The Tapestry of Social Care Work History: A Pointillism Approach

Abstract

This paper postulates that the understood ‘early history’ of social care work must be re-evaluated using methodology intended to deconstruct, decolonize, and delineate historical events from the current, common patriarchal influence of modern teachings. This paper disagrees with a history of social care work that too narrowly focuses on several male theorists of social care work but only a few pioneering female practitioners, resulting in a gendered bias of social care history. Previous historical methodologies have left social care work bereft of inclusivity and without a thorough investigation of the epistemological base of social care work(s) prior to professionalization. A more advanced history of social care work requires a new approach to historical documents which attempts to build or construct a more inclusive historical base of social care work. The Pointillism Approach offers a step-by-step model with which social care work historians can reanalyze and reinterpret important events in the development of social care work by evaluating not only hegemonic paradigms of care-work foundations.