In an important way, this chapter stands apart from other chapters in this book. The broad aim of the book is to make accessible ideas and debates that in most respects have taken place between some social work scholars and members of related communities and disciplines. The book reaches for distinctiveness based on the level of writing and audience rather than by bringing in completely new ideas and arguments. This chapter continues in this vein, but offers a position that has had very little attention in the social work literature and has not impinged on social work practice beyond the margins. I will pursue an argument for sociological social work, while recognising the relative strangeness of the term.

The chapter follows closely the outline in the abstract. After outlining the scope and nature of what sociological social work might encompass, we turn attention to how sociologists and social workers have understood their relationship. The chapter closes with examples of ways in which the methods of inquiry that are associated with qualitative sociological research are open to ‘translation’ such that they may become a form of practice.