Ecology of Common Care: The Ecosocial Approach as a Theory of Social Work and Human Service (SpringerBriefs in Social Work) 3030656985, 9783030656980

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SPRINGER BRIEFS IN SOCIAL WORK

Wolf Rainer Wendt

Ecology of Common Care The Ecosocial Approach as a Theory of Social Work and Human Service 123

SpringerBriefs in Social Work

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13578

Wolf Rainer Wendt

Ecology of Common Care The Ecosocial Approach as a Theory of Social Work and Human Service

Wolf Rainer Wendt Faculty of Social Work Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

ISSN 2195-3104     ISSN 2195-3112 (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Social Work ISBN 978-3-030-65698-0    ISBN 978-3-030-65699-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65699-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Abstract  Ecology is usually understood as a science that has its objective outside the existence of humans and their social life. Ecology is considered environmental science. Ecologically, however, it is also possible to study the life contexts in which human existence and provision of care take place. The texture of our common and individual existence and the economy of its supply can be inspected. The objective here is the scope of the social in the setting of its occurrence. This understanding stems from the ancient oikos – the concept of living together in the domestic sphere. It is from there that the ecosocial approach has been developed in the theory of social work. The approach deals with where and what is being worked on socially. It is applicable to the whole economy of care at the levels of individuals, organisations, societal processes and political decision making. The treatise describes and reflects the main features of that concept.

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Preface

Social work is primarily direct practice. It consists of caring activities alongside other human services and commitments to people. The daily job routine does not require theory. In scientific discourse, social practice is offered orientation beyond mere functioning. The theory places action in relation to the closer and further conditions and contexts in which it fulfils its purpose. There are different theoretical approaches to social work. The ecosocial concept developed from reflection on stationary, outpatient and domestic care for people. The interactions and arrangements that take place in the processes must be studied in their spatial and temporal contexts and dependencies. Material and immaterial, natural and social-structural factors have an impact. Welfare calls for permanent and versatile disposition. With regard to the resources we dispose of, concern for well-­ being is based on the ecology of their occurrence, and with regard to the effects of our dispositions, concern is passed on to the ecology of the local and global coherences of life. The ecological frame of reference of human existence includes its social, cultural, economic and political dimensions. The ecosocial approach presented in this treatise, therefore, integrates lines of thought in social, behavioural, economic and political sciences that are usually separate. The concept takes into account that many and various fields of activity belong to social work and human services and that they are included in an ecosystem of provisioning and involved in a mixed production of welfare. It can only move forward sustainably with common welfare in a resource-conscious way, towards which the theory orientates ecologically. Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

Wolf Rainer Wendt

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About the Book

The book presents the ecosocial approach as a core concept of social work and professional care. Within the ecological framework, the care for welfare and the function of human services are discussed. In an era of crisis, the ecological anchoring of welfare and cautious care is an essential contribution to the study of sustainable social provision. The treatise embeds dispositions about it in the ecology of the protection and securing of common life.

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Contents

1 Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   1 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   5 2 What to Think of in the Ecosocial Concept ��������������������������������������������   7 Reference ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   9 3 The Genesis of the Ecosocial Paradigm ��������������������������������������������������  11 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  14 4 The Scope of the Theory����������������������������������������������������������������������������  17 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  19 5 The Central Concept of the Household and the Principle of Householding����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  21 5.1 The Concreteness of the Oikos ����������������������������������������������������������  22 5.2 Resources Matter��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  24 5.3 Householders as Carers and Managers ����������������������������������������������  25 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  27 6 A Comprehensive Field of Study��������������������������������������������������������������  29 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  32 7 Differentiations Are Necessary: Domestic and External Relations ������  33 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  37 8 A Multilevel Construct������������������������������������������������������������������������������  41 8.1 The Micro Level: Ecology of Personal Life ��������������������������������������  42 8.2 The Meso Level: Actors and their Networks��������������������������������������  44 8.3 The Macro Level: Ecology of Political Decision-Making������������������  45 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  47 9 An Ecological Orientation for Human Services and the Social Profession����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  49 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  52

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Contents

10 The Ethical Underpinning������������������������������������������������������������������������  55 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  57 11 The Turn of Ecological Thinking in the Anthropocene��������������������������  59 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  62 12 Back to Care and Social Work������������������������������������������������������������������  63 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  66 13 Working in Stewardship����������������������������������������������������������������������������  69 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  71 14 Conclusion��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  73 Reference ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  74 Index��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  75

About the Author

Wolf  Rainer  Wendt  teaches at the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University (DHBW), School of Social Work, in Stuttgart, Germany, and at other universities. He was co-founder and chairman of the German Association of Social Work (DGSA) for many years and also chairman of the German Association for Care and Case Management (DGCC).

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Chapter 1

Introduction

Ecology is usually understood as a science that has its object outside the existence of humans and their social life. The opinion prevails that the science is concerned with non-human matters only. Ecology is considered environmental science. Derived from this conceptual classification, social-ecological theorems deal with the relationship between society and the surrounding nature. Into this binary construction, the traditional juxtaposition of people and social environment in social work can be inserted, supplemented by the natural environment. Ecologically, however, it is also possible to study the whole life contexts in which human existence and provision of care take place. The object here will be the scope of the social in the setting of its occurrence. The texture of our common and individual existence and the economy of its supply can be inspected. It is this field as a sphere of action that the ecosocial approach deals with: a theory of human services and social work bases their cause, their procedure and their outcome on that texture and in the household with its means and potentials. The contexts of our conduct of life, of social processes and of professional procedures are extended in space and time. Ecology captures the connections of that agency and the human agency in general. People do not exist alone and they cope with their lives together with other people in the institutions and structures of society and state and in a natural environment. In this vast structured field there are services and professions that help people with problems during the course of their lives and under the conditions of their existence. The agents of care and support are part of the realities of the field in which they operate. The theory of the engagement of human service and social work encompasses the whole field of contexts in which people live and act. This field contains what human services and social work have to work on. The specific procedures and techniques used in professional practice are not addressed in the ecosocial approach. Social work is understood here as a process of striving for changes in the living conditions of people. The changes can be improvements in individual life on a small scale and social reforms on a large scale. In between there are interactions in which

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 W. R. Wendt, Ecology of Common Care, SpringerBriefs in Social Work, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65699-7_1

