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A Deeper, More Social Ecological Social Work Practice
Author(s): Michael Ungar
Source:
Social Service Review,
Vol. 76, No. 3 (September 2002), pp. 480-497
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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A Deeper, More Social
Ecological Social Work
Practice
Michael Ungar
Dalhousie University
Although an ecological model of social work practice has been important to the profession
since the 1970s, advances in ecological theory based on developments in deep ecology
(Naess 1989) and social ecology (Bookchin 1980, 1982) inform a significantly different
understanding of ecological theory on which to base an emerging practice. Earlier con-
ceptualizations of ecology in social work, synonymous with mechanistic systems models,
differ from the more mutualistic, nonhierarchical, and emancipatory use of ecological
principles found in this new ecology. Eight principles are explored for their applicability
to the practice of social work.
Although ecological social work practice has been an integral part of the
profession’s practice orientation since the 1970s, developments in deep
ecology (Naess 1989) and social ecology (Bookchin 1980, 1982) offer
social workers increasingly progressive theories on which to base an ec-
ological practice. These developments are similar to critical, feminist, and
postmodern developments taking place in the profession, which them-
selves reflect an evolving understanding of the person-in-environment and
the dynamics of power inherent in transactional processes (Chambon
and Irving 1994; Van Den Bergh 1995; Ife 1997; Leonard 1997). Earlier
conceptualizations of ecology in social work, synonymous with mecha-
nistic systems models (see Auerswald 1968; Germain 1978, 1981; Meyer
1983), differ significantly from the more mutualistic, nonhierarchical, and
emancipatory use of ecological principles discussed in this article.
Ecological Social Work 481
Ecological Perspectives in Social Work
The term “ecology” was first used by Ernst Haeckel in 1868 to refer to
interdependencies among organisms in the natural world. In conven-
tional usage, ecology means “the interdisciplinary scientific study of the
living conditions of organisms in interaction with each other and with
the surroundings, organic as well as inorganic” (Naess 1989, p. 36). There
is a comfortable fit between the science of ecology and a profession like
social work, which has as its expressed purpose fostering healthy and
interdependent transactions between persons and their environments.
The earliest ecological model of social work practice challenged the in-
dividualistic casework orientation popular in the early and middle twen-
tieth century (Ramsay 1994; Wakefield 1996b). As Carol Meyer notes, “The
movement from casework to social work was more than semantic; it meant
ultimately that family, group, community, and organizational approaches
to intervention were to be included under the heading of social work
practice, and that new efforts were to be made to intervene in the client’s
environment” (1983, p. 12).
In an early review of ecological theory, Geoffrey Greif and Arthur
Lynch (1983) trace social workers’ understanding of ecology to biolog-
ical theories that explain adaptation of organisms to their environments.
In human terms, this means that “as a person enters each new situation,
he or she usually adapts to its demands and, by his or her presence,
changes the situation at least structurally. A person is constantly creating,
restructuring, and adapting to the environment even as the environment
affects the person” (Greif and Lynch 1983, p. 38). Although these early
formulations emphasize goodness of fit through adaptation, they prac-
tically ignore the position of the observer (social worker) vis-a`-vis the
client and the relative power of each part of the helping system. Early
ecological models were based on systems theories that built on the works
of Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1968) and Gregory Bateson (1972) and were
most commonly used by social workers to explain the interactional pro-
cesses between family members. These systems-based models of practice,
as developed by social workers such as Salvador Minuchin (1974), did
not deconstruct the standpoints of those who decide which adaptations
are determined to be the best. Implicit in these early models is the naive
assumption that all family members benefit equally from a system that
establishes balance in ways amenable to those in power (Luepnitz 1988).
Despite these shortcomings in systems theory, social workers still found
an ecological perspective, based on a broadened view of systems theory,
intriguing and more synchronous with their mission than the individu-
alizing psychoanalytic models of intervention popular in the 1950s and
1960s. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Edgar Auerswald (1968) was
pioneering efforts to integrate ecology and general systems theory in social
work, and the field of ecosystems and ecological practice gained ground.
