Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Introduction
- One What is social work research?
- Two Why do research in social work?
- Three Doing research application
- Four Mapping social work research
- Five Social work research over time
- Six Place and space
- Seven Sociological social work: a case example
- Eight Doing good social work research
- References
- Index
Six - Place and space
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 April 2022
- Frontmatter
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Introduction
- One What is social work research?
- Two Why do research in social work?
- Three Doing research application
- Four Mapping social work research
- Five Social work research over time
- Six Place and space
- Seven Sociological social work: a case example
- Eight Doing good social work research
- References
- Index
Summary
Continuing with the approach in Chapter Five, this chapter begins with ways in which awareness of the meaning and importance of place is shared between the humanities and social work. Moving on to a consideration of that over-familiar term globalisation, this leads on to a more general consideration of how research practices occur in space and place. This book is not where one would think of turning for discovering and applying research methods. But when we consider how social work and research take place from place to place, and in spatial contexts, then some of the clearest illumination can be shed on this question by research methods, perhaps especially those that we would think of as qualitative in nature. Much of the later part of the chapter is given over to how research methodology addresses questions of place and space. We conclude with briefer than usual suggestions about making practical sense of the chapter.
Social work research takes place within temporal, social, relational, cultural, faith, governmental, political, institutional, ethical, intellectual, spatial and practice contexts. At any given period, there usually will be sufficient common understanding and acceptance of the purposes of social work research to enable the social work community across different nations and cultures to engage in near-enough mutual understandings and practices. However, the character, purposeful priorities and uses of social work research will always be shaped – diversely – by the challenges of the places in which it occurs.
What are our assumptions of the meaning of ‘social work context’? Possibly roughly the same as ‘setting’ or ‘agency’ and as something that is a ‘given’ of social work practice. Something we can ‘touch, taste and handle’ – that is relatively fixed and durable – social work’s material culture. Maybe we distinguish in our minds the local from the extended setting. This extended setting may be spatial, or defined by membership. Service users may well appear in our image of the social work context, or the domains of nation, community, health and so on. In all of this, ‘time’ and ‘place’ are high-level concepts by which we structure and make sense of the world, and ‘use effortlessly all the time … yet are quite unable to define’ (Fulford and Columbo, 2004, p 131).
- Type
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- Information
- Research and the Social Work Picture , pp. 103 - 120Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2018