ABSTRACT
This chapter presents few theoretical and methodological perspectives that try to conceptualize the social and the material as entangled. It demonstrates how social work research in advanced welfare states can benefit from theorizing the 'socio-material'. With increasing use of computer-based technologies in social work, increasing use of welfare technologies and monitoring, 'big data' and so forth, it is pertinent for social work research to consider the materiality of the world and how it becomes entangled with the problems of the social. The chapter offers an introduction to actornetwork theory and relate it to social work. It provides a brief introduction to Ingold's work and discusses how a focus on life and movements might guide distinctive social work research. Actor-network theory has often been criticized for being more interested in non-humans than humans, more interested in the objectivity than subjectivity.
