Searching Again and Again. Inclusion ... - Oxford Journals

British Journal of Social Work (2001) 31, 271–285

Searching Again and Again. Inclusion, Heterogeneity and Social Work Research Emilia E. Martinez-Brawley Emilia E. Martinez-Brawley is Professor of Social Work and Distinguished Community Service Scholar at Arizona State University. She is the author of many articles on community theory, research and multicultural issues, and of several books, her most recent being Close to Home. Human Services and the Small Community (NASW Press, 2000). She has lectured extensively in the USA, Europe, Australia and Latin America. Correspondence to Emilia E. Martinez-Brawley, Professor of Social Work and Distinguished Community Service Scholar, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287–1802, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Summary Once upon a time there was a society of priests who built a Celestial City with gates secured by word combination locks. The priests were masters of the Word and, within the City, ascending levels of power and treasure became accessible to those who could learn ascendingly intricate levels of Word Magic. At the very top level, the priests became gods; and because they then had nothing left to seek, they engaged in games with which to pass the long hours of eternity. In particular, they liked to ride their strong, sure-footed steeds around and around the perimeter of heaven: now jumping word hurdles, now playing polo with concepts of the moon and the stars, now reaching up to touch that pinnacle, that Splinter of Refined Understanding called Superunderstanding, which was the brass ring of their merry-go-round (Williams, 1991, p. 1).

This story speaks to the elusive power and stronghold of paradigms and other intellectual games in the ‘ascendingly intricate’ spiral labelled the research process. It will be the purpose of this paper to address some of the exclusionary assumptions of recent paradigms in social work, in an effort to strip them of their mystical aura and open the way to more inclusionary scholarly habits and ‘ways of knowing’. The intent of this discussion is to legitimize the possibility of many alternatives for understanding the complex phenomena that surround the practice of social work in a very heterogeneous world. One of the best ways to include those who are ‘not like us’—whoever the ‘us’ may be, is to travel the roads of many ‘parallel universes’ (Updike, 1997, p. 16).

 2001 British Association of Social Workers

272 Emilia E. Martinez-Brawley

Exclusion in research is not limited to people of colour, nor is it the monopoly of any one discipline or profession, country or location. The inclusionary/exclusionary research paradigm debate in social work presented here may have varied in intensity from country to country: ‘ways of knowing’ have differed in various cultures. However, the influence of the social work literature, primarily from the USA and the UK, across the world has broadened the parameters of the phenomenon. Thus, what may have been initially an American or English-speaking world debate now has much broader implications for social work research (Scriven, 1969; Hartman, 1994; Smith, 1987, 2000). The discussion here provides an overview of how paradigmatic choices affect inclusionary/exclusionary scholarly habits in our heterogeneous world.

Inclusionary/Exclusionary Research Paradigms In the past fifty years, the term research itself has come to be imbued with so much mystique that social work scholars have often forgotten it should simply refer to ways of studying and analysing what professionals do. In an applied discipline, research is challenged to examine the substance of the particular practice at a point in time, looking repeatedly at it from various angles while searching for solutions to problems. For about 30 years, social workers, primarily in the USA but increasingly in other parts of the world, came to equate research with specific prevailing paradigms and methods. Like the misguided priests in the Williams’story, social work researchers and practitioners were not ‘looking again and again’ to achieve new insights, but merely ‘sure-footedly’ riding around the perimeter of an artificially created heaven. Certain ‘truths’, however tentative, had become ingrained; existing flaws and prejudices had been enshrined and many believed the pinnacle of ‘Superunderstanding’ had been reached (Fischer, 1981, 1993; Hudson, 1982). Yet, the pinnacle was unidimensional; it was neither open nor accommodating of various perspectives, historical or cultural frameworks or worldviews. The application of science to social work, in the most traditional and deterministic sense (Zimmerman, 1989; Howe, 1994), had become the ‘Refined Understanding’ of an artificially created research heaven. But, as observers sometimes quietly and sometimes not so quietly attested, the pinnacle many social work scholars believed they had reached was seriously limiting the work of searching and researching, learning and knowing. The much publicized and bitter journal debate between the logical positivists and others that began quite publicly in the 1980s, pointed to these limits. Heineman’s (1981) critique of the ‘obsolete scientific imperative in social work,’ Karger’s (1983) concern about the political dimensions of controlling the direction of knowledge development and Howe’s (1994) admonition that ‘the pursuit of scientific truths in human affairs has led time and again to totalitarianism and the suppression of human freedom and individuality’ (p. 521) are but a few examples of how, in recent years, thinkers in the profession have attempted to alert social workers to the problems of the ‘scientific’ dominance in social work practice. Unimaginative and unidimensional methodology and empirical lit-

