Social Work with Disadvantaged and Marginalised People by Jonathan Parker Sara Ashencaen Crabtree

Author:Jonathan Parker, Sara Ashencaen Crabtree [Jonathan Parker, Sara Ashencaen Crabtree]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Social Work
ISBN: 9781526416643
Google: 5uk7DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Learning Matters
Published: 2017-10-30T05:18:52+00:00

Virtue ethics

Aristotle accepted that people approach the concept of a good life in different ways, reflecting their different characteristics and needs. This approach demands experimentation and deep observation, reflecting social work’s imperative to ‘walk alongside’ people on the margins and to immerse themselves in their society. Whilst Aristotle spoke of moderation between extremes relative to the needs of situation and individual, he did identify a range of virtues that are necessary to achieve within oneself to conduct a good life, a life of happiness. It is from this thinking that virtue ethics stems. This approach to ethics takes the person and his or her moral character as central rather than searching for an overarching model of ethical life, unlike deontology and consequentialism (Baron et al., 1997). The approach requires us to ask questions about what constitutes a morally worthwhile or good life and has been used to delineate an ethics of care and nurture important in feminist and social work settings (Gilligan, 1982, 1988; Halwani, 2003).

Virtue ethics represents a relativistic ethic, however, and does not give any instrumental guidance as to how one should behave. This has been used as a critique but perhaps belies a point for critical reflection by social workers that challenges a regimented and categorising approach to people and groups, something that necessarily marginalises and disadvantages those who fall outside accepted parameters. Rather, social work stands with those at the edges and beyond and walks with them. It needs to answer the question, nonetheless, how other people are protected from those whose ‘good life’ and ethic increase the needs of others. Virtue ethics, as an approach to social work, raises important issues in determining what we do, when and how we do it. These are questions that aid critical self-reflection and determine, contextually, why we take a certain position or not in our practice. The relativism of virtue ethics may cause some difficulties and it is useful also to find an anchor. We will now turn to situation ethics which, through social justice and human rights, may begin to provide such a grounding.

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