El estudio de la Epistemología del Trabajo Social Contemporáneo desde la intervención en lo social como práctica científica.

Abstract

Usually the epistemology of Social Work has been analyzed from the social sciences. Our proposal is to look at social intervention from a perspective of scientific practice in order to understand the epistemic structures of Contemporary Social Work and from that to understand how social interventions actually occur. We analyze what is the sense of thinking about the study of the epistemology of our discipline from this viewpoint focused on intervention and what are the advantages that there are in contrast with other positions on the epistemic study of Social Work that focus on the influence of social sciences, their theories and research methods relegating Social Work to a secondary position. The aim is to correct this situation by putting our discipline at the center. It is proposed to use a methodological approach from three elements: the reading of social reality, the positioning in front of it and the objectification from it in the scientific practice of Contemporary Social Work. The notion of scientific practice and the importance of understanding how intervention in the social sphere gives us tools to understand how a project of this nature would be structured and what kind of questions are worth asking to address the study of an epistemology focused on intervention. The approach to the epistemology of Social Work from this perspective contributes to deepen our own epistemology to explain how intervention in the social is in fact configured. Emphasis is placed on the need to recover the normative dimension of practice and the epistemic standards that derive from this. This makes it possible for us to improve our models and strategies of intervention in the future, as well as to put forward theoretical-methodological proposals that set out realistic epistemic standards in terms of their operativity and in terms of the capacities of the professional-subjects who implement them.