482 Social Service Review
As ideas evolved, ecological theory came to refer specifically to transac-
tional processes, not to the individual components of either the person
or environment in a system (Woodrow 1983). Models proliferated, in-
cluding Carel Germain and Alex Gitterman’s (1980) life model, Meyer’s
ecosystems model (1983), and Minuchin’s (1974) structural family ther-
apy. Such convergence of thought and an explicit emphasis by authors
to provide guiding theory rather than prescriptions for practice led Greif
and Lynch (1983) to observe that social work was at the time moving
steadily away from “a fragmented view of practice based on method de-
rived from setting” (p. 54), which typified earlier developments in the
profession. Although its adherents saw systems-based ecological models
of practice as a positive step, Jerome Wakefield (1996a) argues that such
detachment from practice made ecological theory redundant to social
work because, being an applied discipline, the profession still had to rely
on empirically tested domain-specific interventions.
Despite this potential redundancy, the ecological model defined pro-
gressive clinical practice (though not community practice) in the 1970s
and early 1980s. Typical of writings at the time, Paula Allen-Meares and
Bruce Lane’s (1987) work drew connections between ecological social
work and advances in related fields of ethology (the study of animal
behavior), ecological psychology (the study of the effects of the physical
environment on human psychology), and ethnology (the study of social
knowledge in everyday contexts). Allen-Meares and Lane developed a
model of assessment that epitomized the orderly inclusion of ecological
factors. They described how determinism underlies complex transactional
processes. This description was only a short step from the psychological
ecology formula, , with which Kurt Lewin (1951) showed thatB p f(P, E)
behavior is a function of persons in interaction with their environment.
Following Lewin’s work in field theory, Urie Bronfenbrenner (1979)
pushed the ecological perspective to a respectable position in psychol-
ogy. Bronfenbrenner’s work proved similarly useful to social work,
which, as a profession, relies in part on psychological theory to inform
practice. Writing for his more conservative colleagues in the field of
developmental psychology, who placed little importance on assessing a
child’s environment as a causal factor in psychopathology, Bronfen-
brenner explained, “The ecology of human development involves the
scientific study of the progressive, mutual accommodation between an
active, growing human being and the changing properties of the im-
mediate settings in which the developing person lives, as this process is
affected by relations between these settings, and by the larger contexts
in which the settings are embedded” (1979, p. 21).
Bronfenbrenner notes that although all behaviorists acknowledge that
people and their environments interact, little attention was actually be-
ing paid to the social determinants of the phenomena under study. Only
the most rudimentary attention was given to a critical conceptualization
Ecological Social Work 483
of the environment. Instead, behaviorists homogenized the environ-
ment into a set of distinct variables associated mostly with a person’s
social address. This practice contrasted with the subtle nuances syste-
matically investigated by these same researchers in their studies of the
human psyche. Only recently has there been evidence that more inten-
sive ecological inquiry is both possible and necessary. For example, there
is now sufficient evidence to hypothesize that ecological forces at play
in the world beyond the family affect a child’s development as much
or more than the child’s interaction with parents (Rich 1998).
Related work in the area of family therapy paralleled developments
in ecological social work and Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model of
human development. Ecological perspectives on ethnicity, race, and
gender in practice situations promised a more critical understanding
of the power implicit in transactional processes. These perspectives,
however, developed rather modestly and did not initially challenge or
deconstruct dominant values. For example, John Spiegel (1982) dis-
cusses a Puerto Rican family in which the father is overly controlling of
the daughter and her social and sexual development:
Because we are dealing with families based on Lineal or Collateral orientation,
it is important to line ourselves up with the head of the family. This is normally
the father, but in his absence it can be the mother or grandmother. Since the
head of the family holds culturally sanctioned power, we would not be able to
gain entree into the family without sincerely respecting that power and the
objectives he or she has in mind for the family. Thus we would not be able to
get very far if we indicated that one of our goals was to obtain autonomy or
individuation for a wife or daughter. (P. 48)
Proponents of critical, feminist, and postmodern theories of intervention
will see the problem with this transactional approach, which charges the
therapist with expert knowledge and proposes a set of Western values that
are not openly deconstructed during the intervention (see Van den Bergh
1995; White 1995). Issues of oppression and power were not wholly ad-
dressed in ecological social work practice until later in the 1980s in work
by Deborah Luepnitz (1988) and Betty Carter and Monica McGoldrick
(1989), who, among others, adopted transactional models that ascribed
no final causality to system components and acknowledged the ethno-
centrism and sexism of social workers.
