(European Social Work Education and Practice) 1st ed. 2021 Edition
by Walter Lorenz (Editor), Zuzana Havrdová (Editor), Oldřich Matoušek (Editor)
This book presents a unique analysis of the learning derived from
East-West contacts in social work and reflects on the discipline's
inalienable trans-national dimensions, of high actuality in the face of
the re-emergence of nationalisms. The fundamental transformations in
Europe subsequent to the revolutions of 1989 had a profound impact on
social work in terms of raising sharply the profession’s relationship
with politics. The exchanges between western schools of social work and
the emergent academic partner institutions in former Communist countries
formed a valuable testing ground for the essential principles and
competences of social work in terms of their universal scientific basis
on the one hand and their regard for cultural and national values and
contexts on the other.
The chapters in this contributed volume
focus on lessons derived from fundamental social and political
transformations, highlighted by East-West encounters and intra-national
divisions, and thereby have important messages for mastering impending
transformations in the light of the global COVID-19 health crisis. They
demonstrate how cultural and social divisions can be addressed
constructively with direct implications for training and practice in
dramatically changing contexts:
- Lithuanian social work’s claim to professional autonomy vs. authoritarianism in popular and political culture
- Social work between civil society and the state – lessons for and from Hungary in a European context
- When
Europe’s East, West, North and South meet: learning from cross-country
collaboration in creating an international social work master programme
- Nordic-Baltic
cooperation in social work researcher education: A Finnish perspective
on the impact on scientific, historical and linguistic similarities and
differences
- Intra-national similarities and differences in
social work and their significance for developing European dimensions of
research and education
- Social work, political conflict and European society: reflections from Northern Ireland
European Social Work After 1989: East-West Exchanges Between Universal Principles and Cultural Sensitivity is
an invaluable resource for social work educators; social work
practitioners confronted with national and international divisions;
students of social work, of social administration and policy; and any
policy researcher with a comparative focus.
