SUSTAINABILITY AND NEW ECONOMIC APPROACHES AN EXPLORATION FOR SOCIAL WORK RESEARCH (Jef Peeters)

Ecology and sustainability have long been a focus of a small group of social work researchers, but the intensification of the ecological crisis has recently increased this attention enormously (Närhi & Matthies, 2016; Ramsay & Boddy, 2017; Krings et al., 2018). In international social work, this attention became a program item in The Global Agenda for social work and social development (IASSW, IFSW & ICSW, 2012), which aims, among other goals, to promote social and economic equality and to work towards environmental sustainability. The International Federation of Social Workers is further developing this agenda through e.g. the publication of handbooks on the agenda item ‘Promoting community and environmental sustainability’ (Rinkel & Powers, 2017, 2018, 2019). But although the Global Agenda recognizes the problem of ‘unjust and poorly regulated economic systems, driven by unaccountable market forces’ (p. 1), so far there is little research on how social work relates to the economic dimension of sustainability (Matthies et al., 2020). This working paper therefore explores alternative economic concepts that focus both on sustainability and distributive justice, and their possible significance for social work.

Author: Jef Peeters

Free download: https://soc.kuleuven.be/ceso/spsw/workingpaperseries/2022/ceso-spsw-2022-01