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Overview
This innovative book explores social work as a series of encounters - between clients and social workers, social workers, their colleagues and other professionals, and more widely between citizens and the state. Providing a variety of social constructionist perspectives on the idea of the 'client', it presents in-depth discussion of the roles, language and contexts of meetings between social workers and their clients.International contributors present discussion on categorization, analyzing 'roles', and reflexive practice. Drawing data from a variety of sources, including legislation, client files and transcribed dialogues with clients, the book employs methods such as ethnography and narrative analysis to illuminate new understandings of clienthood.
Bringing together a rich variety of data, this volume forms an important contribution to major debates on the nature of social work.
Synopsis
This text evolved from a 1997 conference organized by the Department of Social Policy and Social Work, in Tampere, Finland, and two subsequent seminars held in 2001 in Tampere and Huddersfield, UK. Nineteen academics, researchers, and practitioners from Europe, Australia, and the U.S. contribute 14 chapters on clienthood construction in different human service contexts. Coverage includes the creation and re-creation of client identities in interview situations and other institutional practices; institutional dialogue in worker-client and professional-professional talk; the formation of professional or organizational frameworks, ideologies and conceptualization in social work practices; and the implications of such constructions. Distributed by Taylor & Francis. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR