LAUSR

This is a fascinating and challenging book. Linda Bell is not writing about social work and anthropology but is doing anthropology. Bell is an academic anthropologist, research educator in social work and trained in emancipatory and feminist research paradigms. This gave her, in her own words, an advantage in her first encounters with social workers. While social work is ceaselessly in search of a knowledge base of its own but mainly is drifting into borrowed knowledge from various disciplines, anthropology was never at the frontline in the development of social work as an academic discipline and practice-based profession. In its struggle for legitimacy and under the influence of profound changes in the welfare state, social work is forced to adopt more evidence-based and managerial schemes of intervention. However, social work is characterised by processes packed with complexity (what is social work actually?), uncertainties (why are we there for?) and ambivalence (how become a social worker). In this vein, an anthropological perspective develops knowledge about social work that other sciences cannot provide. Exploring social work is founded on two sources: first, Bell’s own acquaintance and history with social work and social workers, starting in the early 1990s and second, interviews she conducted with a variety of social workers and social work educators in the past 12 years, in search for multiple voices and views. The main argument Bell develops is that