ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that social work values cohere in the notion of a practice and of the practical mode of experience. There are a number of ways in which social work values could be described as forming a particular coherence. It has been assumed, for example, that coherence and also context may be supplied by treating the values simply as the code of practice of a particular profession. For the latter neither throwing a football with skill nor bricklaying constitutes a practice, but the game of football and architecture do: 'the range of practices is wide: arts, sciences, games, politics in the Aristotelian sense, the making and sustaining of family life, all fall under the concept'. The chapter also presents some of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book illustrates some of the central features of the description of coherent and complex human activity, and also some of the interest such a description has for social workers.
