A Case for Critical Social Work Action

Despite critical social work’s (CSW) growing popularity, its praxes and associated policies have thus far remained largely discursive. This situation can be attributed to several factors, including social workers’ attitudes, training, and education and the nature of the systems and organizations employing them. In this article, we contend that besides these viable inhibiting factors, CSW has yet to become a widely used praxis as a result of some of its intrinsic characteristics and the encounter between them and the social work profession. The main part of this article offers guiding principles for promoting critical social work action (CSWA). These principles, which are largely based upon and inspired by fundamentals of Paulo Freire’s genuine pedagogical action, include dialectic practice and policy-making; impatient patience; exemption from neutrality; redefining rationality; humanization, liberation, and transformation; and the formulation of alternatives to silence.