ABSTRACT
The UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)1 gave recognition to social work as a subject for which doctoral students could register and train for the first time in 2005. This implies a question which, although embedded in the context of doctoral research, is more general. Are efforts by the social work community across different countries to achieve greater research recognition of social work only a device to build the capacity of social work? This is not to demean such a motive, but are such efforts only about this? If we were to think that social work research differs only in place and people from politics, sociology, psychology or geography, then the question whether social work research is distinctive would be merely rhetorical.
