50 ● Kate van Heugten and Anita Gibbs
We tend to rank our values, and we can often resolve ethical problems by
acting to support higher-ranked values over lower ones. For example, it is quite
common to value human life over animal life. We might rank the preserva-
tion of life higher than property rights and act accordingly. There are many
reasons for the ranking of values; not all of them are necessarily declared or
even consciously understood.
Most occupational groups, especially in the helping professions, share
sets of values. Frequently identified social work values include social justice
and human rights (Banks 2006). These values are clearly general, and human
service workers widely, perhaps even universally, accept them—that is, until
they are explicated in more detail. The more specifically that values are artic-
ulated, the more local their relevance tends to become and the more readily
they are disputed from different cultural perspectives (Hugman 2012).
Professional values are often not explicit about political or ideological
positions, even though it is likely that they will be found to reflect such posi-
tions if carefully examined (Banks 2006, 2012). Taking a step back in this
way—in other words, being critically reflective—is generally easier to do
from a historically or culturally aware perspective. There are various frame-
works for making decision about values, as we shall see later in this chapter,
but understanding one’s own values, and questioning the often-obscured
contextual nature of many values, are important steps in all cases.
Human service practitioners encounter many situations where value-laden
decisions have to be made. Fortunately less common, are dilemmas in which
practitioners have to choose between two or more incompatible but equally
highly ranked values. Ethical theorizing is concerned with such situations.
Ethics
Banks (2006) explained that the term “ethics” is used in two quite different
ways. The first use is in relation to ethical philosophy and ethical theoriz-
ing. Ethical philosophy is concerned with the study of moral problems and
moral thinking. This philosophy recognizes three types of ethical thinking:
meta-ethics, normative ethics, and descriptive ethics. Meta-ethics comprises
critical thinking about the nature of morality: whether it is possible to judge
rights and wrongs and whether good and evil can be distinguished. Norma-
tive ethics is concerned with whether and how moral decisions can be made
and dilemmas can be resolved. Descriptive ethics relates to the study of how
people relate to values and moral questions. Being descriptive, this third field
of study does not aim to develop ethical theory. Descriptive ethics tends to
be of less interest to philosophers, but it is of vital interest to sociologists and
anthropologists (Banks 2006).