The shift from a depoliticized, though contextually sensitive, ecolog-
ical social work to overt criticism of the differences in power inherent
in transactional processes is most evident in Germain and Gitterman’s
revised edition of their classic text on the life model. The 1996 edition
adds three new conceptual areas to their model: vulnerability, oppres-
sion, the use or misuse of power, and social and technological pollution;
habitat and niche; and life course, the trajectory taken by individuals,
with attention paid to social and cultural determinants of these trajec-
484 Social Service Review
tories. This greater emphasis on contextualization, power, and privilege
reflects advances in cultural sensitivity, the politics of location, and the
understanding of the mutual dependency among all things human and
the natural world.
Arguably, a more progressive theoretical basis is needed if ecological
theory is to be defended against its critics. As Malcolm Payne (1991)
notes, earlier understandings of ecological theory are less than tenable.
Modernists argue that the theory does not explain why things happen or
why connections exist. Nor is ecological theory sufficiently prescriptive to
inform practice directly. It is overly inclusive, giving us little guidance
about what is important to include in a general schema. Further, it does
not criticize the entropy of systems that are not viable, leaving unques-
tioned the value of some systems as they exist. Finally, it is overly gen-
eralized, and the language is too complex. These objections suggest that
ecosystems or ecological theory, as originally developed, overstate the
importance of the parts of a system, making it appear that homeostasis
(system stability) is preferable to conflict and change and leaves unchal-
lenged underlying assumptions such as hierarchies and institutions. These
criticisms leveled at ecological theory are partly the result of a systems
solipsism that has no capacity to deconstruct its own cultural embedded-
ness. Although not a panacea capable of addressing all these questions,
a social and deep ecological response to a systems-based ecology does
offer a better understanding of the context and power of the social worker
in transaction with those with whom he or she works.
A New Ecology
Bookchin’s Social Ecology
While sharing similarities with the systems-based theories from which
ecological social work originated, a new ecology is rooted theoretically
in writings related to social ecology and deep ecology. Murray Bookchin
(1982) is credited with coining the term “social ecology” in the late
1970s, referring specifically to the interrelationship between human be-
ings and the natural environment. For Bookchin, adapting the biological
construct of ecology to include the social realm of human beings brings
with it the potential to understand not only our place in nature but also
our relationships with one another. As Bookchin explains:
Put quite simply, ecology deals with the dynamic balance of nature, with the
interdependence of living and nonliving things. Since nature also includes human
beings, the science must include humanity’s role in the natural world—specifically,
the character, form, and structure of humanity’s relationship with other species
and with the inorganic substrate of the biotic environment. From a critical view-
point, ecology opens to wide purview the vast disequilibrium that has emerged
from humanity’s split with the natural world. One of nature’s very unique species,
Ecological Social Work 485
homo sapiens, has slowly and painstakingly developed from the natural world into
a unique social world of its own. As both worlds interact with each other through
highly complex phases of evolution, it has become as important to speak of a
social ecology as to speak of a natural ecology. (1982, p. 22)
Bookchin argues against the uncritical use of ecological principles by
environmentalists, who, he believes, tend to seek peaceful associations
with nature but do not challenge its ongoing commodification and
plunder. Environmentalism, according to Bookchin, facilitates domi-
nation of nature by developing techniques for diminishing the hazards
caused by domination. Ecology, as a philosophy, emphasizes instead
diversity and complexity, both biological and, by extension, sociocul-
tural. Bookchin challenges the ecology, feminist, and community de-
velopment movements to seek a nonhierarchical society in which dom-
ination of nature by human beings along gender, race, and class lines
is abolished. An unapologetic anarchist, Bookchin sees in lessons from
ecology, both metaphorically and practically, the path forward to social
order without social domination.
