Utopian Thinking and Social Work (English, Chris Horsell)

This book highlights the importance of employing imaginative sensibilities to thinking and action in social work and social policy practice. Exploring the question of how ideas about utopia and utopian method can be used in social work practice and policy practice to address social inequalities, it shows that central to this critique is the argument that contemporary social policy responses and subsequent social work interventions to a range of policy problems (e.g. homelessness, poverty, family violence) need to acknowledge the failure of dominant neoliberal discourses in addressing these issues. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and, in many ways, exacerbated existing inequalities, and the post-pandemic future provides opportunities to put utopian ideas into action. Showing how utopian thinking can challenge fundamental assumptions regarding welfare dependency and unitary identities in policy settings, this book will be of interest to all scholars, students and professionals working in social work and social policy.