ABSTRACT
There has been an animated, even passionate, debate about the relative merits of ‘positivist’ and ‘humanist’ versions of social work. Yet, in our view, the way in which the debate has been conducted has been, in several respects, unhelpful. Not that there is nothing to debate. But social workers have tended to adopt entrenched positions which make it difficult to get fully inside or outside the argument. Advocates of qualitative research have been dismissed as ‘intellectual Luddites’ (Thyer, 1995: 97), while, from the opposing trenches, some protagonists of qualitative research dismiss those they label positivist as dangerously simplistic elitists, whose values are ‘at variance with the value base, and the purposeful and humble activities of social work practice’ (Everitt et al., 1992: 61). Hence, positivism becomes ‘a swear-word by which nobody is swearing’ (Williams, 1976: 239), and we are sometimes left with the impression that if only we were courageous enough to ‘deconstruct’ a problem, we would be nine tenths of the way to its solution. While a commitment to evidencing practice lies at the heart of the best work of both positivist and humanist strategies, Augustine’s comment is apposite for some representatives of both camps – ‘total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation’.
