CONTACT: tsacks@berkeley.edu(link sends e-mail)
As an interdisciplinary field of social science and an applied helping profession, social welfare and social work are often charged with supporting marginalized populations in times of acute crisis and chronic structural vulnerability. Social work scholars and practitioners intervene in countless sites of inquiry and practice ranging from mental health clinics, the child welfare system (aka family policing system), support for immigrants and climate refugees, victims of commercial sexual exploitation, etc. In spite of the field’s diffusion, it coheres around the primacy of stratification based on race and gender (and intersecting categories) as well as capitalist extraction. At present, we face multiple and simultaneous threats including the climate crisis, increasing inequality, authoritarianism, genocide and expansion of carceral logics. Obviously, these are global challenges that uniquely impact people in their local contexts. This group will explore how the field of social work can step into the void created by these polycrises to organize affected populations, advocate for policy changes that may mitigate harms, and theorize about social work’s strengths and limitations amid these crises.