Bookchin wrestles with many of the issues confronting the profession
of social work. Among these are social organization, hierarchy, holism,
homogenization, power, and the privileging of knowledge. As an evolved
marxist (Light 1998), Bookchin sees the alienation of human beings
from their environment as the result of class, race, and gender struggles,
which, over time, have led individuals to subjugate one another and the
environment in the pursuit of power and domination. Those in power
have ignored lessons from ecology, seeking holism through unity in
sameness rather than unity in diversity. Critics of a homogenizing pro-
fessional discourse in social work argue a similar point, that those who
represent the state through its social services pay too little attention to
the subjugation of clients and to the dualism between social workers
and the communities that they service (Margolin 1997; Hugman 1998).
Bookchin’s concept of an ecological society, though more a liberal
interpretation of history than a fact-based one, emphasizes just such plu-
ralism within nonhierarchical communities: “Freedom would no longer
be placed in opposition to nature, individuality to society, choice to ne-
cessity, or personality to the needs of social coherence” (1982, p. 318).
As Bookchin explains, “there are no ‘kings of the beasts’ and no ‘lowly
ants.’ These notions are the projections of our own social attitudes and
relationships on the natural world. Virtually all that lives as part of the
floral and faunal variety of an ecosystem plays its coequal role in main-
taining the balance and integrity of the whole” (1980, pp. 59–60). Building
on Bookchin’s work, Andrew Light (1998, p. 7) explains that “the history
of social and natural evolution has become the history of two competing
logics: the logic of spontaneous mutualistic ecological differentiation and
486 Social Service Review
the logic of domination, which works against everything represented by
the other.”
Naess’s Deep Ecology
A new ecology for the human services also borrows heavily from the
deep ecology of Arne Naess (1989; Reed and Rothenberg 1993; Zim-
merman 1994). The inclusion of both Bookchin and Naess under the
heading “new ecologists” should not imply conviviality between the two
(see Pepper 1993; Benton and Short 1999). There is, however, a synergy
between Naess’s and Bookchin’s ideas and their application to an ec-
ological social work practice.
According to Naess, deep ecology is the study of the mutual depen-
dency found in all aspects of an ecosystem. The intrinsic value of each
component exists apart from the value that human beings place on it
(Taylor 1994). Within a deep ecology, there is no separation between
organic and nonorganic elements. The deep ecologist and Bookchin’s
social ecologist are conceptually similar: “Deep ecologists call for a shift
away from anthropocentric humanism toward an ecocentrism guided
by the norm of self-realization for all beings . . . Maintaining that hu-
mans are nature rendered self-conscious, social ecologists call for small-
scale, egalitarian, anarchistic societies, which recognize that human well-
being is inextricably bound up with the well-being of the natural world
on which human life depends” (Zimmerman 1994, p. 2).
Thinking about the world ecologically allows human beings to look
more critically at human communities and, like the deep ecologist, to
proclaim that diversity, complexity, and symbiosis are in our own best
interest. As Naess explains, the complexity and symbiosis found in a phys-
ical environment is inextricably linked to its diversity: “If we are permitted
to vary three factors a, b, c in spatial horizontal arrangements, we can
only realise six different patterns: abc, acb, bac, bca, cab, cba. If we add
one more basic factor, d, the number of arrangements increases to ‘four
factorial’, 24. This illustrates the intimate relation between complexity and
diversity. When the number of elements increases linearly, the number of
possible relationships increases factorially” (Naess 1989, pp. 201–2). Hu-
man communities are arguably much the same. Both complexity and
diversity protect ecosystems against destruction. Likewise, the concept of
symbiosis indicates the unity between the one and the many in ecological
relationships between people. In practical terms, Naess argues, “We need
types of societies and communities in which one delights in the value-
creative aspects of equilibrium rather than the glorification of value-
neutral growth; in which being together with other living beings is more
important than exploiting or killing them” (1989, p. 24). Mathis Wack-
ernagel and William Rees (1996) use the metaphor of an “ecological
footprint” to help us further appreciate our collective human impact and
Ecological Social Work 487
dependency on the natural environment. In human beings’ push toward
development, that footprint has grown exponentially. Calls for voluntary
simplicity are challenging unbridled growth in a finite ecosystem.
