Social Work Research

This book, sourced from the experience of the social work researchers, educators and practitioners, offers, for the first time from the Indian context, a reflexively situated and insightful pathways to social work research and theorising practice that underlines the importance of 'methodologies in fields of practice'– epistemologies, locationalities and positionalities embedded at varied sites of practices. This understanding is built on the observation that research capturing specific ‘Fields of subjectivities’ (rural tribal communities, women, children and youth, and persons with disabilities) located in the Indian contexts responds to social issues in complex and diverse situations - a relational ontology. It underscores the scope and new possibilities of research in the Social Work discipline, and its function in contextualizing ‘fields of practice’. The strength of the book lies in capturing and visibilizing these varied sites of practices through ‘research-practice continuum’ approach while demonstrating the primacy of ‘methodologies of practice’ in building a social work knowledge i.e. democratic, emancipatory and locally empowering.

Accordingly, the book suggests that strengthening of social work research and theorising practice would entail recognition of 'methodologies in fields of practice' in the context. In doing so, the book underlines the need to take a decolonial approach and intends to strengthen practice-based knowledge for an immediate reference point for social work scholars, researchers, educators, practitioners, administrators and policymakers.