Social Issues and Social Work: a Shifting Terrain?

Abstract

Surveying the contents of Australian Journal of Social Issues in its first ten volumes (1961-1974) shows a strong relationship between writing about social issues and the field of social work. However, in the most recent ten volumes (1995-2004) such an overt connection has largely disappeared. This article considers this change from the perspective of simultaneous shifts both in the definition and study of social issues and in Australian social work over the forty volumes in which AJSI has been produced. The divergence of the journal and social work, along with other practice-focused areas, is to be understood in terms of shifts in thinking and writing about social issues and in the changes that have taken place in social work and human services scholarship in the last 44 years. Introduction: the disappearance of social work from AJSI? In both the popular mind and in academic and professional writing there is often a connection made between the study of 'social issues' and the field of social work. Conversely, social workers, especially social work academics, may research in and write about the substantive questions that face society, sometimes addressing these in ways that go beyond the immediate demands of professional practice. In this sense the traditions of social work include its engagement with the applied social sciences and wider social inquiry, particularly as these may be concerned with social policies. Australian Journal of Social Issues was founded in 1961 by a 'committee representing professional social workers' based at the University of Sydney (Brennan 1961:1). The first editor was Tom Brennan, with John Lawrence as the editor for the abstracts section. In 1968 Howard Throssell of the Department of Social Work at the University of Queensland took over as editor, reflecting a broadening of the support for the journal across institutions; at the same time, the editorial committee began to define itself other than as representing professional social work. In 1969 the journal was published jointly with ACOSS. Then in 1970 the editorship was taken on by Ronald Burnheim, a psychologist in clinical practice. In 1971 ACOSS assumed complete responsibility for publication. Thus, in a decade, AJSI developed from being identified with social work per se to a much wider journal grounded in the application of social sciences more generally to debates about Australian society. Burnheim was followed by Margaret Sargent, who edited the journal from 1975-1981, and who although initially based in a Department of Social Work was identified as a sociologist. From early 1994 to mid-1995 the journal was edited by a group that included, for differing lengths of time, Jacki Byrne (a public servant) and Catherine McDonald, John Solas and John Tomlinson (social workers in the School of Human Services at Queensland University of Technology). The only other social worker (or person from a practice-based profession or discipline) to edit the journal has been the present author (1995-2000). Given the strong initial leadership from the profession, it might also be expected that social workers would figure prominently in both the readership of the journal and the authorship of material that the journal publishes. Yet it became clear to me as the editor in the latter half of the 1990s that relatively few submissions of manuscripts were received from social work academics and almost none from practitioners. Nor, as far as could be ascertained informally, was the journal considered by the 1990s to be a source of ideas for social work and human services to the same extent as it had been in its early years. Several questions arise from these observations. First, what is the evidence for the divergence of social work and AJSI between its inception and the present time? Second, in so far as there is evidence of such a shift, what factors may be identified as having a bearing on such a change? Third, what might such an inquiry tell us about the study of social issues and social work in Australia? …