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the necessity of one change refers to the necessity of the other. The social project extends over a diverse range of small-scale practice. In it, professional social workers are involved alongside other employees and civil and informal activists. In an official context, professional social work is assigned various tasks in the interaction with people in need, with groups and in the community. Human service is used here as an overarching term for specific professional services provided to persons with social, health and other problems affecting human life. With the broad use of the term human service, it is not assumed that a separate human service profession is responsible, alongside the existing ones. Social work takes place inside and outside human services. Human services practice in various areas of care. A large proportion of them perform health-related tasks. The meaningful term care is used here to denote any kind of concern for personal and collective well-being. Caring focuses on the direct satisfaction of needs and the fostering of capabilities, and indirectly on the availability and maintenance of the resources required for this purpose. In practice, care involves effort and work. Care is provided by services involving various professions and can be expected from every person concerned for his or her own common interests and needs. From an ecological perspective, social care encompasses the attention and exercise of all that is beneficial to life. An essential aspect of the processes of social care is the economy of those who care and the economy of the way of life of those to whom care is directed. The interrelation of informal and formal care work is the subject of the discourse of the care economy. Common care extends and deepens the care of shared life across the limits of an area of social and economic concern. It is based on the experience of belonging, of common humanity and common sociality in the common world. Common care demands both societal efforts and individual efforts in conjunction with each other for the accomplishment of welfare-related tasks. Ecologically, a small and a large community need each other. Between them, their maintenance is provided for. This provision is organised and professionalised. The terms care, social work and human service describe what happens in the domain of welfare, a field that covers a wide range of facts and life contexts. Ecological thinking captures and reflects them. The formulation ecology of care refers to the respective interconnections. The ecological theoretical framework in social work, or more precisely the ecosocial approach, has developed since the 1970s (Wendt 2018). In social work at the time, the approach offered an alternative both to a psychosocial reduced understanding of personal problems and to a limitation of their explanation by the critique of capitalism and its relations of domination and exploitation. The ecological subject of the approach is not the environmental crisis and the state of nature on our planet, but the contexts in which people make their living, have their problems and crises, care and strive for a good life. The concern for this includes all life in its interconnectedness and the demand for sustainability, but the starting point is the collective and individual coming to terms with existence. The organised provision of welfare services follows on. Ecological thinking is process oriented. The ecosocial approach is dedicated to the process of welfare within human and common existence. In order

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to grasp and shape this process, the contexts in whose fabric social and individual lives take place are examined. Key concepts in the ecosocial framework concern the household and householding, the concrete living situation, individual and collective welfare in its spatial and temporal extension, care in the connection between self-care and service provision, social economy, working in stewardship. The socially relevant processes are perceived in ecological referral contexts. “Ecosocial” is written here without a hyphen to make it clear that the social is really meddled in, even enmeshed in the ecological. The knowledge interest of the theoretical approach lies in the merging of the social and economic determinants of action, especially of caring action, in the ecological concretion of common existence. The approach avoids a separation of person-, organisation- and policy-related theory formation, as occurs in the array of theoretical models of social work from the critical theory of the welfare state to social management concepts to methodological approaches in clinical social work. The ecosocial approach emphasises: • • • • • • • • • •

The living together of humans as a basic fact of existence The ecological immanence of social life and action in the common world A relational understanding of well-being The extension of the contexts in which we conduct and secure our lives individually and collectively Interconnectedness beyond the binary understanding of person-in-environment Householding in social life as a general task The linkage of self-care, informal care and formal provision of care Social participation and inclusion and overcoming exclusion as a general aim Focusing on the field of welfare production and its multi-level evolution Stewardship in responsibility for sustainable social well-being

When we look at the facts that contribute to the well-being of people, we have a broad field of actualities before us. There are the natural conditions in our environment and in ourselves, there are the social circumstances with their chances and adversities, conflicts and crises, and there are the institutions in the community that can support, encourage and secure us. People do a great deal informally for their own well-being, with each other and in caring for others. Formally, the services and staff in social services, education and health care are available for the welfare of the population. They constitute the infrastructure of the care system. The World Health Organization once formulated with regard to health care: Health systems are defined as comprising all the organizations, institutions and resources that are devoted to producing health actions. A health action is defined as any effort, whether in personal health care, public health services or intersectoral initiatives, whose primary purpose is to improve health. (WHO 2000, XI)

In parallel to the healthcare system, there are other welfare-related social security systems, the education system and the employment system. The care for personal and collective well-being takes place within those systems and outside them in the space of ordinary life. Human services are established within this space and

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they function in the household of the (public, communal, social and private) organised living together. This shared life is the object of common care, focused on the material and non-material, structural and processual circumstances of well-being. The term “household” is used here to denote a conditional context of actors and practices, thus addressing an ecology of social processes of care. Heuristically, this treatise assumes an initial unity of coping with existence in a shared living community. The domestic unit  – exemplary in the ancient oikos  – unites all actions for the care of the members of the household. In its space the physical, economic, social and cultural aspects of living and acting together form a unity. In modern life we find the unity of communal coping with existence dissolved and its particular tasks assigned to the aforementioned systems of provision. On a personal level, these systems require professional caregivers who connect their procedures to the care of their addressees. The social processes that take place lead, if they succeed, to moments of individual and common welfare. The ecosocial approach deals with these processes where they are “at home” and how they are “at home”. They are embedded in life contexts locally and beyond in our common world. Starting ecologically at home and not from surroundings, natural or social, that is what distinguishes the ecosocial approach from environmental, bio-ecological and various social–ecological concepts. Misunderstandings are to be expected; for this reason alone, the statement requires further explanation. The ecosocial approach focuses on the coherencies of life. These can be social life contexts, economic contexts, political contexts, cultural contexts, natural circumstances (for example, climatic conditions). Ecologically, those contexts do not stand separately from each other, but are interrelated. The term ecology refers etymologically to their initial unity in human life. The use of the term in biology is a derived one; only subsequently has the reference to the natural environment emerged. The ecology of human life includes caring behaviour, which is primarily used to maintain this life, to meet everyday needs and to overcome problems in life. Secondarily, human services and social institutions are involved in this in a helping and securing function. The services alone cannot cope with the demands of life. In times of crisis, the importance of informed interaction among the public, civil and private parties becomes apparent. New solutions are sought in this interaction. The theory places the infrastructure of welfare services within the frame of reference of human existence and its conditions in general. Terminologically, the composite “eco-social” expresses this order. The task is not to shape a community socially and ecologically, but to shape it socially in an ecological manner. The ecosocial theory unfolds the social ecologically. Social conditions are living conditions – and living conditions, natural and cultural conditions included, determine the social life of individuals and the community. What is to be taken care of humanely and socially can be understood within the frame of reference of an “ecological life” (Bendik-Keymer 2006). In it, we commit ourselves, both on a small and large scale, considerately and constructively, to a sustainably flourishing life.

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References Bendik-Keymer, Jeremy. 2006. The Ecological Life. Discovering Citizenship and a Sense of Humanity. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. WHO. 2000. The World Health Report 2000 – Health Systems: Improving Performance. Geneva: World Health Organization.

