Article | Open Access
Critical Post‐Humanism and Social Work in the City: About Being Entangled as Researcher and Professional
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Abstract: Social work has a long history of dealing with social issues and working towards an inclusive city. The complexity of these issues requires conceptual thinking that goes beyond “the human” and encompasses spatiality, materiality, as well as non‐human beings and their connectedness. I propose to explore “post”‐theories for this purpose, which constitute a major reconfiguration of thinking in the field of social work and research on social inclusion in general. This article outlines important elements of “post”‐theories that connect with major claims of social work such as the aim of social justice, empowerment, and ethical stances towards research and practice. It further outlines in which sense these elements connect with social work and what that could mean for analysing social problems and how to approach them. The contribution provides thoughts on how post‐humanism might provide inspiration to think as researchers and act as professionals concerning questions of social justice and inclusion.
Keywords: assemblage; critical post‐humanism; ethics; new materialism; social work
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© Marina Richter. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction of the work without further permission provided the original author(s) and source are credited.