Inclusion, Heterogeneity and Social Work Research 273 eralness in theory construction, while not to be equated with science, have plagued much of social work in recent years (Martinez-Brawley and Zorita, 1998, pp. 199–200).

These authors emphasized that those who spoke from ‘the edge of the frame’, that is, from outside the prevailing paradigm, primarily women and minorities of colour, were not being acknowledged (Martinez-Brawley and Zorita, 1998). Smith (1987) described a similar state of affairs. Smith analysed articles appearing in the British Journal of Social Work, which had supported a ‘scientific’, albeit primarily evaluative methodology (Sheldon, 1984, 1986) or argued its problems (Raynor, 1984). Raynor (1984) offered a critique of Fischer’s assumptions (1976, 1978) and pointed out their emphasis on ‘cause–effect relationships’ on the verification of theories ‘with ‘‘facts’’ which purportedly existed in ‘‘the real world’’ ’ (Raynor, 1984). Raynor further lamented the emphasis on technical issues in social work research ‘as a means for achieving social workers’goals, as opposed to the desirability of those goals as ends in themselves’ (Raynor, 1984, p. 5). Social work research had become wedded to a method or approach, not to the exploration of avenues to knowing. In the USA, the report of the NIMH sponsored Task Force on Social Work Research (1991), called for more social work research, accusingly stating that ‘social workers [had] yet to demonstrate either an ideological or a resource commitment to the furtherance of research’ (p. 424) while remaining completely silent on the meaning of social work research (Witkin, 1995). The Task Force had focused only on the effectiveness of research, not on what it was or could be, or whether that effectiveness applied to all constituencies. The underlying assumption [was] that social work research [would] achieve its effectiveness ends through ‘the mastery of [the] scientific methodologies necessary to study complex interactions’ (Witkin, 1995, p. 425). The emphasis was on the collection of ‘factual’ data, and on the formulation of questions amenable to the establishment of causal relationships, thus privileging methods that would lead to such findings and favouring constituencies or cultures that could best rely on such procedures. In the sciences, Kuhn (1962) had ‘made it clear that data do not necessarily speak for themselves; what is factual (what is regarded as data) greatly depends on the substantive content of one’s theory. Theory, in turn, depends at least partly on one’s social location, social identity, and research purposes’ (MacCarl Nielsen, 1990, p. 15). The existing paradigm was functioning as a map or guide, dictating the kind of issues that appeared important to address, the kind of procedures to be used to solve the problems defined, and the kind of people who would most likely conduct the research. Social work research practices had become exclusionary, not because the profession consciously wanted to exclude but because the avenues or paradigms it selected were simply not inclusionary. What was surprising is that even those who believed social work was a science, were not asking what had occurred in the sciences since Kuhn (1962) that might have thrown new light, and certainly cast many doubts on the adopted path of social work research. The perceived arrival at a methodological Superunderstanding was


narrowing the profession’s options and possibilities for knowing. For, as Feyerabend (1993) suggested: A scientist who is interested in maximal empirical content and who wants to understand as many aspects of his theory as possible, will adopt a pluralistic methodology . . . and he will try to improve rather than discard the views that appears to lose in the competition. For the alternatives, which he needs to keep the contest going, may be taken from the past as well. As a matter of fact, they may be taken from wherever one is able to find them—from ancient myths and modern prejudices; from the lucubrations of experts and from the fantasies of cranks (Feyerabend, 1993, p. 33, emphasis added).

