ABSTRACT
Plenty of textbooks dealing with social work concentrate on certain problems, such as mental health, violence, substance abuse or unemploy ment. To classify problems in such terms is foundational for social work as a knowledge domain and is necessary for the ability to understand, dis cuss and intervene in identified problems. In this chapter, however, such classifications of problems are not taken as ready-made to be found and dealt with. Instead tools are provided to analyse how they are intrinsic to social work interaction as an institutional communicative practice and how both social workers and their clients are actively involved in their making. This requires an alternative approach and a set of questions that are more explorative in character: How do social workers and their clients come to talk about their concerns in terms of, for instance, ‘neglect’, ‘learning disability’ or ‘physical abuse’? How do they arrive at a conclusion of what kind of problem they are dealing with? What consequences do these categories have in terms of intervention and action? What entitlements and obligations are implied for the parties involved? These are some of the issues to be raised when exploring categorisation in social work interaction.
