Resolving uncertainties? The contribution of some recent feminist ethical theory to the social professions

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Uncertainty is a long-recognized hazard of working life in the social professions and, as post-modernists have re-emphasized, is not to be dissolved away, but celebrated, as in a recent address to the Amsterdam School of Social Work (Bauman 2000). Ethical theories, it has been suggested, can contribute to a better understanding of the depth and complexity of uncertainty in social work, and that uncertainty is a condition of ethical responsibility. However, in the difficult circumstances commonly encountered, some of the uncertainty needs to be resolved as well as possible. The intention of this paper is to demonstrate the relevance of some recent feminist ethical theory to the practices of the social professions, not only in relation to the ethics of practice but also with reference to the epistemological and research methodological issues with which they are intimately connected. I will contend that what they have to offer significantly advances issues discussed by postmodernist theorists, providing practical and theoretical guidance through a framework of concepts which assists the interrelated tasks of understanding and intervention in the social world. This paper is part of a wider project, providing an ethical dimension to work already published by the author on social assessment (Clifford 1998).