Hans van Ewijk: Complexity and Social Work (2017)

A Systems Library, Vol. 34

5 min readSep 25, 2024

This book will be of interest to all kinds of professionals who find themselves dealing with diffuse, slippery problems. Social work is just one branch of public service that is undergoing a paradigm shift. This particular profession recognises that it must move away from solving and treating neatly labelled ‘disorders’ to helping citizens deal with a much wider range of social vulnerabilities and forms of dysfunction.

Late modern complexity

These forms of social complexity manifest themselves as a result of the demands and expectations of a late modern society characterised by increasing differentiation, weaker embeddedness and lack of direction. At the same time, the welfare state is being transformed into a ‘participatory society’, which shifts responsibility for meeting societal demands from the state to the combined efforts of markets, local authorities and civil society actors, including individual citizens. Human and social rights are still upheld, but conditionally. Individuals must fulfil a series of obligations in order to qualify for access to these rights.

Social efficacy

How, then, does a meaningful social work practice emerge from this complexity? The argument revolves around the notion of ‘social efficacy’, the ability to cope with daily life and participate in society. This form of efficacy is the result of a person’s innate capacity and their social environment. Van Ewijk explores social efficacy through a number of theoretical lenses — including Antonovsky’s salutogenesis and Sen/Nussbaum’s capability theory — that combine dispositional and contextual elements. In addition to social functioning, professional functioning is also grounded in distinctive forms of efficacy. Donald Schon’s notions of ‘reflective practitionership’ and ‘artistry’ form the basis of an ethos of ‘normative professionalisation’ that infuses practice with a mixture of technical, moral and aesthetic elements.

‘Normative professionalisation’

Rather than offering blueprints, these notions of efficacy help professional problem-solvers make sense of contemporary social complexity and reflect on the direction of their own practice in this multidimensional field. Van Ewijk concludes by characterising the professional ethos of a complexity-sensitive social worker as follows:

These are workers who 1) believe in their profession, 2) understand and accept the ‘activation’ and ‘embedding’ of their clients as core tasks, 3) know and are able to apply the social work body of knowledge, 4) are both social artists and social architects with personal social efficacy and competences endorsed by organisations of excellence, 5) are embedded in the context of their people, and 6) work with social justice as a permanent moral horizon providing both inspiration and direction.

A tension with evidence-based practice

This is followed by a discussion of how this type of practice needs to position itself in relation to the dominant framework of evidence-based practice (EBP). Here the author argues for a weak interpretation of EBP that moderates the demand for hard evidence and emphasises the normative dimension of social work.

Moving on from just getting on

The final chapter revolves around a fictional case involving an abrasive, socially vulnerable middle-aged man and a young social worker. The story allows many of the core messages of the book to be brought to the fore. Social work is in danger of appearing unappreciated because of all the friction embedded in the professional’s environment. “The trick is to change the feeling of just getting on with it into the belief of slowly moving in a certain direction”. Van Ewijk suggests that five core elements or activities need to be in place to support professionals’ resilience: connecting knowledge, accepting vulnerability, mentoring and socialising, building anchors and unravelling complexity. The author’s concluding message: “I am convinced that thinking in terms of viability rather than solutions and cures, and a lighter form of support through acceptance, anchoring and connecting rather than intensive treatment, will lead to sustainable solutions with better social and economic impacts. This direction should be the essence and challenge of social work”.

Workers, take heed

Again, I think this book has much to offer professionals of all kinds. First, because they often work as part of heterogeneous, self-directed teams: micro-cosmoses that reflect the larger ‘place-seeking society’ of which they are a part, and in which social differences and vulnerabilities are played out. Dealing with these social dynamics requires skills and sensitivities not unlike those discussed in this book. Moreover, the generic nature of social challenges — person-bound, context-sensitive, value-laden, cross-disciplinary, resource-constrained — applies to many other areas of professional activity. Therefore, the ideal of reflective practitionership advocated in this book should gain wider currency.

More to read in the Systems Library:

Vol. 33: Hilary Bradbury and William Torbert: Eros/Power (2015)

Vol. 32: Charles Taylor: Modern Social Imaginaries (2003)

Vol. 31: Martin Savransky: The Adventure of Relevance (2016)

Vol. 30: Martin Savransky: Around the Day in Eighty Worlds (2021)

Vol. 29: Augustin Berque: Poetics of the Earth (2014)

Vol. 28: Mary Catherine Bateson: Composing a (Further) Life (1989, 2010)

Vol. 27: Hilary Bradbury: How to Do Action Research for Transformations (2022)

Vol. 26: Francis Laleman: Resourceful Exformation (2020)

Vol. 25: Keller Easterling: Medium Design(2020)

Vol. 24: Ian Cheng: An Emissaries Guide to Worlding (2018)

Vol. 23: Janis Birkeland: Positive Development (2008)