ABSTRACT
This chapter critically considers the steady turn away from social theory within social work generally, and the unintended consequences of this for critical social work specifically. Historically, social theoretical concepts and forms of argumentation have played a decisive role in shaping the ideational and normative agenda of critical social work. As the relationship between social work and social theory has steadily broken down, however, the latter has become increasingly (mis)understood and (mis)represented by the former. Herein, the argument is made that current (mis)conceptions of social theory divert attention away from the fact that social workers ‘do’ a form of critical social theorizing all the time, albeit in ways that are actively and institutionally misrecognized. Putting to work a range of social theoretical concepts and forms of argumentation, the chapter calls for critical social workers to (re)present the relationship between social work and social theory to the wider profession. Doing so constitutes a crucial step towards ameliorating the intellectual conditions of reception for the critical social work message.