Such limits make sense given this new ecology’s emphasis that all
things human are only one component of all things natural. A deep
ecology promotes the development of a consciousness that, according
to ecologists like Bill Devall and George Sessions (1994, p. 113), allows
us to see through the “erroneous and dangerous illusions” of domi-
nance. Given this propensity to talk about worldly illusions and the
spiritual connection between the individual self and the unified Self as
discovered through experiences with nature, deep ecology has been
either dismissed or lauded for its celebration of the spiritual—sometimes
at the expense of the practical (Pepper 1993; Reed and Rothenberg
1993; Guha 1994, 1995).
Naess at least intended his theory to inform practical applications of
ecological theory. He characterized his work as an action-informing
philosophy, with each application based on a different interpretation.
Naess describes his work as “ecosophy T,” an arbitrary letter designation
that leaves open the possibility that others will create ecosophy a, b, or
c. The ecologically grounded philosophy of the human services put forth
here is one such application.
New Ecology and Human Services Delivery
Naess summarizes the complexity, diversity, and symbiosis that charac-
terize his ecosophy in eight succinct statements, all of which share much
in common with Bookchin’s conceptualization of social ecology. These
principles of a physical ecology can be adapted to inform an ecological
practice in the human services. Table 1 details both these eight ecolog-
ical principles and the corresponding principles for an applied ecolog-
ical practice. The eight principles for practice in the right-hand column
are, however, only one of the many possible adaptations of deep and
social ecological theories. Others may view Naess’s work as informing
a different set of practice principles, and they would be completely
justified in creating a complementary “ecosophy” of the human services.
As interpreted here, these eight principles of practice are meant to
challenge earlier conceptualizations of ecological practice that pro-
duced little change in the business-as-usual approaches found among
service providers mandated to change people’s behavior (Kemp, Whit-
taker, and Tracy 1997). For example, a study by Fred Frankel, Robert
Myatt, and Dennis Cantwell (1995) examines the effectiveness of train-
ing outpatient boys to conform with the behaviors of their popular peers.
Parents and teachers were asked if they noticed differences in the boys
after the intervention. Frankel and colleagues state: “Our results suggest
that it is possible to obtain significant immediate improvement in parent
488 Social Service Review
Table 1
Practice Principles of a New Ecology
Naess’s Ecosophy “T”* New Ecology in Practice
1. The flourishing of human and nonhu-
man life on earth has intrinsic value.
The value of nonhuman life forms is
independent of the usefulness these
may have for narrow human
purposes.
Each individual has intrinsic value apart
from the meaning or usefulness of
the individual to others in his or her
community.
2. Richness and diversity of life forms are
values in themselves and contribute to
the flourishing of human and nonhu-
man life on earth.
The diversity of culture and social or-
ganization offers the potential for
unique solutions to emerge to shared
human challenges.
3. Human beings have no right to reduce
this richness and diversity except to
satisfy vital needs.
Structured alliances between communi-
ties and the services that provide for
them must act to increase the diver-
sity of resources that are directly avail-
able to individuals and families to
help them help themselves.
4. Present human interference with the
nonhuman world is excessive, and the
situation is rapidly worsening.
A service delivery system that is man-
aged by community stakeholders, not
bureaucracies, is the least likely to
contribute to social disintegration.
5. The flourishing of human life and cul-
tures is compatible with a substantial
decrease of the human population.
Human service delivery systems work
best when they are kept small, allow-
ing resources to be divested to the
communities being served.
6. Significant changes of life conditions for
the better requires changes in poli-
cies. These affect basic economic,
technological, and ideological
structures.
Public policy is needed that expands the
capacity of communities and their
members to function on their own by
providing the resources they need to
sustain their well-being.
7. The ideological change is mainly that of
appreciating life quality (dwelling in
situations of intrinsic value) rather
than adhering to a high standard of
living.
What is good for individuals and their
communities is the benchmark of en-
lightened social and economic
development.
8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing
points have an obligation directly or
indirectly to participate in the at-
tempt to implement the necessary
changes.
Those who believe in the above points
have an ethical obligation to achieve
these goals by changing the methods
of their practice and the structure of
the organizations for which they
work.