Chapter 2

What to Think of in the Ecosocial Concept

Ecosocial thinking is dedicated to the conditions of human and social life and affairs as they are actually interwoven. With this thinking, a theory of life’s coherencies is configured. Individuals and corporate agents operate in the midst of them. They shape and cultivate the physically predetermined coherences and thus create conditions and structures on which people depend in different ways and to varying extents. As a result, there is cause for care and work aimed at well-being. The ecosocial concept reconstructs the intercorrelations in which this happens. No binary differentiation of (social) system and (natural) environment is postulated, but a complex connection in which systems function in different ways. This distinguishes the ecosocial approach to be presented here from other ecosocial concepts of social work that combine environmental as ecological goals, with social goals. The ecosocial paradigm outlined here states: we live, act and interact amidst our concrete (social and cultural, material and natural) surroundings and world. We are part of it, we are dependent on the near living situation and the wider situation of life. We shape it with our conduct and way of life. The conditions and dispositions we have to deal with, our own and those of others, are inherent in the common world. We are “keeping house” in our world. Social processes and the whole human existential configuration are understood ecologically. The focus of ecosocial theory is the “inner life” of the social world, not its external environment. Ecologically, the social actors are insiders. Social life and social care are based on belonging. People belong to a family, to a neighbourhood, to local and institutional associations and to state entities. They behave in their world according to subjective motivations and objective requirements; they fulfil assumed or assigned tasks, and in doing so they are socially faced with needs, desires, conflicts, disorders, deficits and crises. They are met individually, organisationally and institutionally in arrangements of problem solving. The actors involved are connected in a web of interaction with each other. The processes of problem handling require enquiries, consultations, coordination, cooperation and ways of management and governance in steering. Included in

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 W. R. Wendt, Ecology of Common Care, SpringerBriefs in Social Work, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65699-7_2

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2  What to Think of in the Ecosocial Concept

the social processes under consideration is the economy of actions in them. The ecosocial theory omits the usual juxtaposition of economy, ecology and social issues. To view something ecologically means to conceive of it comprehensively and in the entirety of the context to which it belongs. The ecosocial paradigm is a paradigm of insiderness and participation. The ecosocial perspective belongs in the theoretical discourse of social work and human services in general. In this discourse, one often limits oneself to ask rationally what is to be achieved by the professional commitment and how the service works in what way. An action theory is sufficient for this purpose. The theoretical interest may be reduced to the methods used to fulfil the tasks that the system of social welfare benefits imposes on individual services and social work. Seen soberly, the system needs the services and social work in case of problems that people have and in case of troubles that particular groups of people cause. However, according to their self-understanding, the social profession is not satisfied with merely functioning. Scientifically, this understanding can be integrated with that of the entire established structure of services of general social interest into the human mastering of life in the world. This is the orientation of the ecosocial theory approach. Of ecological interest are the existential conditions and circumstances in which welfare-oriented action is necessary, evolves and fulfils its purpose. How do we get along with our life, with other lives and in the common life, sustainably? Welfare – in the original sense of “wel faran” or “to fare well” – is what we all want (Wendt 2014, 21). This striving is flanked and supplemented by organised efforts to maintain people in a state of well-being, which means the present life satisfaction of a person or group. Distinguished from present satisfaction, welfare and the pursuit of it have an extension in time. As in natural processes, we have to consider the dimension of time in the space of caring and care provision. The development of welfare has to be seen. Thus, welfare comes about in the life of an individual person and at the aggregate level of public welfare (dependent in the end on the welfare of the planet). In this context and in the case of social and health problems, short-term solutions are often contradicted by long-term outcome. Welfare is achieved on pathways of unfolding personal and shared social life. Such paths must be prepared – in the form of educational paths, pathways to work, healthy paths, etc. They need constant revision. Obstacles have to be overcome, deficits have to be remedied, conflicts have to be endured. On the paths to individual and collective welfare, oppression, denial, disadvantage, exclusion, abuse and violence are present in structures and people. An institutional and professional social practice deals with such matters prudently. This circumspective prudence can be bolstered ecologically. People look for their own individual ways of welfare – for example, in partnership and family life – and can be supported in this – for example, in balancing work and family life. In the surrounding spheres of personal conduct of life, places and ways are to be opened and maintained that contribute to the quality of life. Well-­ being is relational; it comes to fulfilment within the sphere of shared life. Liveability arises in extensive material and institutional structures, which must be taken care of. The ecological concept embeds social work and human service in the wider context

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in which people and society must and want to come to terms with themselves and the world to which they belong. This coping task has economic, political, cultural and social aspects. The ecosocial approach extends to them and encompasses them. The focus is on processes of development, enabling and coping that take place under the influence of various factors and with the agency of those involved. The course of these processes and the evolution of its structures and functioning are considered. For example, one can look at family life in all its changes, developments in the social and healthcare system, changes in urban and rural living conditions, the transformation of the world of work and its effects on the people affected. A range of sciences are concerned with these issues. From an ecosocial perspective, the topoi represent a set of social conditions of human existence.

Reference Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2014. Die Signifikanz von Wohlfahrt. In Sorgen für Wohlfahrt, ed. Wolf Rainer Wendt, 19–35. Baden-Baden: Nomos.

Chapter 3

The Genesis of the Ecosocial Paradigm

Historically, the construct of the ecological presupposes the idea of the social, but this idea is linked to an old concept of economy. The biological application to the household of nature goes back to a basic form of domestic coexistence. The ecosocial concept ties in with this connection. The theory captures the social problems, which are the subject of helpful services, within the ecological frame of reference. I have been pursuing the ecosocial approach since the 1970s. It has evolved in the theoretical discourse of social work (Wendt 1982, 1990, 2010, 2018). In practice, social work intervenes in milieus in which people live or offers them another, in positive cases a therapeutic, milieu. My practical experience in residential youth welfare made me realise the dimensioning of social processes in space and time. The stationary context represented a coherence of life. What is social in this context? How does this coherence take on a social character? Historical studies (Brunner 1956; Finley 1973; Geremek 1988) on the economic maintenance and security of people, before social support was introduced, offered an anthropological perspective on the subsistence of domestic communities in a unity of economic and social action under natural living conditions. This perspective provided an ecological frame of reference for dealing with human affairs and the social issues, even under modern conditions. The ecosocial approach allows a descriptive and normative reconstruction of social practice and conduct of life with the intention of appropriate design and adequate problem-solving. In science, the assumption that the social can be ecologically recorded may be traced back to the eminent German zoologist, physician and philosopher Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), who introduced the term ecology to describe the household or economy of nature. He coined the term as a derivation of the Greek “oikos” meaning “household” or “place to live”. Inspired by Carl Linnaeus (Specimen academicum de oeconomia naturae, 1749) and other older conceptions (Egerton 2012; Debourdeau 2016), Haeckel looked at the position of an organism in the household of nature to define ecology: “By ecology, we mean the whole science of the relations of the organism to the surrounding exterior world, to which relations

