Social Work and the State: Reckonings, Paradoxes, and Future Directions

From the inception of social work to the development of contemporary social welfare policies and practices, our profession has been a core partner in the growth and expansion of various state functions, policies, and practices. Although scholarship has examined aspects of how the state affects social work practice, as well as partnerships between social work and state institutions, the literature provides far less insight into the normative position of the discipline. How should social work, as a profession and academic discipline, relate to the state and state power? Rather than prescribing a wholesale normative position for social work, this article provides a framework for analyzing the professions’ relationships to the state. The aim is to catalyze a more robust analytical framework that will help guide scholarship and practice through an examination of long-standing contradictions. I begin by defining the state and normativity in the context of social work, followed by a brief examination of the reckonings and paradoxes currently being taken up. These foundational discussions provide the necessary context for the article’s primary contribution, applying the Within, Beyond, and Against the State framework to conceptualize our multifaceted relationship with the state and to consider directions for future scholarship.