ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors explain their focus on London and the basic tenor of their approach. The authors clarify and frame key aspects of the central argument, starting with the fundamental sources of apparently quixotic cultural activism in the slums. Two particular aspects call for the authors' attention as they consider how it might have infused so unlikely a quarter of public life as social work. The memoirs of many social workers also suggest less rarefied origins for their personal activism. Many were drawn into social work by encountering poverty and social conditions at first hand. The authors summarize that the cultural mission to the London poor was not the 'expression' of a discrete idea put into action, whether that be Arnoldian 'culture', or Ruskinian 'art for the people', or the social metaphysics of Green implanted at Balliol College, to take the three usual suspects.