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 W. R. Wendt, Ecology of Common Care, SpringerBriefs in Social Work, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65699-7_3

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we can count, in the broader sense, all the ‘conditions of existence’. These are partly organic and partly inorganic in nature” (Haeckel 1866, 286, translated by the author). Ecologically, life is perceived in its context, in a relational and situational field. For their existence and continuance not only plants and animals but also humans depend upon each other and on the living and non-living matter. The meant conditions of existence are not added to human existence, but they are its foundation and prerequisite. The economy of human existence – for all its claimed singularity – cannot be separated from the economy of life locally and globally. And the question “What’s the economy for?” can be answered for now and for the future by Brown and Garver (2009, 23): “a flourishing commonwealth of life”. As ecology is the body of knowledge concerning the economy of nature, the ecosocial field of study is the economy (the disposition of resources, means and forces) in the human conduct of life from the individual existence over its social organisation up to the public provision of existence. All this has a temporal extension and is in a constant state of evolution. When he coined the term ecology, Haeckel was influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution. Ecologically, not a status but a dynamism of affective relationships and interaction is perceived. The human being persists and grows in a matrix of biosocial relationships (Ingold and Palsson 2013). In ecosocial theory, the whole life context of human action is to be considered. Over the course of time, a variety of ecological concepts have emerged – a “plurality of meanings and epistemological changes in the field of ecological and environmental knowledge” (Schwarz and Jax 2011, 4). Even earlier than among biologists, the term ecology, after Haeckel had introduced it, came to prominence among socially interested people. The beginnings of ecological thinking in social work go back to the domestic science – “oecology” as “the science of the conditions of the health and well-being of everyday human life” – by Ellen Swallow Richards (Clarke 1973, 120; Dyball and Carlsson 2017; Walsh 2018). Swallow Richards, founder of the home economics movement at the turn of the twentieth century, is also the first to use the term human ecology. She defines: “Human Ecology is the study of the surroundings of human beings in the effects they produce on the lives of men. The features of the environment are natural, as climate, and artificial, produced by human activity, as noise, dust, poisonous vapors, vitiated air, dirty water and unclean food” (Richards 1907, V). Ecologically, the practice of social work is being looked at by its protagonists Edward Devine and Jane Addams (Wendt 2018, 30; Staub-Bernasconi 1989) in the Progressive Era after 1900. Later, Carol Germain (1973) and Alex Gitterman contributed to the ecological perspective of the profession with the life model of social work practice (Gitterman and Germain, 2008). They describe the mutual responsiveness of the person and the social environment to each other with particular effect on the transitions in the course of life. The purpose of practice is, according to the life model, to increase the “level of fit” between people with their needs and the environment with its resources (Gitterman and Germain 2008, 72). Parallel to this theoretical line, Gregory Bateson’s way of thinking, which he calls an “ecology of mind” and in which he reflects a process of systemic adjustment of mind and nature

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(Bateson 1972, 1979), and Urie Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) conceptual model of four environmental systems – micro system, meso system, exo system and macro system – or layers of context that influence human development, fertilised the socio-­ ecological discourse. In its variants, the person-in-environment perspective (Karls and Wandrei 1994) of social work addresses adaptation requirements. People behave actively or passively in an environment that challenges, hinders or encourages them. The individual appears socially in relation to the environment or the environment is socially in relation to individuals. The person-in-environment perspective, also in the conception of Germain and Gitterman, has a double focus and divides people’s life world. “Splitting the human condition into individuals and environments is the historical main current in social work theory building” (Falck 1988, 15). The ecosocial theory presented here is different: the social is ecologically constituted. The social is being placed within an ecological framework. Considered in this frame of reference, the social actors are perceived in the micro, meso and macro structures of their embeddedness and involvement. Within this framework, the interrelationships and circumstances in which people lead their lives are studied. Social and personal existences are ecologically predisposed from the outset. A person is conceived as belonging to a human community in a natural and culturally shaped context of life. The statement that the individual person is a community-related subject includes the natural life in which he or she participates. Ecologically, the problems of people are to be understood owing to their integration into the networked context of life and their participation in it. In the field of cohabitation people take care of themselves and others and also have their crises and conflicts in them. Social problems arise and are solved in the outer and inner living space of people. If a problem cannot be solved in a person’s familiar milieu, he or she can move to another location – or be treated in a stationary setting. A therapeutic milieu can be helpful, for example, as Bruno Bettelheim described in “A Home for the Heart” (Bettelheim 1974), or the use of the therapeutic potential of everyday life space, which Fritz Redl exploited in a “Life Space Interview” (Redl 1967). The ecosocial approach does not argue with a dichotomy of person and environment, but with life circles to which people belong and which arise with their actions and thoughts. The ecological orientation places the working of the social profession in the middle of the behavioural setting with all the circumstances in which people live their lives. According to Pardeck (1988), professionals can play six different roles in ecological social work: (1) a conferee, (2) an enabler, (3) a broker, (4) a mediator, (5) an advocate and (6) a guardian (Pardeck 1988, 135). In practice, the functions overlap. The role assignments belong to the methodology of professional work even without ecological orientation. With it, however, the entire life context of an addressed person is in view. Pardeck speaks of “ecologies” of the individual life situation. “A client functions in more than one ecology. The client’s ecosystem is the interrelationships and conglomeration of these ecologies. For example, a client’s ecosystem consists of the self, family, the neighborhood, and the entire community” (Pardeck 1988, 136).

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The classification corresponds to the systematics in which Urie Bronfenbrenner (1979) described human development in the micro, meso, macro and exo areas of influences on behaviour. Larger and wider spheres of life encompass smaller and narrower circles of life. The theoretical discourse has been continued. In a very stimulating way, Wimberley (2009) designed a “nested ecology” in which humans are placed in an “ecological hierarchy” that ranges from “personal ecology” to “social ecology” and “environmental ecology” to the all-embracing “cosmic ecology”. The domains of “ecologies” are distinct. They entail different tasks for human beings, beginning on the personal level of care for themselves, for their own identity and the place they occupy and cultivate in the world. A personal ecology “also demands that one treat one’s body as a biological home – caring for and nurturing it” (Wimberley 2009, 150). A home must be arranged for the individual person. According to Wimberley: acquiring a healthy and sustainable ecology of self entails locating oneself in a safe, sanitary place where one can reliably experience comfort and protection from the elements while situating oneself within reasonable proximity to a set of basic resources (food, water, fuel, work, community). (Wimberley 2009, 150)

In addition to the concern for basic resources that takes precedence for social work in the interaction with clients, there is concern for their capabilities in a more developed social world. However, welfare care does not begin with human service or social work; rather, the service and the work are connected to people’s caring and their own aspirations.

