ABSTRACT
Research on social work is more usually carried out in social work studies or social policy. Academics in social work studies aim to identify and promote effective social work practice and such research tends to be based on research traditions which treat the reality of social work as unproblematic. This chapter discusses social work as a less certain and bounded enterprise which is constructed through talk and writing. Social work accounts describe and justify social work and show professional practice being created through rhetorical and interactional activity. Social work as text means approaching conversations and reports of social workers as rhetorical, interactional and literary entities to be understood through an analysis of the reading practices of different readers. Social work as narrative is offered as a framework for encompassing concepts of accountability, reading and textuality. A Foucauldian approach to narrative as totalising discourse is evident in a number of studies of how it is possible to conceive of non-Western cultures.
