Social work as memory of conflicts? Reflections on a historiographical figure of thought

Abstract

The article revisits an idea developed and explicated by the author in the early 2000s: that social work can be understood as a (site of) memory concerning societal conflicts and, at the same time, as an open archive or storage that holds very different answers to social questions across time and space. The genesis of this figure of thought is reconstructed and contextualised theoretically, historically and politically. Thus, the idea of social work as memory of conflicts or open archive itself can be characterised as one specific answer to the dispute over history and memory (not only related to social work), while, at the same time, providing new approaches to understanding social work’s present(s) and future(s). Therefore, the article ends with reflections on ‘appropriate’ representations of social work’s history in social work education.