ABSTRACT
This chapter examines social work as a discursive practice and aims to discover whether this kind of discursive framing may add to author understanding of the discipline of social work. It argues that a discourse about social work exists, and that within this discourse is found a 'truth' about social work as a practical, rather than a theoretical, enterprise. The chapter also examines the everyday activities of social workers along five dimensions: the social worker's position; starting where the client is; rejection; the horizon of possibilities; and conflicts about norms. It focuses on the insights of Kikkan Ustvedt Kristiansen, one of the pioneers of social work in Norway, to expand the discipline by trying out a theory and a perspective that has been little utilised in the social work literature in the Nordic countries. The chapter provides a view of the processes making up social work and considers the sample and the data as representative.