References Bateson, Gregory. 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1979. Mind and Nature. A Necessary Unity. Dutton: New York. Bettelheim, Bruno. 1974. A Home for the Heart. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Bronfenbrenner, Urie. 1979. The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Brown, Peter G., and Geoffrey Garver. 2009. Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. Brunner, Otto. 1956. Neue Wege der Sozialgeschichte. Vorträge und Aufsätze. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Clarke, Robert. 1973. Ellen Swallow: The Woman Who Founded Ecology. Chicago, IL: Follett. Debourdeau, Ariane. 2016. Aux origines de la pensée écologique: Ernst Haeckel, du naturalisme à la philosophie de l’Oikos. Revue Française d’Histoire des Idées Politiques 2 (44): 33–62. Dyball, Robert, and Liesel Carlsson. 2017. Ellen Swallow Richards: Mother of human ecology. Human Ecology Review 23 (2): 17–28. Egerton, Frank N. 2012. Roots of Ecology. Antiquity to Haeckel. Berkeley: University of California Press. Falck, Hans S. 1988. Social Work: The Membership Perspective. New York: Springer Publishing Company. Finley, Moses I. 1973. The Ancient Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press.

References

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Geremek, Bronislaw. 1988. Geschichte der Armut: Elend und Barmherzigkeit in Europa. Munich: Artemis. Germain, Carel B. 1973. An ecological perspective in casework. Social Casework 54 (6): 323–330. Gitterman, Alex, and Carel B. Germain. 2008. The Life Model of Social Work Practice. Advances in Theory & Practice. 3rd ed. New York: Columbia University Press. Haeckel, Ernst. 1866. Generelle Morphologie der Organismen. Zweiter Band: Allgemeine Entwicklungsgeschichte der Organismen. Berlin: Carl Reimer. Ingold, Tim, and Gisli Palsson, eds. 2013. Biosocial Becomings. Integrating Social and Biological Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Karls, James M., and Karin E. Wandrei, eds. 1994. PIE-Manual. Person-In-Environment System. Washington, DC: NASW-Press. Pardeck, John T. 1988. An ecological approach for social work practice. The Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 15 (2): 133–142. Redl, Fritz. 1967. When We Deal with Children. Selected Writings. New York: The Free Press. Richards, Ellen H. 1907. Sanitation in Daily Life. Boston: Whitcomb & Barrows. Schwarz, Astrid, and Kurt Jax, eds. 2011. Ecology Revisited. Reflecting on Concepts, Advancing Science. Dordrecht: Springer. Staub-Bernasconi, Silvia. 1989. Soziale Arbeit und Ökologie 100 Jahre vor der ökologischen Wende. Neue Praxis 19 (4): 283–309. Walsh, Elizabeth A. 2018. Ellen Swallow Richards and the “science of right living”: 19th century foundations for practice research supporting individual, social and ecological resilience and environmental justice. Journal of Urban Management 7 (3): 131–140. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 1982. Ökologie und soziale Arbeit. Stuttgart: Enke. ———. 1990. Ökosozial denken und handeln. Lambertus: Grundlagen und Anwendungen in der Sozialarbeit. Freiburg im Breisberg. ———. 2010. Das ökosoziale Prinzip. In Soziale Arbeit, ökologisch verstanden. Freiburg im Breisberg: Lambertus. ———. 2018. Wirtlich handeln in sozialer Arbeit. Barbara Budrich: Die ökosoziale Theorie in Revision. Opladen. Wimberley, Edward T. 2009. Nested Ecology. The Place of Humans in the Ecological Hierarchy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Chapter 4

The Scope of the Theory

The subject matter of the ecosocial approach to social work and to human services is the cohabitation and interaction of people in their shared space of life, with its events and challenges, conflicts and crises. They occur in the context of physical, cultural, economic and social conditions in which there is a multiple set of factors that correlate and influence people’s behaviour in a specific way. Central to this behaviour is the concern for one’s own individual and collective well-being. Organised and professional care is added and adapted to the needs of the people. Ecosocially, no theory of action of a profession is offered, at least not in the form of a methodology. The ecosocial approach presents  a theory of the situatedness of people and human community in life, in space and time, in structures and processes. In the ecology of situatedness, appropriate action can be discussed. For a situational analysis and for situational interventions, an ecosystem theory (Mattaini 2008), which deals with the transactional interweaving of behaviour, seems to be suitable. In general, thinking in systems provides a scientific basis for the ecological assessment of social processes. In order to understand problems of personal well-being and social coexistence, the social, political, economic and cultural systems in which people participate must be considered. Social work is concerned with this complex and multilayered reality in individual cases of direct practice and in macro practice. Related to this interwovenness, (the framework of) theory must be at least as broad as (the framework of the) practice. Whether private or public, action is taken under given spatial and temporal circumstances with reference to near and far, internal and external situational moments. The fact of the “spatio-temporal contingency of human life” has been discussed from various points of view, phenomenologically in terms of the subjective experience that constitutes the lifeworld of people (Hünefeldt and Schlitte 2018, 2). Embedded in this way, the social state of being of communities and individuals is considered, along with the actions dedicated to this state of being. A theoretical processing of appropriate provisioning, support and promotion of people through social work and human services is thus based on clarifying the situational settings

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 W. R. Wendt, Ecology of Common Care, SpringerBriefs in Social Work, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65699-7_4