Sadly, the lack of attention to alternative ways of viewing the world, of steering inquiry or formulating questions, became endemic in social work for a long while. The lack of respect for alternatives maintained a situation of inequality and exclusion in social work research (Witkin, 1995, p. 425). The unidimensionality of what seems to have been the most desirable approaches of the past 30 years has often closed the doors to different cultural understandings and explorations of phenomena. Women, members of ethnic and racial minority groups, and gays and lesbians have increasingly described how social and behavioral research that developed under the dominance of positivism has incorporated and disseminated oppressive ideologies based on race, class, gender and sexual preference (Tyson, 1995, p. 177).

The prevailing deterministic paradigm precluded from enthusiastic engagement in research, cultures that relied on the narrative, or that were less linear in their thinking about approaches to problem solving, or that drew upon a spiritual or intuitive tradition for defining the parameters of action (Opie, 1992; Patel, 1995). Furthermore, alternative texts did not easily find their way into the journals, dominated, as they were, by the pre-eminent paradigm.

Discourses and Counter Discourses A historical review of many important social work writings would show that in spite of what occurred in the past 30 or 40 years, there has always been much controversy among social work academics on the subject of ways of knowing (Peile, 1994; Tyson, 1995). Homogeneous or unified thinking was never a characteristic of the profession. In its early days, social work, as the art of helping, regularly embraced dissonance (Goldstein, 1973, 1997). It was often tied to spirituality and even religion, at the same time that it embraced very secular approaches to social issues. Social work was certainly tied to norms of conduct and social control. Epstein (1999), for example, suggested that it was ‘common to state the intentions of social work as helping people to accommodate to the status quo’ while challenging the status quo by trying to bring about social change (p. 9). Contradiction was in the nature of the subject matter and in the approach of social work ancestors. Social work interventions were based upon beliefs and implied a hierarchy of action. In this respect, they were very different from science. Observable phenomena were at

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the centre of scientific investigations; science, at least in the traditional accounts, left little room for beliefs; while agendas of action could result from the scientific enterprise, they were not the primary reason for engagement. As the western industrial world became more and more committed to a scientific cosmology and as power became more and more identified with science, social workers became convinced that systematization and rationality needed to be its goal, and scientific activity—perceived in a very naive sense—came to be viewed as the only road to the recognition of social work as an academic enterprise. The manipulation of data through statistical means, was practically enshrined as the desired way of knowing and learning in the profession. From the vantage point of the most inveterate empiricists, empirical validation was the only worthy activity of the applied social sciences and other ways of knowing were chastised and labelled ‘unvalidated and haphazardly-derived’ (Fischer, 1993, p. 19). Even the more moderate writers of the period made evident a deterministic orientation which does not aid in the understanding of heterogeneity or culture because it focuses on the individual, not on the cultural milieu. This was an important factor in making the paradigm exclusionary for many culturally different groups. Zimmerman (1989) aptly described the situation: [Determinism] pervades the belief system of many social workers who may rarely think of the philosophy of science or question the epistemological base of research findings. It is present in the concept of ‘treating’ clients regardless of the theoretical bias one favors and in offering those clients the right of ‘selfdetermination’. After all, self-determination implies efficient cause, albeit within the individual rather than in the external environment (Zimmerman, 1989, p. 55, emphasis added).

In their fascination with the scientific, social work researchers had been misled to assume that science was an old fashioned, rational and orderly process which left no room for political agendas. But, as Feyerabend recognized, ‘we are a long way from the old (Platonic) idea of science as a system of statements growing with experiment and observation and kept in order by lasting rational standards’ (1993, p. xi). If social workers believed that through science they could unify the contradictions of the profession, they were and are to be proven wrong. Again Feyeberand points out that ‘science is an essentially anarchic enterprise: theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than is its law and order alternatives’ (Feyeberand, 1993, p. 5). Very much to the point, Fox Keller (1985, 1995), a physicist suggested that ‘[t]ime-honored concepts of rationality, objectivity, evidence, proof, and even truth and reality’ (1995, p. 11) were by far more problematic than many scientists before Kuhn had thought them to be. Science was subject to much historical, social and political influence. As social scientists who focused on the sociology of knowledge and who became known as the Edinburgh School (Barnes, 1977, 1985) pointed out, the whole issue of knowing in the sciences was a very complicated enterprise. If old knowledge is indeed a material cause in the generation of new, then, man’s [sic] rationality alone no longer suffices to guarantee him [sic] access to

