22 ● Kate van Heugten and Anita Gibbs
Perhaps serendipitously, although unfortunately owing mostly to decreased
funding, some New Zealand departments of sociology, social work, human
services, gender studies, and anthropology have become more closely connected,
either in large schools or as joint departments. In other parts of the world, many
departments of sociology and social work have also begun to work more closely
together. It is uncommon, however, for social work to take its alphabetical first
position when these departments are named, perhaps indicating a continuing
bias against social work as the lower-status academic discipline. Closer associa-
tions are leading to more conversations between the disciplines, although the
specters of old arguments and status wars haunt us still.
ConclusionDisciplines are constituted and reconstituted. Sometimes they join temporarily,
so members can discuss common concerns. The differing perspectives can
shed light on complex situations, but only if the members engage in open
dialogue. Occasionally, previously separate disciplines form closer partner-
ships, or if subject areas become very large, groups might split off from their
discipline of origin (Austrin and Farnsworth 2007; Klein 2010).
In this chapter, we identified how social work and sociology shared com-
mon interests from their inception yet split over ideological differences that
have at times appeared to be insoluble. Although social workers continued to
learn from sociologists’ writing, dialogue was constrained. Some (“classical”)
sociologists held, at least formally, particularly strong views that social work’s
practice and value-laden positions were anathema. Consequently, sociology
students learned less from social work’s developments in those areas than they
might have. When disciplines cover similar territory, it can sometimes be
more rather than less daunting for adherents to admit to being able to learn
from one another because they may fear losing the disciplines’ separate iden-
tities. However, with a less positivist emphasis on finding perfect solutions to
complex questions around practice and values, we believe the time has come
to open opportunities for more flexible learning and cooperation. This book
aims to provide an avenue for such opportunities. The next chapter opens
dialogue around practice frameworks, and chapter 3 addresses the place of
values in practice.
Reflective Questions- Explore your local/regional social work and sociology histories. In this
exploration, consider to what extent, and in what aspects, those
histories might be termed shared or separate. Can you identify obvious