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in which they take place. In the sense of being spatio-temporally embedded, the services, the professionals and their addressees are situated – as well as their relationship to each other. The theory assumes that a person participates actively in this space of living together. The basic unit of living together of people is the household. We find the domestic group differently formed culturally (Netting et  al. 1984). Owing to the genealogy of the ecological discourse, the ecosocial approach is grounded in the oikos model of Greek antiquity. But for every cultural form of household it is valid that the participation in a domestic group and its living space enables and shapes an individual’s existence. The closer and wider community of life sets the ecological framework in which the physical, cultural, economic and social facts are considered. In the practice of life, we have to get along in them and with them. It must be done comprehensively and continuously. From an ecological point of view, this is a household task. The task is performed by persons and by institutions of common life. The institutions are civic and political in nature. The field of the ecosocial theory of common care includes the institutional levels of society and state in organised concern for well-being. To the extent that people are not capable of coping with key areas of need at the individual level, which William Beveridge called the “Five Giants” – “Want, Ignorance, Disease, Squalor and Idleness” (Beveridge 2000, 848), the welfare state takes over the responsibility of providing social security (Timmins 1995). Social services are called in, and coordination with the addressees is necessary. The household of task accomplishment involves each side. In it, the vertical interrelations are as important as the horizontal interrelations of the actors. On each level and between levels, the connections between the actors are functional, material, motivational and ideological–mental. If we consider, for example, what a local authority does to provide for its citizens, it depends on tax revenues, corporate contributions, civic commitment, partisan political decisions and social debates about what is necessary. These conditions frame the respective horizontal interaction on one level. In social work and human services various problems are dealt with, pertaining to individual persons or groups of persons, as well as problems that are present in the community. The individuals, the groups and the community exist in their respective contexts and the problems depend on them. Those affected have to get on with the conditions of their lives. The ecological orientation suggests that all the factors must be taken into account when dealing with human problems professionally. With regard to ecology, human services intervene in the household dispositions of individuals. Usually, however, practitioners interpret their actions differently because the service is particular and the professional expertise is special. For a long time, those involved in social problem processing have asked for a separate treatment space in order to be able to proceed according to their own disposition. Place for this could be in a hospital or in a prison, in a workhouse or in a children’s home or in a psychiatric ward. Nowadays, one wants to avoid stationary, inpatient accommodation. But outpatient care, even home treatment, is necessarily related to the domestic setting of the people and their dispositions.

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Clients or patients accept professional intervention according to their own disposition. Within the ecosocial frame of reference, the inner and outer dispositions of people in their behaviour and actions are related to each other and to their contexts. For social work this means that the focus of the ecosocial theory is not on the relationship of the social workers and their clients. The object of the theory is not primarily professional action or a service provided. The scope of the ecosocial theory describes an open space where people live their lives, have their problems and make their decisions. The human professionals find their subject matter within this space. The facts and matters they have to deal with consist of the dispositions that are made in the behaviour and circumstances of people. When people become clients or patients of caring services, there is an antecedent in which they were not clients or patients. Their living conditions and behaviour under these conditions must be considered in a theory dedicated to dealing with problems in people’s lives and in their social context. They mostly cope with problems in the coherence and connectivity of their lives with or without the social support that is present within their sphere of life. In general, the coexistence of people is formed in social relations under material, cultural and political conditions. Biological factors are included, not separated within a sphere of nature. The ecosocial approach is a multilevel theory that traces the interconnectedness of social existence at the macro level of politics, the meso level of institutions and organisations and the micro level of individual living.

References Beveridge, Sir William. 2000. Social insurance and allied services. 1942. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 78 (6): 847–855. Hünefeldt, Thomas, and Annika Schlitte, eds. 2018. Situatedness and Place. Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the Spatio-temporal Contingency of Human Life. Cham: Springer. Mattaini, Mark A. 2008. Ecosystems theory. In Comprehensive Handbook of Social Work and Social Welfare, Human behavior in the social environment, ed. Bruce A. Thyer, K.M. Sowers, and C.M. Dulmus, vol. 2, 355–377. Hoboken: Wiley. Netting, Robert McC, Richard R. Wilk, and Eric J. Arnould, eds. 1984. Households. Comparative and Historical Studies of the Domestic Group. Berkeley: University of California Press. Timmins, Nicholas. 1995. The Five Giants. A Biography of the Welfare State. London: HarperCollins.

Chapter 5

The Central Concept of the Household and the Principle of Householding

The ecological character of cohabitation in a field of action is encompassed in the category of the household. The topos of the household brings together economic and social, normative, institutional, systemic and procedural aspects. They can be caught at the macro level in the political body – or at the meso level in the organisations that in the social economy provide work and benefits for members or public services for the people – or at the micro level in the dispositions for individual well-­ being. With all this, there is also a household to be kept – householding – in the interplay of actors and the synergy of activities. When we assign the household activities with the expression householding in the progressive form of the verb, we underline the conscious and directed execution of the process. (The use of the term is not quite familiar; the idiom “keeping house”, on the other hand, refers only to doing housework.) Householding “can be defined as the interdependent complex of activities geared towards the satisfaction of most material needs of man and towards the disposition of material conditions for the satisfaction of his immaterial needs” (Spijkers-Zwart 1980, 71). Householding must also be done culturally and mentally, based on the “assets” of culture, education and internal and external order. A household is a prerequisite for both conscious householding and its outcome. In the ecosystem of cohabitation there are broad and narrowly defined households in nature and in human society. They exist in dynamic reference to each other. Organised provision of services of general interest is an example of this reference. The task of householding includes the shaping of all of life. The task arises at every level and between levels and everywhere in the ecology of care. Family life is maintained in a household. Organised care in an area of health or education or social support requires a household. Social work can request bottom-up resources to fulfil certain tasks in youth welfare. For example: the legislator may be required to pave the way for the integration of migrants top-down and provide the funds for this. The addressees of measures dispose of their own means and ways. The public discuss

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 W. R. Wendt, Ecology of Common Care, SpringerBriefs in Social Work, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65699-7_5

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how societal “housekeeping” in all its aspects is done in social, health, economic and civil mattters.

5.1  The Concreteness of the Oikos In the European context, the original concrete form of a household is the ancient oikos in the sense of “house and farmyard”. As a real structure, the classical household was both the basic social setting, spatially situated, and the fundamental economic (agricultural) unit. It involved coping with everyday life, work for a living and relationship management. Social affairs in its concrete manifestation remained inscribed in domestic life. In contrast to the pattern of the oikos, the social in the modern sense is abstract – devoid of its ecological concreteness. The theory refers back to the initial state in order to unfold from it the breadth of what needs to be done in care and social work. The domestic space of the oikos included the whole relationships of production, consumption and reproduction and all the resources, possessions and responsibilities of a person or group living together (Nevett 1999; Wendt 2019, 22 ff.). In alternative living communities, the domestic or familial mode of agricultural production is still present today (Netting 1993). The conceptual pattern of the oikos can be used to describe the fundamental ecological positioning of human actors in relational and situational concretion. They move in it, understand themselves in it and take care of their concerns in it. In the area of their competence the actors have to handle the existing resources, both living and non-living, wisely. The old pattern of the oikos is paradigmatic for divers living arrangements, physical and conceptual, and for a multifaceted understanding of organised care for the life and well-being of humans and nature. The pre-modern oikos no longer exists, but the frame of reference remains: a  “house and farmyard” for a well-founded community of life in the responsibility of the human being.  The space and maintenance of individual life entails in its extension the task of maintaining common life. With the idea of an oikos as the domestic sphere, the ecosocial approach focuses socially on household interiors and the conditions that these internal spaces offer the actors in them. People act within their private sphere, whereas civil and political actions take place within a public sphere. In modern times, the distinctive feature of social concern and caring is that it extends from the public sphere into the private space of personal situations and individual behaviour. Human services complement “doing family” and compensate for “undoing family”. A professional social practice has to be concerned with the internal and external conditions of the household of its addressees and with the dynamics with which they conduct their lives under these conditions. In a household, individual conduct of life becomes rooted in time and space. A private or personal household gives relationships a structure and locates it in a setting. In a household, people arrange themselves with the conditions of their existence. The household arranges the functions necessary for its members. With this