276 Emilia E. Martinez-Brawley a single permanent corpus of genuine knowledge; what he can achieve will depend upon what cognitive resources are available to him [sic], and in what way he [sic] is capable of exploiting such resources. To begin to understand the latter involves abandoning simplistic theories of learning, and undertaking a detailed examination of knowledge generation. To discover the former involves examining knowledge generation in its social context, as part of the history of a particular society and its culture; rational men [sic] in different cultures may represent reality in different, even contradictory ways. Hence, the evaluation of knowledge claims is shot through with difficulties; in particular, the existing knowledge on the basis of which new knowledge is generated, the culturally given component can never be independently checked (Barnes, 1977, pp. 20–1).

Fox Keller pointed out that ‘close analysis of how questions are posed, of how research programmes come to be legitimated, of how theoretical disputes are resolved, of how experiments end has revealed the untenability of any clear and stable demarcation between scientific and social, fact and value, knowledge and ideology’ (Fox Keller, 1995, p. 11). This insight into the nature of knowledge and knowing further legitimized the opportunities of dissenting groups. Through the decades, women had been the practitioners par excellence in social work but had often not been accorded their rightful place in the academic ranks or controlled the direction of research. The gulf between researchers and practitioners reflected not only beliefs about social work knowledge but also differences between the authority and status of women and men in the social work profession. . . . Women generally occupied lower-status positions with more direct client contact and were regarded as ‘intellectually inferior but altruistically superior’ to men (Tyson, 1995, p. 84).

By the late 1980s, however, it had become clear that women and minorities—or culturally different groups—were bringing to bear different ways of knowing, equally profound, but of a different tradition. Social work scholarship would have to incorporate their views. Men only could no longer be perceived as the exclusive keepers of the ‘ideal ways of knowing’. Tyson (1995) pointed out that the trend of male dominance in social work research began to shift in the 1980s. Women had made scholars aware that paradigms are culture-laden worldviews and that ideas, including those about human nature vary historically across cultures (McCarl Nielsen, 1990). In social work, women and men had made noticeably different choices in ‘research design heuristics’. Relevant here is the fact that a greater percentage of men authored studies using quantified data or experimental designs while a greater percentage of women relied on qualitative data (Tyson, 1995, p. 84). In the 1990s, Hartman began a series of editorials in Social Work on ‘ways of knowing’. In 1992, she published one in which she criticized the privileging of specific methods in learning and knowing: Foucault (1980) studied the development and institutionalization of what he termed ‘global unitary knowledges’ that, through a struggle over time, have come to subjugate a whole set of knowledges and disqualify them as ‘beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity’ (p. 82). In his analysis, the privileging of the methods of science and unitary knowledges have led to the subjuga-

Inclusion, Heterogeneity and Social Work Research 277 tion of previously established erudite knowledge and of local, popular, indigenous knowledge located at the margins (Hartman, 1992, 1994, p. 23).

Foucault encouraged ‘thinking differently’. Plurality of discourses are at the centre of knowing. This was probably one of his major contributions. Much of Foucault’s work points to the need for transgressive counter discourses, an endless questioning of the systems of thought in which we are located and hence an opening up of realms of freedom accomplished through speaking the truths of the multiplicities that traverse the self (Irving, 1999, p. 43).

