Towards a Relational Green Social Work
Gregor Husi
The environmental crisis, especially the climate crisis, is becoming increasingly acute – with all the social and cultural consequences that entails. Social work is becoming aware of this, and a number of concepts for ecologically oriented social work are now available. What has been lacking so far is a theoretically sound conception of social work that links ecological thinking with relational thinking. Lena Dominelli’s green social work offers excellent opportunities for this. Its most important theorems are presented at the beginning. Her approach implies relationality, but its theoretical elaboration is largely lacking. The aim of this article is to close this gap. To this end, the discourses of relational social work and relational sociology are examined. As far as the latter is concerned, Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens and Jürgen Habermas deserve special attention. However, what these three social theorists have in common is that they have hardly addressed the relationship between society and nature. This deficiency can be remedied with the help of social and political ecology. Important concepts here are societal relations with nature and the imperial mode of living. Against this broad discursive background, relational green social work — known in German-speaking countries as «Grüne Soziale Arbeit» — can finally be presented as a new, theoretically ambitious approach to future social work.
Keywords
Keywords: Relational social work, Relational sociology, Green social work, Imperial mode of living, Relationality.
