Introduction

This book sets out to look at what we have termed ‘social work in extremis’. It is an attempt to bring together a number of case studies that look at social work responses in ‘extreme’ or crisis situations. There is no single common perspective in the chapters that follow. In total we look at what social work institutions, social workers and community activists do during episodes of war, military occupation, environmental disaster, forced migrations and political and economic restructuring. Some of the authors look at the response of state social work and welfare institutions in these circumstances (Murphy and Neocleous), others provide reflective accounts of their work as social work academics and practitioners in crisis situations (Teloni, McCulloch, Xavier, Maglajlic, Hinestroza and Ioakimidis), two look at the extent to which social work students and educators can engage with campaigning movements in post-crisis situations (Teloni, Pentaraki), while three of the chapters, perhaps more controversially, look at alternative forms of ‘popular social work’ that can develop in the face of extreme circumstances (Lavalette and Levine, Ioakimidis, and Jones and Lavalette).

This last themed element, especially as it includes the volume editors, may need some further elaboration. In these chapters it is suggested that, faced with crisis situations, there is an immediate requirement to establish a social work that can engage with communities and meet people's needs. Faced with these immediate needs, communities and social movements act to create an engaged popular social work, and the chapters by Lavalette and Levine, Ioakimidis, and Jones and Lavalette provide a glimpse (and sometimes it is no more than that) of a ‘popular social work’, one that is flexible, open, reliable, non-stigmatising and non-conditional and hence stands in sharp contrast to the worst practices and manifestations of ‘official’ social work.