliberal project to the point where neoliberalism has become part of its understandings and everyday activity? It is hoped that through this research, a more sophisticated understanding of the impact of neoliberalism on social work will contribute to the revitalization of critical social work in Australia and forms of resistance to the neoliberal project.

2. Michael O'Brien;  Equality and fairness: Linking social justice and social work practice;  Journal of Social Work April 2011 11: 143-158,

• Summary: Social justice lies at the heart of social work practice and is used by practitioners to describe their practice. That practice is primarily described at the individual level.

• Findings: Equality and fairness are core aspects of social justice and are drawn on extensively by social work practitioners in this research project to define social justice and are reflected in their practice. The two terms are, however, given a range of diverse meanings by practitioners. Those meanings are translated into and reflected in their practice.

• Application: There are important implications for social work education, the social work profession and social work practice in the diverse ways in which the terms are understood and used.

3. Susan Young and Joanna Zubrzycki; Educating Australian social workers in the post-Apology era: The potential offered by a ‘Whiteness’ lens; Journal of Social Work April 2011 11: 159-173,

• Summary: The Australian Prime Minister’s 2008 historic Apology to the Stolen Generations gives Australian social work an opportunity to confront its past complicity in Australian Indigenous disadvantage and embrace the development of Indigenous social work as central for practice. Critical Whiteness¹ theory in social work curricula could assist the development of Indigenous social work as a core approach by challenging the ongoing and largely un-reflexive practices emanating from social work’s Euro-centric heritage with its often taken-for-granted knowledges and principles which negatively affect Indigenous peoples.

• Findings: Recent professional and theoretical attention on critical Whiteness highlights race privilege, questions the invisibility and continuing invisibilization of race, critiques previously taken-for-granted Western knowledges and practices, and facilitates the development of countering practice approaches. Research studies reveal some practitioners to be aware of the need for different practices as well as some who practice differently without realizing they are using critical Whiteness principles.

• Application: Critical Whiteness theory in the social work curriculum offers a strong conceptual and practical opportunity for students and practitioners to become more racially cognizant in their work with Indigenous people, allowing this work to be more effective in the profession’s social justice mission as well as decreasing some of the extant colonizing practices.

4. Kate van Heugten; Registration and social work education: A golden opportunity or a Trojan horse?;  Journal of Social Work April 2011 11: 174-190,

• Summary: The Social Workers Registration Act (2003) introduced a system of voluntary statutory registration of the social work occupation in Aotearoa New Zealand. This was hailed as a measure that would protect the public from unsafe practices, and enhance the status of the profession. More recently, however, commentators have noted that these positive effects may not necessarily be forthcoming. This article explores the impact of registration on educational programmes, by placing regulation of the occupation in the context of hegemonic neoliberalism.

• Findings: Neoliberal approaches to social care not only constrain the delivery of services, but attempt to shape the perspectives of the social care workforce. Education is a potentially powerful tool for achieving that shaping. Where statutory regulation of social work is in force, competency based training threatens to supplant critical analysis, which is a hallmark of higher education. To retain viability as an academic discipline, social work educators must champion social work’s continuing role in analysing and theorizing the distribution of power in social welfare and social care.

• Application: Social work educators have a role in supporting practitioners, who struggle to maintain disciplinary integrity whilst employed within 21st-century human services, by continuing to engage in critical debates, and advancing knowledge about the theory—practice nexus. In advancing such knowledge, they also have much to offer other disciplines in institutions of higher education that are looking to explicate their utility in the ‘real world’.

5. Barbara Staniforth, Christa Fouché, and Michael O'Brien; Still doing what we do: Defining social work in the 21st century; Journal of Social Work April 2011 11: 191-208

• Summary: Members of the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers (ANZASW) were asked to provide their definition of social work. Over 300 responses were analysed thematically in order to determine if practitioner views corresponded to recent shifts in social work education and theory which emphasized the importance of social change, strengths based perspectives and the importance of local and indigenous contexts.

• Findings: The findings demonstrate that while there was some recognition of social change and strengths-based perspectives in the definitions of social work provided, that those working in the field remain focused on ‘helping individuals, families and groups’ engage in change. Respondents did not, for the most part, acknowledge local or indigenous perspectives in their definitions.

• Applications: Results from this study may be useful for social work professional organizations, and social work educators, students and future researchers who are interested in the definition of social work and its scopes of practice.

NGUỒN: SAGE Publication