Heterogeneity in the Ranks Very recently, Irving (1999) wrote how postmodernism, which ‘runs counter to a faith in a universal and objective scientific methodology’ has heralded an attack on the assumption that there should be ‘one objective, scientifically based outlook on which all fair minded people should agree’ (Irving, 1999, p. 30) Irving acknowledges the influence of philosophers such as Nietzsche, Beckett and Foucault in the development of this postmodern perspective in social work today; however, the influence of women and diverse cultures helped to draw attention away from the unitary, scientific vision. The newly arriving diverse groups in the ranks of social work were making their own claims on the profession. [A]s social work adopted positivism . . . the qualitative studies that practitioners had traditionally used to examine and discuss their clinical work were depreciated by comparison with studies using quantified data. Women, who were more likely to be practitioners and to author qualitative studies, may have found that their interests were likely to be devaluated during the shift to positivists beliefs (Tyson, 1995, p. 86).

Adding to feminist dissatisfaction and perspectives, minorities of colour were making evident different views of the world, questioning the axioms that had existed in practice and research. Neither social work practice nor research could remain on a ‘business as usual’ mode. Heterogeneity introduced or increased the added element of impermanence and unpredictability in social work explanations and actions. These elements distanced the growingly mixed profession even more from those aspects of the scientific enterprise which aimed at identifying and expressing regularities as closely as possible. Regularity in physics, chemistry, biology or human conduct might have enhanced human capacity for controlling destiny but regularity did not seem achievable in the heterogeneous and disordered world outside the scientific sanctum (Gergen, 1982). Cultural ‘anomalies’ were challenging the accuracy of the existing paradigm and change was becoming more desirable. Furthermore, critical theory and constructivism had come into a number of social science fields (Gergen 1982; Graumann and Gergen, 1994; Denzin and Lincoln, 1994; Peile, 1994). Critical theorists questioned the underlying social and political bases for dominant knowledge and constructivists recognized that knowledge is the result of social interchange.


This type of discussion in the social sciences opened the way for further dialogue in social work, dialogue that was cognizant of the nature of the questions being asked, the relativity of the circumstances surrounding social interaction and the differing historical, political, linguistic and cultural frameworks that influence research and practice. If interpretations in the social sciences were important, then, there had to be more than one way of looking at any phenomenon. Furthermore, if language was not only a reflection of cultural elements but was also, as Said (1978) had put it, was implicated in power relations, then, inclusionary practices in research would require not only methodological changes but a long process of filtering and refiltering what exists. This is also a slow political process, for the continual reinterpretation of the new through the old which is prevalent in the research enterprise does not make for a fluid environment. The situation in all disciplines is very complex. Knowledge no longer requires application to reality; Knowledge is what gets passed on, silently, without comment, from one text to another. . . . What matters is that ideas are there, to be repeated, echoed and re-echoed (Said, 1978, p. 116).

In a more recent paper, referring to how worldviews and paradigms, which are exclusionary for those at the fringes, grip the thinking of scholars, Said (1989) added: ‘And, if we suspect that as in all scholarly disciplines, the customary way of doing things both narcotizes and insulates the guild member, we are saying something true about all forms of disciplinary worldliness’ (p. 213). Said’s description of the process of knowledge transmission is very applicable to research in the social sciences and in social work. The constant reinterpretation of what is said through the process of reviewing, editing, reading and repeating, often puts at peril the best intentions to include.

Beyond Business as Usual One of the purposes of this discussion is to entertain what happens or needs to happen as we search for new ways of ‘knowing’ and ‘practising’ in social work while incorporating the many possible contributions and exploring the many avenues of diverse ways of thinking. The deliberate use of the gerunds here indicate the revolving nature of the enterprise. If social work is to embark in a searching and re-searching that embraces inclusionary rather than exclusionary practices, a shift that fundamentally influences current definitions of reality will be required. The many groups or constituencies of social work practice and research will need to be engaged in their own definitions. Weick (1987) suggested that these re-definitions were exemplified by many liberation movements which have challenged the views others had of them. Since a major function of the socialization process is to train people in a homogeneous view of the world, the inherent capacity of people to grow according to their own lights is frequently denied or ignored. . . . Shared views about the nature of reality invariably build on the definitions of others. To even imagine

Inclusion, Heterogeneity and Social Work Research 279 that one has the capacity to create a new definition for oneself is a radical act. . . . [Yet] this step seems to be a critical factor in changing a worldview, whether it be on a personal or a societal level. The existing paradigm, based on notions of racial and gender supremacy, was seen as a construction that could be radically altered. Individuals found the amazing part of this reconstruction to be the fact that it could be initiated in their own heads. It involved the process of letting go of one set of ideas for another (Weick, 1987, p. 226).