* Adapted from Naess 1989, p. 29.
and teacher ratings of outpatient boys’ social skills. This was accom-
plished by the use of a relatively brief training program designed to
train boys to act more like their popular peers. Parents were integrated
into the treatment effort with beneficial effects” (pp. 308–9). This type
of intervention is not what a professional practice informed by deep
and social ecological principles looks like, though it is currently accepted
as an example of ecological social work. Such planned intervention,
though apparently effective, was based on expert knowledge that work-
Ecological Social Work 489
ers used to change the boys’ behavior in predetermined ways. The boys
were never consulted about the direction of the changes. Success was
measured by unquestioned standards of compliance in home and school
environments, compliance that may, or may not, be contextually relevant
to the boys’ health and well-being (see Tyler et al. 1992; Cirillo 2000;
Ungar and Teram 2000).
The eight principles of an ecosophy of the human services are an
attempt to resolve these shortcomings and bring ecological models of
social work in line with developments in feminist, critical, and post-
modern theories related to the human services. An ecological practice
that values, for example, intrinsic worth and mutuality may use any of
a number of traditional individual or community interventions but does
so as long as each openly challenges the interventions’ presumed au-
thenticity with clients. However, while clients, not practitioners, should
decide the appropriateness of the interventions used, social agendas will
still dictate what is and is not a problem requiring attention. This, then,
leads to the necessary deconstruction of the relative power and privilege
of each stakeholder’s standpoint vis-a`-vis the problem, its hypothesized
solution, and the interventions to achieve goals that may or may not be
contested. In the above example, we may ask disordered boys about the
benefits of their behavior, and we may deconstruct the privileged pro-
fessional discourse that defines for the boys their status as healthy or
unhealthy. But all of this takes place constrained by socially constructed
norms that dictate what is tolerable and intolerable behavior among
youth (Stebbins 1996).
In practice, interventions informed by a new ecology would elicit the
meanings that the boys attach to their lived experiences. From this
understanding, those intervening can match what they offer to what the
boys say they need. Negotiations would proceed that either invest more
power in the boys’ solutions or behaviors, which in turn gives them
legitimacy (see Taylor, Gilligan, and Sullivan 1995), or focus on helping
the boys achieve their preferred lifestyles in ways that bring them wider
social acceptance. The effectiveness of interventions like these is already
well documented in the literature with delinquents (Ungar 2001), young
women with depression (Nylund and Ceske 1997), children with Atten-
tion Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (Nylund and Corsiglia 1996), and
drug-using or drug-abusing youth (Sanders 1997).
Eight Principles in Practice
Intrinsic Value
In considering the best interests of their clients, social workers are ad-
vised to see “the client as an individual, a member of a family unit, a
member of a community, a person with a distinct ancestry or culture”
490 Social Service Review
(Canadian Association of Social Workers 1994, p. 4). In the heterono-
mous ethics (Loewenberg, Dolgoff, and Harrington 2000) of an eco-
logical practice, this belief is anchored to a philosophy that promotes
each individual’s intrinsic value regardless of his or her function in the
larger community. In practice, this means that, in and of themselves,
all who participate in the associational life of a community have value,
though the power, privilege, and beliefs embedded in the dominant
culture will determine at any given moment which attributes are valued
and which are not.
A social work practice informed by new ecology demonstrates a
healthy respect for relativism in the way that professional mandates are
expressed. One need only think of the debate over spanking to witness
the intrinsic value of multiple realities. Advocates for spanking talk of
their religious or moral duty and how their actions are in the best
interest of the child; to refrain from corporal punishment is interpreted
as a sign of neglectful parenting. Though marginal at this time, it is not
long since such views were roundly upheld by most social institutions
(Bullen 1991). A practice informed by a new ecology is self-critical, and
while different health discourses compete, the practitioner’s role is to
appreciate the temporal and social dimension of interventions. A new
ecology orients practitioners to this relativism, in the same way as do
postmodern interpretations of social work (Leonard 1997).
Diversity and Diverse Solutions
As Leslie Margolin (1997) explains, the profession of social work has not
reflected enough on the conflict between doing good and being an agent
of social control. In the second part of that mandate, the goals are pre-
determined and the outcomes generalized. It is difficult in practice to
value what each unique population and its community brings to the dis-
course on health. We commit, through our categorization of good and
bad behaviors, a sin of omission. “The social work narratives that appear
on the surface always seem to suggest underlying counternarratives: When
social work describes its clients one way, all the other infinite ways those
clients could be described are excluded. When social work establishes
one reality, it necessarily blocks others: it is both positive and negative,
simultaneously” (Margolin 1997, p. 7).