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arrangement, a derived meaning is added to the original meaning of the term “household”: it denotes the totality of dispositions that can be made in a unit of living. The unit can be an individual person, a family, a larger corporation, a community or the state. Of every unit and within it, there is a constant disposition or householding for the maintenance and continuation of existence. Primarily (before the derived and metaphorical use of the term), a household is understood to be a co-resident domestic group and a material, spatially and temporally determined form of organisation of human existence and social life. It is the concrete coherence that matters. In living together, the physical household has the character of a “home” with the bonds it implies for the orientation and behaviour of people. With the increasing virtualisation of the living world, the connection to real contexts is becoming more important. The condition of a person is set in a domestic place. This homelike character can also be assumed by a larger bond of people in a region, in a nation-state and in the oikoumene as a worldwide connection of mankind and life. Our world has no outside. We are dependent on it with everything that belongs to it in the “ecosphere” (Cole 1958), and concern can be demanded of us everywhere. In the oikoumene, membership and participation are committed. They are a prerequisite for conscious ecological and social action. A household locates belonging and membership. The attribution is independent of the self-description of persons. You belong to a family, a political commune, a state. What affiliation means is explained by the constitution of the institution or political body. A homeless person remains a resident; he or she is helped to reside in one way or another. For people with disabilities, the community seeks to remove existing barriers. Diversity exists within the framework of social cohesion. The reference to the common house does not hinder particular identities from asserting themselves. The household, however, is based on common interests, with which the specific interests must be in proportion. As a setting of its practice, a household includes a set of rules that stabilises, secures and guides practice. The order of dealing with the means and possibilities in the life of a community and each person who forms the household. As the basic unit of action, the household includes its motives and objectives and the means of achieving these objectives. Its management – householding – was the subject of oikonomia in ancient times. As “householding proper”, oikonomia was distinguished from “money-making”, as Karl Polanyi pointed out with reference to Aristotle (Polanyi 2001, 56). It did not stay that way. In modern times, the market-driven “economic” has moved away from the domestic sphere. The liberated arbitrariness in trade and change has been captured by the modern state in its large household, which now encompasses economic affairs politically. As a consequence, the “social” also became separate in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and established itself vis-à-vis and in opposition to the state and to disembedded economic business. In the end, a householding polity seeks to integrate the (market) economy socially in one step, to rationalise the social economically in a later step – and finally to integrate the two ecologically in a sustainable development.

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5.2  Resources Matter Household refers to tasks and in order to fulfil them, the household contains resources and functions as a common pool resource for its members or stakeholders. A household serves its purposes with the means with which it is endowed. The term “resource” is commonly used to refer to the diverse means or assets that can be deployed in transactional exchanges. The “place of springs” that generates the means and from which they are taken is overlooked. Ecosocially, the social “springs” from living together; social forces, including the ability to care, are rooted in (the household of) a person and are inherent in the structures of society (in the household of its order). Economic resource theories (Dorsch, Törnblom and Kazemi 2017) do not refer to this disposition. In contrast to all other living beings, humans have to manage their household consciously. They make use of its means. Ecologically, the household (of nature) provides the conditions for the existence of a living being. From a household “spring” the means that are needed to sustain life. Those who need help or want to recover, turn to a “resort” (etymologically), a place that offers resources. (The word “resource” is derived from the Latin resurgere, “rise again”, “recover”.) Understood as a resource, the various aspects of the material and immaterial social, economic and cultural maintenance of human existence, individual and collective, are derived from the concept of the household beyond its old concreteness in the oikos. As a repository of resources, the household of a person, a family, local or regional body and the state maintains or enhances well-being. This is done in a household by allocating and distributing its means appropriately. Within the greater context of existence, we live on resources that are provided by the ecosphere of our planet. We also have a share in it when it comes to transforming physical stocks for social use. In the ratio of larger to smaller units, the dispositions are generally made in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity. A concept of the household includes the budgetary use of its means. In a figurative sense, the term household is used as a place of supply, support, insurance and provision. The household is a resource that can be drawn upon. Elements are attributed to it, which in themselves are called resources. These can be material goods, financial means or intangible assets such as personal strengths and abilities or mental powers. People care for and cultivate them and human services build on them, support them or seek to restore them. For this purpose, the services use their own material and personnel resources. They make dispositions about this within the framework of their household – and may expect that the addressees of their deployment will also do so within their household. Available resources are scarce. The clientele of social work primarily includes groups of people who are short of resources. They lack education and qualifications, sufficient income, social relations or healthy conditions. Those who lack resources are less able to cope with challenges and burdens in life. Therefore, sufficient resources must be provided for prevention and rehabilitation. A person can do this himself; human services offer complementary and compensatory help. If services

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make resources accessible to clients, it should be ensured that the elements of support are included in their households, which usually requires the clients’ own work: education must be acquired, health behaviour must be practised. When deciding whether to grant either cash benefits or benefits in kind, the recipient’s arrangements for their use are relevant. They should be resources for the user that meet the requirements. Resource requirements are determined by needs. The objective (or normative) need must be distinguished from needs that someone feels subjectively. The normativity of needs is measured in the interlocking of households. If resources are non-­ existent or cannot be explored, no needs can be submitted. In summer there is no need for snow, even if someone has the desire. This says that means that no one needs are not resources. Ski equipment is not needed in the summer. People often purchase unnecessary insurance. With general prosperity, needs can be declared that cannot be realised in a poor country. Ecologically, it follows in natural contexts how existing life mutually contributes to the common livelihood. In the social context, what people need beyond their physical survival must be clarified or bargained for. These are – in one way or another – household decisions. A welfare regime sets the household of social provision in relation to individual households and to the requirements of caring in them. For the system of social support and promotion the following is valid: many people are resourceful. Each person has a unique potential. People move independently within the public supply infrastructure. But many people need to be made aware of it. In an ecosystem of support, a suitable allocation of resources is necessary. Which combination of resources is necessary and sufficient in spatial and temporal extension must be decided on a case-by-case basis. The disposition presupposes the maintenance of resources in a suitable structure of services independent of the actual occurrence of their use. Nowadays, when allocating resources for welfare in one place, it must not be forgotten that this involves drawing on resources from other places in the world – with social consequences. We buy cheap clothes made in Bangladesh. Nurses go from poor countries to rich countries and care for frail old people there. The ecology of supply has very broad social repercussions for the use of resources.