One of the results of this kind of change—a mental and empowering process of affirmation—is the validation that the ‘outcomes’ or ‘results’ of research are likely to be fluid and ever-changing. Research becomes an engaging process of discovery and even self-discovery for individuals and groups and there is invariably as much knowledge gained from the process of as there is from the discoveries. In fact, there may be no ‘discoveries’ but rather profound insights, which by benefiting the researcher will also benefit the field. Because social work is closely tied to beliefs, discovering in social work is fundamentally a moral search, enlightened by philosophic and even, perhaps, religious discourses. This kind of research is likely to move away from mathematical language and methodologies and rely more solidly on ways of problem solving in particular historical, moral, political and socio-economic contexts. Interpretation of circumstances and events would once again become quite central to social work understandings. Yet, there are those who still believe we need to arrive at more permanent solutions, offer more concrete and generalizable explanations or less impermanent answers. It is, in fact this romance with permanence that has served as the primary impetus behind the development of modern science. But, as Gergen argues, ‘while some phenomena are sufficiently stable, enduring, reliable, or replicable that they readily lend themselves to encapsulation in lawful principles, others may remain intransigent to such undertakings (Gergen, 1982, p. 11). Fortunately, at the outset of the twenty-first century, those who believe that permanency is possible, at least in the social or human sciences are fewer now than in the past. This should not be construed to mean that the understandings we reach in social work or the answers we may formulate are not worthwhile. On the contrary; all searching and knowing in social work opens up valuable avenues for action, and the more inclusionary the searches, the more avenues they will open. Knowledge will then be understood not as the unique possession of any particular culture or type of culture but as persons deploying ‘their cultural resources to authentic tasks of explanation and investigation’ (Barnes, 1977, p. 24). These new perspectives are pointing to the existence or availability of ‘parallel universes’, of many pathways or avenues to be pursued, none of which should be confused with universal Truths. Social work’s fascination with the scientific method was the result of a quest for permanency of solutions, of a desire to arrive at Truths; a desire to achieve universal answers to problems which often defy generalizations. This is not to say that there are no common elements in the human condition or that what we learn in one context is never applicable to another. What we must remember, however, is that ‘in contrast to the mighty oaks of the natural sciences, one might describe the social sciences as a sprawling thicket’ (Gergen, 1982, p. 3). And


this sprawling thicket is political, interpretative and often, like human nature, chaotic. Social work, more than any other profession should be able to recognize this. Its own early history provides examples of methodological pluralism and highlights the interaction of the ‘objective’ and the ‘subjective.’ The natural sciences have always dealt with phenomena that are by and large enduring and replicable, and have searched for the regularity of the ordinary. Social work, on the other hand, has always dealt with ‘the case’, with phenomena that are often not replicable. The more culturally heterogeneous the context, the less replicable the phenomena. Social workers have always had to recognize that the idiosyncratic is valuable and essential in solving human problems. Furthermore, because social work is also a philosophy of living, a set of values that informs helping, and a set of beliefs that dictates priorities, the more inclusionary it becomes, the more it is likely to result in flexible and modifiable responses. What two French scholars stated recently more broadly about the social sciences is applicable to social work. ‘Its discourses are essays, rigorous to a greater or lesser degree depending on the author’s scruples, competence, working ability or research talent’ (Revel and Ricard, 1998, p. 255, emphasis added).