Social workers who approach their mandate with the bias of privilege
will fail to notice community resources that offer alternative models of
coping. For example, divesting mandated control to communities in order
to show respect for indigenous patterns of healing and care, which is
occurring in aboriginal communities, demands of child welfare workers
a flexibility and tolerance for diversity (Borg, Brownlee, and Delaney 1995;
Connors and Maidman 2001). The argument against such divestment has
been that doing so risks a plethora of relativistic interpretations and stan-
Ecological Social Work 491
dards of practice that pit one reality against another, leaving children at
greater risk of harm. The science of a new ecology challenges us to attack
at a fundamental level the problems with hierarchical and colonialist
interpretations of care and intervention. It integrates into social work
practice a perspective that promotes the value of diversity and diverse
solutions to the problems facing distinctly different populations.
Structured Alliances
Practice based on the principles of a new ecology promotes the indigenous
helping capacities of marginalized communities as ends in themselves.
This new ecology provides a critique of the hierarchical and bureau-
centric way in which elites manipulate community processes to achieve
their own goals. For example, much of the literature on informal social
networks starts with the premise that informal helpers can accomplish
what professionals are unable to do (Garbarino 1983; Mastronardi 1990;
McKnight 1995; Cameron and Vanderwoerd 1997). There remains, how-
ever, an unquestioned belief by professionals who remain outsiders to the
communities they service that there exists a predetermined set of out-
comes that they achieve through subtle manipulation of local resources.
A more politicized and ecological model of practice emphasizes sharing
health resources with communities: placing professionals and the dollars
that go with their positions in community-based organizations accountable
to community boards, engaging in processes that allow communities to
determine the goals of interventions, and changing the rigid bureau-
centrism of social work practice (e.g., holding meetings in spaces that are
comfortable ecologically for clients, such as churches and health clinics,
rather than the sanitized, but convenient, boardrooms and meeting rooms
of government offices).
Management by Stakeholders
Managerialism in social services, like environmentalism, leaves unques-
tioned issues of hierarchy and power and the objectification of com-
munity as an extension of services rather than understanding formal
services as an extension of the community (Ungar, Teram, and Picketts
2001). Social workers have become too much like functionaries of the
state who support the growing disenfranchisement of people from their
own natural helping systems (Payne 1991; McKnight 1995).
Bookchin deplores those he terms “managerial radicals,” who em-
phasize change processes without due consideration to the ends being
sought. As Bookchin explains: “Environmentalism tends to reduce na-
ture to a storage bin of ‘natural resources’ or ‘raw materials.’ . . . The
‘harmony’ of the environmentalist centers around the development of
new techniques for plundering the natural world with minimal disrup-
tion of the human ‘habitat’” (1982, p. 21). The profession of social work
492 Social Service Review
may have embraced ecological practice models in the past, but social
workers have not prevented individuals and their communities from
becoming commodified as clients rather than being interdependent
partners in service delivery systems (Fisher and Karger 1997; Margolin
1997).
Divestment to Community
While these ideas will be attractive to many who already resist the ho-
mogenizing effects of bureau-centric practice, there is no getting around
the fact that the ecological social worker is calling on the self-perpetuating
system of his or her employer to show tolerance for the very diversity that
threatens it. Just as ecocentrism, as opposed to anthropocentrism, en-
courages us to think as individuals but act in ways that recognize our
place in nature, the ecologically oriented social worker must be part of
a professional discipline while not privileging professional discourse.
Centralized services may be efficient for managers, and provincial stan-
dards a legal necessity, but such models seldom put resources where they
are most needed, which undermines a community’s capacity to care for
itself. Ironically, it is in resource-poor rural communities that social work-
ers have been most effective marshaling resources, working informally,
building alliances, situating themselves in community-relevant structures,
and stretching meager financial resources (Martinez-Brawley 1993;
Brownlee and Delaney 1997).
