Feeding the Scyborgs in Social Work

Abstract

ContextSocial work has experienced long-standing tensions between care and control since its inception. As shifting moral, social, political, intellectual, and market forces have historically shaped social work agendas and practices, so have feminists through politics, research, teaching, and praxis. While radical and critical social work has frequently pushed back against oppressive systems and movements, social work and feminist social work frequently find itself colluding with and/or being coopted by institutions and systems that oppress, coerce, and control certain people and communities.We need not look far for evidence of these tensions, including but not limited to social work practice and interventions steeped in carceral logics and rescue-based work poignantly evidenced by the now defunct Project Rose (Wahab & Panichelli, 2013). Gramsci (1992), pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will, captures the spirit from which we write this editorial, and we turn to paperson's (2017) A Third University Is Possible for inspiration and critical hope, as we contemplate the tensions above and the emotions they engender.