Ecology of Common Care

This book offers an ecological foundation for social work and for care provision in general. It presents the ecosocial approach according to its origins, distinguishing it from other theoretical social work approaches and applying it to various areas of care for welfare. The ecological anchoring of social welfare and common care is an emerging topic in political, organisational, and person-related development of human services and social work. In an era of crisis, this anchoring is an essential contribution to the study of sustainable social provision. The book embeds the dispositions about it in the ecology of the protection and securing of common life.

Ecology of Common Care: The Ecosocial Approach as a Theory of Social Work and Human Service is an essential text that should engage the academic community of educators and researchers in social work and other human services professions, as well as students in bachelor's and master's programmes in these professions.

Auteur

Prof. Dr. phil. Wolf Rainer Wendt studied philosophy, psychology, and sociology and then practiced in youth welfare. Since 1978 he has been professor and Head of the Department of Social Work at the Berufsakademie Stuttgart, now the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University (DHBW) Stuttgart in Germany. He was co-founder and chairman (1993 to 2009) of the German Association of Social Work (DGSA), and also was chairman (2004 to 2015) of the German Society for Care and Case Management (DGCC). In 2003 he received an honorary professorship at the University of Tübingen in Germany. He has written a number of books (in German) on the theory and history of social work, the social economy and care and case management.

Contenu
1 IntroductionEcology is usually understood as a science that has its object outside the existence of humans and their social life. Ecologically, however, it is also possible to study the life contexts in which human existence and provision of care takes place. The object is the scope of the social in the setting of its occurrence. The texture of our common and individual existence and the economy of its supply can be inspected. It is this field as a sphere of action that the ecosocial approach deals with: A theory of human services and social work is the basis for their cause, their procedure and their outcome of that context and in the household with its means and potentials.The contexts of social agency are extended in space and time. Ecology captures the connections of that agency and the human agency in general.
2 What to think of in the ecosocial conceptThe ecosocial concept reconstructs the intercorrelations in which human care and social work happen. We live, act and interact amidst our concrete (social and cultural, material and natural) surroundings and world. We are part of it, we are dependent on it and we shape it with our conduct and way of life. The ecosocial theory omits the usual juxtaposition of economy, ecology and social issues. To view something ecologically means to conceive of it comprehensively and in the entirety of the context to which it belongs. The ecosocial paradigm is a paradigm of insiderness and participation.
3 The genesis of the ecosocial paradigmHistorically, the construct of the ecological presupposes the idea of the social, but this idea is linked to an old concept of economy. The biological application to the household of nature goes back to a basic form of domestic coexistence. The ecosocial concept ties in with this connection. From Ernst Haeckel's (1866) introduction of the term and topic of ecology, the transfer to social science discourses in home economics, urban sociology, psychology and social work can be traced.
4 The scope of the theoryThe subject matter of the ecosocial approach in social work and in human services is the cohabitation and interaction of people in their shared space of life with its events and challenges, conflicts and crises. They occur in the context of physical, cultural, economic and social conditions in which there is a multiple set of factors that correlate with and influence people's behaviour in a specific way. In an ecology of situatedness of people and human community, appropriate action can be discussed.
5 The central concept of the household and the principle of householdingThe ecological character of cohabitation in a field of action is encompassed in the category of the household. The topos of the household brings together economic and social, normative, institutional, systemic and procedural aspects. They can be caught at the macro level in the political body or at the meso level in the organisations that in the social economy provide work and benefits for members or public services for the people or at the micro level in the dispositions for individual well-being. Three sections discuss: (1) the model of the ancient oikos; (2) resources as "stuff" of purposeful and sustainable action; and (3) householding in a caring and managing function.
6 A comprehensive field of studyAll people have a stake in the maintenance and continuation of a household. Householding includes domestic activities in the residence of persons, outside it any kind of resource use. In this respect, householding also includes enterprises and businesses of all kinds. In an ecological respect, they must be sustainable and not disturb the metabolism between humans and nature. Among the public, private, and common undertakings, agencies that provide human services have the purpose of strengthening, promoting and securing the personal and social assets (of health, knowledge, resilience, employability, etc.).
7 Differentiations are necessary: Domestic and external relations**Environmental concerns are, in themselves, not the subject of ecosocial theory. They do so in the milieu of social and individual living. In the scientific discourse it is necessary to distinguish the ecosocial perspective from diverse environmental science approaches. Concerned with the settings and the processes of shaping and conducting human life, the surrounding nature is perceived ecosocially to the extent t...