Looking Back to Keep Moving . . . And It May Not Be “Forward”

Abstract

In this concluding chapter, the author looks back over the content of the 13 preceding chapters of the volume and reflects on the process of assembling them. Rather than offer an interpretative summary that would dilute their contextual specificity, the various “recontextualization stories” should be read on their own. Instead, five global “predicaments” with which all social work practice accounts in the volume directly, indirectly, and intersectionally are addressed: the pandemic, the crises in global capitalism, racism and other “embodied” social antagonisms, war and conflict, and the ecology. A second section briefly speculates about the consequences of the convergence of the several predicaments whilst the final section offers thoughts about the need to evolve a “relational” approach to professional social work, proposing that the real meaning of the “social” that refers to the authors' “work” entails their professional attempts across all their intervention modes to restore people's relational capabilities.