The Radical Voices of Social Workers

Abstract

This article reports the findings of a national study of self-identified radical social workers who practiced between the 1950s and the present. Utilizing a variety of methods, the research attempted to assess respondents' perspectives on the field, their underlying theoretical orientations, and the development of their philosophy of practice. The findings indicated that the roots of respondents' ideologies vary, depending on their family origin, religious background, the influences of certain writings or people, the period in which they reached maturity, and the impact of a particular social movement. Despite these differences, respondents reflected similar views on capitalism as a socio-economic system, the nature of labor, the relationship of individual problems to exploitation by elites, the need for a redistribution of wealth and income, and the dominance of the social work profession by clinical or psychotherapeutic perspectives. Overall, they believe that radicals have had very little impact on the profession as a whole and are largely pessimistic about the future of radicalism within the field.