Multidisciplinary Perspectives: Enhancing the Social Work Essay Through the decades, those who have emphasized the artistic elements of social work were probably aware that knowing in social work was an essay that needed to be informed by the intuitive and the inspirational and in some small way by what could be truly called the scientific. Rational thinking alone could not offer the tools to accommodate the myriad of human options, choices or conditions. Rational, or better put, linear thinking alone cannot offer the spectrum of options needed for a truly inclusionary paradigm. For example, the literary genre called ‘magic realism’, commonly associated with Latin American writers, is very useful in discovering how the intuitive and inspirational can lead to fuller understandings of the human condition, not only among Latinos but also among other cultures (Allende, 1985; Anaya, 1972; Cisneros, 1991; Castillo, 1993; Preciado Martin, 1996). The characters in the novels of Isabel Allende (1985, 1999) or Rudolfo Anaya (1972), or the stories of Preciado Martin (1996), for example, can be better understood if one can remain open to the intangible and the intuitive. They look at the human condition from the vantage point of different worldviews: the concrete and the practical, and the spiritual and magical. The same can be said for many African, African American, East Indian and American Indian writers (Houston, 1994; Silko, 1983; Deloria, 1994, 1999; Walker, 1993, 1998 and many others). In social work, the more we want our research practice to include those who do not share in the body of western industrial beliefs, the more that the notion of parallel universes will need to enter our observations and practices. Furthermore, the more open we become to different avenues for exploration, the more holistic and interdis-


ciplinary we will need to be in our approach to knowing. Unlike the scientist who learns more by dissecting, social workers can learn more by respecting the amazingly intricate web of forces that make the human whole more than the sum of its parts. Personal narratives have entered the knowledge building system of social work and other social sciences. Journals devoted to personal narratives are becoming more acceptable as ways of recording the discourses of minorities and women (e.g. Contemporary Sociology; Reflections: Narratives of Professional Helping). Narratives can often better accommodate ‘the anomalies’ that challenge existing explanations and help change paradigms. On a slightly different vein, social work beliefs will often have to be modified or attenuated to embrace heterogeneity. As we recognize that our worldviews are influenced by our many pathways and there will be less need for any single one to be ‘the Truth’, be it liberal, conservative, scientific or spiritual. The values that the profession can espouse within the parameters of what enhances human dignity and affirms life, will find expression in different policies. In an interesting recent article, Porter (1999), an anthropologist, wrote what she entitled an ‘anthropological defense of child labor’. Porter was addressing the UN’s unanimously adopted Convention of the Rights of the Child. Because a position against child labour has been an article of faith among western social workers since the early 1900s, the UN’s declaration of rights was unquestionably celebrated. Yet, building her argument on what many social workers who have worked in the developing world or even in the more remote areas of the first world would probably confirm, Porter points out how the UN’s declaration will require much clarification to guide meaningful action among diverse peoples. Porter highlights that all of the Convention’s points, from the right to a name to the regulation of the labour of children, are based primarily on the beliefs of western industrial countries. While we may believe, or may even be convinced, based on some important theories of development, that children are better off without working responsibilities, no practitioner in social work, who is open to the notion of many pathways and understands contexts, is likely to penalize families whose survival depends on children joining their relatives working in the fields. Action in social work becomes meaningful when guided by a dialogue—albeit not always external—between facts as reported at the time, beliefs (morality, philosophy or even religion), context (historical, geographic, economic, political, linguistic, cultural) and art (the assessment of the possible). Another area that will require constant vigilance in increasing the capacity of social work to search and re-search a very variegated universe is the many linguistic constructs that affect understandings—or reveal our understandings. Social work has been in its origin the product of the industrial world, thus adjusting its tenets to different socio-cultural and linguistic traditions is in itself a challenge. How we view the world is at least partly the result of our socio-linguistic experiences. Social work knowledge seeking is highly dependent on verbal communication. Each language, each system of communication conveys a very complex set of assumptions, shared beliefs and views of the world. Languages rely heavily on assumptions and interpretations. Crossing linguistic borders is not just translating from one language into another. Even when people speak the same language, the issues of communication


