Ethics & Social Welfare

Narratives of Ethics in Social Welfare and Social Work: Voices from South Asia

 Ethics is central to social work and social welfare practice across the globe. Ethical practice in these areas becomes more challenging when the world is experiencing numerous socio-economic and political challenges–war, racial and ethnic violence, religious persecution, refugee crises, hate crime and displacement, among other pressures. In this context, ‘ethics’ refers to how we treat each other and the ecosystem, which covers the matters of rights, responsibility, and well-being (Banks, 2015, p. 782).  The ethical issues and challenges at stake invite interrogation from social work, social welfare and community development perspectives.  

 Pankaj and Yadav (2022) argue that the 'notion of agency and responsibilities are at the core of ethics, linked with the recognition of human and ecosystem vulnerability'. This foregrounds the value of practitioners having ‘ethical sensitivity’ and acting with integrity – which,  in turn highlights the necessity of critical engagement with those terms. Meeting eco-social ethical challenges can be readily situated among the ethical demands facing  social workers and practitioners working in South Asian countries. Rampant socio-economic and political inequalities connected with hierarchical social structures such as caste, religion, and ethnicity often exacerbate the ethical challenges faced by social workers and development workers working in this area. And overcoming such challenges may be considered as the biggest obstacle for practitioners. Crucial to this is an appreciation of the insights and experiences of social work practitioners, social activists, scholars, and educators from South Asian countries.

The aim of this call is to further enhance our understanding of the range of ethical difficulties and challenges faced by community workers, social workers, and practitioners working with different vulnerable social groups such as Dalits, women, and labour migrants – and to explore the ways in which such priorities might be addressed. Due to the intersectionality of caste, gender, ethinicity, religion and the vulnerable social and economic position of clients and target groups, community workers experience these challenges in particularly acute and complex. Hence this special call, for ‘Narratives of Ethics in Social Welfare and Social Work: Voices from South Asia’, we are interested in manuscripts and case studies – including those drawn from personal narratives, oral history interviews, and insights from the field, and discussion of practice in situations of poverty, exclusion, war, conflict, disaster, health crisis and other relevant contexts. We are expecting two types of manuscript submission–Journal article and the practice paper.  Manuscript for the journal article will be typical academic article which shall follow the academic style of writing.  However, for the practice paper, there is no expectation that the submission should follow a strict academic style, as the focus of the practice section is to document the local context of ethics-based practice of social work and social welfare practice within different socio-economic, cultural, geographical, educational, and historical contexts in the South Asian region.