BREAKTHROUGH OF THE SOCIAL, THE

The structure of the volume reflects the dialectic between theory and practice in social work. The first section provides an epistemological framing, the second section contains international contributions with an analysis of social work in practice after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Five chapters engage in epistemological issues, addressing the concepts of social, participation, humanity, modernity, and institutionalization, primarily based on a critical analysis paradigm. The conceptual reconstruction provides a normative foundation for social work as a practical science. Theoretically sound perspectives on social work practice are developed in times of social transformations, erosion of civil society cohesion and the digital restructuring of the lifeworld. The practice-oriented examination of social work reverses this path of epistemology in eight chapters, mostly but not only in Europe, dealing with marginalization, vulnerability, disability, migrations, and ageism; addressing the tensions between welfare and workfare, as well as the involvement of public and private providers and how to conceive and manage quality in the relations established and the services provided without forgetting the human rights and welfare roots of social work.