Social Work and Common Sense: A Critical Examination

Rooted in a lively, critical approach to social work education and practice, Social Work and Common Sense challenges readers to think critically and more deeply about core facets of social work knowledge and ’received ideas’. Garrett draws on the work of Antonio Gramsci to develop new, and often provocative, insights on attachment theory, creativity, anger, human rights, the ’unmarried mother’ in Ireland’s past, and contemporary approaches to ’decolonising’ social work education.

The book is divided into ten chapters, each of which includes a series of reflection and talk boxes to assist students to critically reflect (individually and in class/seminar and fieldwork/workplace discussions) on key facets of the preceding chapter.

Addressing often complex ideas in a freshly accessible way, Social Work and Common Sense will be required reading in all postgraduate and advanced undergraduate classes in theory and social work.

Paul Michael Garrett has been described, by the International Journal of Social Welfare, as ’probably the most important critical social work theorist in the English-speaking world’. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and works in Galway. The author of several books, his most recent is Dissenting Social Work, published by Routledge in 2021.