BJSW Advance Access published online on September 22, 2009
British Journal of Social Work, doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcp104
Moral Sources and Emergent Ethical Theories in Social Work
Mel Gray is Professor of Social Work at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia and Research Professor in The Australian Institute for Social Inclusion and Wellbeing. Her recent works include Indigenous Social Work around the World: Towards culturally relevant education and practice jointly edited with John Coates and Michael Yellow Bird (Ashgate 2008), Social Work Theories and Methods, co-edited with Stephen A. Webb (Sage 2008), Evidence-based Social Work: A critical stance with Debbie Plath and Stephen A. Webb (Routledge, 2009), Ethics and Value Perspectives in Social Work, co-edited with Stephen A. Webb (Palgrave 2010), and Sage International Social Work (four volumes) co-edited with Stephen A. Webb (Sage 2010).
Correspondence to Mel Gray, Ph.D., Professor of Social Work, The Australian Institute for Social Inclusion and Wellbeing (TAISIW), The University of Newcastle, University Drive, Callaghan 2308, New South Wales, Australia. E-mail: Mel.Gray{at}newcastle.edu.au
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Abstract |
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This paper examines the feminist ethics of care as an emergent ethical theory that casts ethical dispositions in a different way to the deontological focus on duties and rules and consequentialist–utilitarian focus on minimising harm. It is closer to, though different from, virtue ethics with its focus on moral character. The paper highlights the philosophical tensions within and between these disparate theories, suggesting nevertheless that discussions about ethics are enriched by these diverse influences. Since it is not possible within the scope of this paper to deal with all of these ethical theories in depth, following a brief overview of the more established theory of deontology, virtue ethics and the ethics of care are discussed. While the feminist ethics of care attempts to provide a more complete view of morality and ethics in social work, there are important philosophical problems with which social work needs to engage in order to discern whether it offers a better understanding of morality than existing approaches in social work ethics and whether it can address the complexities of the problems social workers deal with and the harsh practice environments in which they work where the ‘practice of value’ is becoming ever more difficult and strong reasons to care must be found.
Keywords: Social work ethics, feminist ethical theory, virtue ethics, ethics of care, dialogical ethics