are much tied to individual histories. Witness, for example, the different meanings conveyed by the same words to many of the people around the globe who speak English, or the very different responses to the same linguistic stimuli that one is likely to get when addressing rural vs. urban people, or those who inhabit the dessert vs. those who live near the sea, etc. Elucidating meanings across language borders places social workers in areas where predictability will be scarce. The way our linguistic experiences influence how we react to words as apparently straightforward as ‘stop’ and ‘go’, let alone illness, recovery, surgery, death and many others can be important factors in social work research. Neither researchers nor practitioners can assume that responses informed by western traditions, which are the dominant in the profession, are universally shared. Even within the Western traditions, contextually laden meanings are very illustrative. A story told recently in a television interview by Calvin Trillin (1996, 1998) cleverly illustrates this point. Trillin was talking about his background, growing up in Kansas City as a son and grandson of immigrants. The story involved his traditional Lithuanian grandmother. On hearing that her husband had to have a minor hernia operation and that her daughter needed to be taken to the hospital because she may have appendicitis, her response had been, ‘So, give me poison!’. She was responding not to utterances that denoted simple surgical procedures but to profound cultural experiences and idiosyncracies. Although the story was told by Trillin for its humour, it illustrates how text is interpreted within a given cultural context. ‘The meaning of an utterance is as much a function of the context in which it is used as it is of the words that make up the utterance (Murphy, 1997, p. 132). Countless similar examples can be narrated by social work practitioners who listen closely to the dialogue of families. In an Italian or Latino family, the conversation between a mother and a grown son, for example, might include questions and answers that would be understood as pathological dependency in a different environment. A mother, in that context, may ask a grown son where he is going, at what time he is coming back, while arranging the collar of his shirt or giving him advice on how to behave in public (Gangotena, 1994). Some recent films clearly illustrate the fact that utterances cannot be disassociated from their context and culture. For example, in East is East (2000), viewers will witness the stresses of adjustment in a Pakistani and English family of seven children in Manchester. In My Son the Fanatic (1999), they will see how cultural practices often do not remain true to the original cultural purposes or intentions when exercised in different environments.

Concluding Reflections These comments about ‘knowing’ in social work are not a repudiation of science, or of rationality. They simply reflect the observation that most social work action is not ‘scientific’in the strict sense because it always entails more than an objective, neutral or replicable account of phenomena. Even with the new understanding of scientific activity as a culturally determined phenomenon, social work will stand at a distance. Social work knowing is an unfolding essay. Social work knowing almost


always implies interpretation. Inclusionary searching and re-searching require even more interpretation and place the findings of the work often in a tentative, incomplete mode. The dilemma as Opie (1992) accurately stated is that ‘to present one’s research outcomes as contingent and incomplete goes against very strong Western notions of objectivity and truth and raises questions about the authority of texts and modes of writing in which limitations are overtly acknowledged’ (Opie, 1992, p. 59). An inclusionary paradigm in social work research will need to overcome this bias. This discussion has brought to the fore at least some of the many-sided perspectives necessary to find new understandings in social work. The ways of knowing for social work in the new millennium will need to be varied. Pluralism of theories and of metaphysical views will not only be important for methodological purposes but will become an essential part of a humanitarian outlook (Feyeberand, 1993). Those who want to engage in searches that are inclusionary, however tentative they might appear, must begin by showing the broadest acceptance of multiple approaches. This must apply to researchers, practitioners and policy makers. To assert that there is only one way of determining the merit of what social work does, is as problematic as asserting that there is only one way of understanding the human condition or alleviating human suffering. Overtly, social work has generally been committed to inclusion. Nevertheless, covertly exclusionary practices, much like the games of the priests in Williams’ tale (1991), have revealed themselves through intolerance of styles, through the tabooing of cultural or religious practices or unique linguistic understandings, or through delegitimizing certain directions or methods of knowing. It is our professional responsibility to broaden our parameters; to accept that our most cherished ideas may change; to consider our paths as choices made within a culture, at a given time and place. Consciously adopting a perspective that accommodates heterogeneity in social work research implies seeing even the familiar in different ways. It implies constantly raising the anomalies that will challenge existing theories, beliefs and perspectives. In a heterogenous world, our best work will not be the quest for permanency but the search for all the possible alternative avenues that can lead us to new levels of understandings. Inclusionary social work research will be an unfolding, valuable essay. Accepted: September 2000

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