ABSTRACT
This chapter represents a modest attempt to do the same for practice research in social work. Practice research starts and finishes with practice. It explores what we mean by pluralism in relation to social work, and specifically as it relates to methods used in practice research. Pluralism is a way of understanding social diversity. It is not the only way to understand social diversity, but pluralism is unique in recognising conflicting positions that cannot be reduced to one another, ranked in order of importance or reduced to a single position. International mass migration caused by globalisation, war, famine or climate change has brought many people into contact with those different from themselves. Pluralism, in its purest form, denies the existence of unifying forces in nature. This means that there are multiple ways to engage with reality and there is no scope for general theorising or single ways of understanding reality.
