ABSTRACT
This journal comes to you with what might appear to be an out of the ordinary title: Qualitative Social Work. In this essay, we will attempt to explain what we mean by that term, and in addition introduce readers to the aims and purposes of the journal as well as to the contents of the first issue. The subtitle, a room with a view, perhaps suggests the notion of a room with a number of windows and corresponding multiple views of varying scenery. While not wanting to belabor the analogy, this journal is a kind of room with a view – or indeed, rooms with views. Further, the title suggests something about the journal’s editorial position on the landscape of qualitative research and of social work. While there has been a tendency to see these as two separate landscapes, we in fact see these as one landscape, if a rather cluttered one. By way of a final note of introduction, this article was written in the days immediately following the events of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington D.C. The world, whether one views it as postmodern of not, now seems a very different place. In a just world order, we need to keep open all channels of communication, all possibilities for dialogue. We hope this journal provides a forum, even if only in a small way, for facilitating some of that dialogue.