Public Policy and Community Empowerment
Public policy that reflects a new ecology addresses the exigencies of
community life at multiple levels. For example, preventing child abuse
is not accomplished through programmed interventions alone. As Ray
Peters and his colleagues (Peters et al. 2001, p. 211) explain, “While
children from any socioeconomic status can be abused or neglected,
low-income families experience higher rates of child abuse, because
poverty increases the severity and range of stresses to which these fam-
ilies are exposed. Thus, the issues of promoting family and child wellness
and preventing child abuse and neglect become tied to economic and
workplace policies that impact child poverty.” Public policy that ad-
dresses poverty in ways that promote community control over resources
and that tolerates a multiplicity of constructions of healthy families will
contribute to solving family problems such as child abuse. This has been
a common thread in ecological practice, and yet, as Peters and col-
leagues observe, “Why, after ten years of advocacy for social policies to
address child poverty, has the rate of child poverty increased?” (2001,
p. 211). Alternate models of ecological practice, which emphasize social
responsibility for families, require better articulation (Eichler 1997).
Ecological Social Work 493
Enlightened Development
The social worker whose practice reflects a deep and social ecology
recognizes that development, either in how service delivery systems func-
tion, or in how a community promotes its economic and social well-
being, must provide sustained benefits to the greatest number of com-
munity members. For example, under this model, one would question
the value of superprisons and the multibillion dollar corrections in-
dustry, which have shown no positive effect on those incarcerated and
have resulted, ironically, in no decrease in crime (Cayley 1998). In con-
trast, local initiatives modeled on aboriginal restorative justice forums
have been shown to be effective for both property crimes and crimes
of violence and, of much more benefit to communities, perpetrators,
and, in some cases, victims (Van Den Berg and Grealish 1996; Burford
and Pennell 1998). Such localized initiatives maintain community own-
ership for problems and solutions.
Ethical Obligations to Foster Change
Margolin writes skeptically that “social workers may claim Jane Addams
as their source of inspiration, but they do Mary Richmond” (1997, p. 4).
Current trends point to the depoliticization of social work as the profes-
sion becomes less involved in community initiatives (Fisher and Karger
1997). Bob Mullaly observes that “if social workers truly believe in the
values and ideals they espouse, then they cannot subscribe to and try to
maintain a social order that contradicts and violates many of these same
values and ideals” (1997, p. 101). As Margolin (1997) demonstrates, social
workers speak of institutional causes of racism and poverty, but so much
of the discourse in which workers participate day-to-day continues to focus
on individual pathology instead of community capacity. To take an eco-
logical stance obligates social workers (and their employers) to put into
practice their commitment to broad social change through participation
in politicized community initiatives and organizations.
Practically There
Social work practice based on these eight principles of a new ecology
is an attempt to celebrate diversity in constructions of health and the
deconstruction of the relative power of the competing discourses found
among privileged professional service providers and the marginalized
groups that they serve. Such acceptance of differences reflects a growing
call by clients for more inclusive services that emphasize the needs of
special groups such as immigrants, aboriginal peoples, and at-risk pop-
ulations (Canadian Association of Social Workers 2001). Deconstruction
of these discourses does not necessarily mean, however, the privileging
494 Social Service Review
of all discourses equally. The practitioner informed by a new ecology
simply starts from the premise that assumptions of causality and health
are relative across cultures and time, with stakeholders participating
more or less vocally in the construction of the normative assumptions
that constrain their lives and dictate the appropriateness of particular
interventions. The eight principles of a deeper, more social, ecological
practice presented above offer a beginning guide to practitioners who
wish to operationalize ecological theory in nonoppressive ways.
Although the eight principles discussed above remind social workers
of their embeddedness in communities and the complexity of clients,
further study is needed to understand the applicability of social and
deep ecology to social work. Acknowledging the mutual dependencies
and dynamics of power between professionals and those that they serve
does not resolve questions of how social workers can mediate differences
among social groups and among these groups, service providers, and
the providers’ employers. Looking to feminist, critical, and postmodern
understandings of social work practice may help to inform this practical
application of ecological theory while also contributing a progressive
ecological perspective to these other practice discourses. Nevertheless,
arbitrary definitions by communities as to what are and are not appro-
priate standards of behavior, and what constitutes effective practice in
each context, will remain subjects of debate between those with differing
amounts of power.
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Note
I wish to thank John Coates, Carolyn Campbell, and the anonymous reviewers of this
journal for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.