Introduction

Bailey and Brake's collection aimed to provide a series of arguments for, and about, radical social work in Britain. It did not look at social work engagement beyond Britain's shores. This is no great surprise; in 1975 international and comparative social work was still some considerable distance off! Nevertheless, in the second decade of the 21st century it would look odd for any radical social work book to restrict itself to debates about social work within a single nation-state and ignore developments and arguments that are drawn from the international stage. More than this, it is now clear that many of the questions posed in the Bailey and Brake collection, such as the meaning of ‘professional’ social work, the relationship between social work and the state and the elements of social control within social work practices, are posed sharply and in different ways when we look at social work in various global locations, with different traditions and methods of work, alternative relationships with and to the local and national state and competing perspectives on the role and task of social work.

There is another important reason for including a discussion on international social work in the present volume: internationally, social work is expanding at a rapid pace. In the ‘Tiger economies’ like China and India and in the former Soviet Republics, for example, exploitation, oppression, poverty and inequality have created social problems which these states have looked to social work to ‘solve’ and control. But how should social work ‘solve’ such problems?

International social work attempts to look at a range of social problems that social work can address, at local ‘indigenous’ practices and the way(s) in which they can be incorporated into professional and regulated modes of social work delivery (Healy, 2001). The expansion of social work has opened up discussion about what the appropriate forms of social work should look like – but increasingly discussion is framed in terms of how close ‘new social work models’ will match existing Anglo-American conceptions of social work practice. In part such conceptualisations reflect an arrogance within British and American social work – an assumption that they provide the bench-mark against which all others should be judged. In part this reflects a view of social work history that is ‘developmentalist’ in origin.