Abolition and Social Work: Possibilities, Paradoxes, and the Practice of Community Care

Author:   Mimi E. Kim ,  Durrell M. Washington ,  Cameron Rasmussen ,  Mariame Kaba
Publisher:   Haymarket Books
ISBN:  

9798888900918


Pages:   304
Publication Date:   30 April 2024
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Not yet available   Availability explained
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Abolition and Social Work: Possibilities, Paradoxes, and the Practice of Community Care


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Overview

A critical anthology exploring the debates, conundrums, and promising practices around abolition and social work in academia and within impacted communities. Within social work—a profession that has been intimately tied to and often complicit in the building and sustaining of the carceral state—abolitionist thinking, movement-building, and radical praxis are shifting the field. Critical scholarship and organizing have helped to name and examine the realities of carceral social work as a form of “soft policing.” For radical social work, abolition moves beyond critique to the politics of possibility. Featuring a foreword by Mariame Kaba, Abolition and Social Work offers an orientation to abolitionist theory for social workers and explores the tensions and paradoxes in realizing abolitionist practice in social work—a necessary intervention in contemporary discourse regarding carceral social work, and a compass for recentering this work through the lens of abolition, transformative justice, and collective care. Contributors include Autumn Asher BlackDeer, Ramona Beltran, Danica Brown, Charlene A. Caruthers, Angela Y. Davis, Alan Dettlaff, Tanisha “Wakumi” Douglas, Annie Zean Dunbar, Angela Fernandez, Kassandra Frederique, María Gandarilla Ocampo, Claudette L. Grinnell-Davis, Sam Harrell, Justin S. Harty, Shira Hassan, Leah A. Jacobs, Nev Jones, Joyce McMillan, Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work, Dorothy Roberts, Sophia Sarantakos, Katie Schultz, and Stéphanie Wahab.

Full Product Details

Author:   Mimi E. Kim ,  Durrell M. Washington ,  Cameron Rasmussen ,  Mariame Kaba
Publisher:   Haymarket Books
Imprint:   Haymarket Books
ISBN:  

9798888900918


Pages:   304
Publication Date:   30 April 2024
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available   Availability explained
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

Foreword Introduction (Mimi E. Kim, Cameron Rasmussen, and Durrell M. Washington) Society for Social Work and Research Keynote (Angela Y. Davis) Section 1: Possibilities Abolitionist Social Work (Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work) Abolition: The Missing Link in Historical Efforts to Address Racism and Colonialism Within the Profession of Social Work (Justin Harty, Autumn Asher BlackDeer, and Maria Gandarilla Ocampo) Reaching for the Abolitionist Horizon Within White Professionalized Social-Change Work (Sophia Sarantakos) Abolitionist Reform for Social Workers (Sam Harrell) Section 2: Paradox Is Social Work Obsolete? (Kassandra Frederique) No Restorative Justice Utopia: Abolition and Working with the State (Wakumi Douglas) Abolition, Social Welfare and the State (Mimi E. Kim, Cameron Rasmussen, and Durrell M. Washington) Section 3: Praxis Staying in love with each other’s survival: Practicing at the Intersection of Liberatory Harm Reduction and Transformative Justice (Shira Hassan) Social Work and Family Policing (Joyce McMillan and Dorothy Roberts)  Indigenist Abolition: Strategies for Decolonization, Healing, and Imagination in Social Work Practice (Ramona Beltran, Katie Schultz, Angela Fernandez) Involuntary Commitment in Public Sector Mental Health Services: Anti-Carceral Strategies & Responses (Leah Jacobs and Nev Jones) Queer Black Feminism and Social Work Practice (Interview with Charlene Carruthers)

Reviews

“Abolition and Social Work provides a frank and detailed analysis of how social work is shaped by and executes the work of the carceral state, and how social workers committed to abolition are struggling to dismantle criminalization within institutions designed to contain and control people. This book should be required reading for all social work students and everyone else who works closely with social workers—lawyers, nurses, teachers, mental health providers of all kinds. This book breaks the humanitarian illusion of social work and raises the real questions about if and how we can infiltrate its systems to redistribute, disrupt, and support liberation.”—Dean Spade, author of Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) “The contributors to this visionary book have offered a timely gift to social workers and other comrades working for freedom. It is both a call to remember the radical origins of social work practice and an invitation to redirect our current and future work—unapologetically—toward justice. We need this guidance more than ever; Abolition and Social Work serves as a compelling and timely resource for scholars, activists, and practitioners alike.” —Beth E. Richie, author of Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America's Prison Nation “If you are working to limit or end the violence of policing and prisons, this book is required reading. Gathering the fruits of decades of experience from a wide range of perspectives, editors and contributors illuminate the traps, pitfalls, and dead ends of simply substituting counselors and caseworkers for cops and cages—most important, that caseworkers often act as or collude with cops, policing people instead of supporting them, producing similar and expanded forms of harm. This critical collection invites everyone in a ‘caring profession’ into a critical assessment of their collusion with the carceral state, points to the promise of an abolitionist approach to care work, and challenges all of us to reach beyond policing in new forms to radically reimagine how we care for each other. A necessary and critical intervention, right on time.” —Andrea J. Ritchie, cofounder of Interrupting Criminalization and coauthor of No More Police: A Case for Abolition “Timely and powerful, this collection is required, transformative reading not just for social workers but for all of us who engage in the daily radical labor to build a more free and flourishing world. Full of key tools to engage in abolitionist practices, Abolition and Social Work is a book to study and struggle with now.” —Erica R. Meiners, coauthor of Abolition. Feminism. Now.


Author Information

Mimi E. Kim is assistant professor of social work at California State University, Long Beach and founder of Creative Interventions. Kim continues her political work through promotion of transformative justice and abolitionist visions and practices of community care and safety. Cameron Rasmussen is a social worker, educator and facilitator. He is an Associate Director at the Center for Justice at Columbia University, a lecturer at Columbia Social Work, a PhD student at the Graduate Center, and a Collaborator with the NAASW. Durrell M. Washington is an author, social worker, educator, facilitator, and socio-legal scholar from the Bronx, New York. He is a collaborator with the Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work and PhD Candidate at the University of Chicago.

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