5.3  Householders as Carers and Managers Actors who dispose of resources within the scope of their activities are responsible for a household. In their dispositional function the actors are called householders. People dispose in their everyday life about the application of their means, their forces, their body, their time and about the use of social relations. Persons are householders of their health and if they do not cope with it, they use the services of the healthcare system. People are householders of their employability and use qualification measures in the education and vocational training system for this purpose. Householding with relationships is necessary in order to find and maintain social

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connections. To be clear: in the householding function referred to here, persons do not have to be homeowners (as in the common use of the word “householder”) or employed housekeepers, but they do make decisions about the life course and about living arrangements. This means that they make decisions about “conditions of existence” in the ecological sense. In domestic life, the primary sphere of action of persons, the process of householding consists of preparing and maintaining the place for oneself or each other where one can be comfortable alone or together with others. Householding can be considered from the perspective of those who prepare the place or “prepare a home” and from the perspective of those for whom it is prepared. Wimberley (2009) originated the distinction between “making a home” and “being at home”. From a personal householding perspective, the categorisation of “basic ecological needs” must: functionally address issues associated with making a home (securing, provisioning, and maintaining a safe and healthful living space) and being at home (experiencing a sense of belonging in a particular place, locale and time, feeling at home with one’s family, friends, and neighbors, and feeling at home with oneself) (Wimberley 2009, 149).

The process of householding “situates” people and as a result they are (more or less) “well situated”. For an actor, householding means getting one’s own house and taking care of it. Or one cares outside the intimate context of the private realm within the household of an institution or a corporation for its members and stakeholders and the fulfilment of its purpose. In general, managers are householders, unless their function is limited to specific tasks. The process of householding includes all caring, economic and social dispositions in the conduct of life. In aspects of time and space, householding signifies maintaining and sustainably developing a human commonwealth; it may be small and familiar or large and extended, equipped with many or few assets. (And once again, nota bene: in distinction from a household, a budget only financially balances the revenues and expenditures that are expected in a household.) The theorem of the household allows us to argue socially, economically, politically, publicly and privately from the ecological point of view. In mainstream economics, (domestic) households are regarded only as units of consumption, compared with which firms or enterprises are the producers, operating within the freedom of the market. In this view, the domestic sphere is a “non-­ economic” realm. The ecological discourse reverses the relationship: the household is not situated within the economic analysis, but economic processes are understood within the frame of reference of households. This means the personal household of people, the household of a community and the state and the global household of the biosphere and our planet. Ecologically, households are thought of as the bearers of the resources that we produce and with which we live: the household of nature, the household of a body politic or nation, the household of an enterprise, a family household and the household of a single person who uses his/her powers and abilities as well as his/her material means for his/her own maintenance and advancement. Business entities and market participants have their place in extended households, so long as firms are not

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household undertakings themselves. Business activities depend on household decisions, as has become apparent in the COVID-19 crisis, for example. As a householder, the state had to make extensive new dispositions during the pandemic. And as householders, citizens also had to make different dispositions in their lives from what they were used to. Decisions in the household can be deliberated and freely agreed upon. Thus, a household (the political and the private) is also to be understood to be a space of freedoms, instead of being conceived as an “iron cage”. In society, personal and institutional households are not isolated units. People can “be[ing] at home” in institutional households and these are there for “making and maintaining a home”. All households use common goods and compete for resources. As far as they belong to a larger household or are to be attributed to it, they also stand up for each other in a subsidiary manner. In this sense, social work comes into being and social economy is being run on the basis of solidarity. Personalised social services use their households to intervene in the households of their addressees. To this end, the household of a regional or local authority or of the state makes funds available, which in turn are collected by means of levies on individual households. The extent to which all this happens has ethical, legal and political connotations. With the use of funds in public households, ecotheory does not yet indicate what the practice of social work aims at. Mainstream of teaching on social work makes one wonder: where does this approach leave the criticism of societal conditions? Social work is aimed at changing them. But, if statements on social conditions are not to remain merely ideological, the concrete concerns about the distribution and redistribution of resources and opportunities lead into the horizon of dispositions in households. In the practice of social support, care and management, the dispositions will be guided by principles of equitable justice, equal opportunities, self-­ determination, development promotion and rehabilitation. In order to bring such principles to bear in individual cases, one must look at the circumstances of personal lives and the social fields in which they take place. This orientation characterises the ecological perspective of human service activities. In social work directed at societal structures, it focuses on the systemic social problems that are due to the capitalist economy. Its local and global damage is thus an objective of householding directed at nature and mankind.

References Cole, Lamont C. 1958. The ecosphere. Scientific American 198 (4): 83–92. Dorsch, Michael J., Törnblom, Kjell Y., and Kazemi, Al. 2017. A Review of Resource Theories and Their Implications for Understanding Consumer Behavior. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research 2 (1): 5–25. Netting, Robert McC. 1993. Smallholders, Householders. Farm Families and the Ecology of Intensive, Sustainable Agriculture. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Nevett, Lisa G. 1999. House and Society in the Ancient Greek World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Polanyi, Karl. 2001. The Great Transformation. The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon Press. Spijkers-Zwart, Saskia I. 1980. The Household and ‘Householding’; Some Conceptual Considerations. In The Household, Women and Agricultural Development, ed. Clio Presvelou and Saskia Spijkers-Zwart, 68–73. Veenman and Zonen: Wageningen. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2019. Die Ordnung der Welt in Haus und Staat. Gesellschaftliche Steuerung im westöstlichen Vergleich. Springer VS: Wiesbaden. Wimberley, Edward T. 2009. Nested Ecology. The Place of Humans in the Ecological Hierarchy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Chapter 6

A Comprehensive Field of Study

Household is a comprehensive construct and a term with versatile application. The ecological category focuses on resource use in shared life. From the arrangement of concrete living together the material criteria are abstracted, according to which the transactions in a living community are computed, evaluated and balanced. What remains is accounting and the financial decision-making unit, budget, which does not reflect the concrete extent of the ecological facts. Household means with different accentuation the personal sphere of subsistence, of an individual’s physical and psychological livelihood, a living arrangement made by a group of persons who have a shared place of residence, the sphere of life and tasks of a community, a state household and finally the global household of the biosphere. At every level, the actors belong to the community and household of life. They are its stakeholders – with rights and obligations. Their participation counts. All people have a stake in the maintenance and continuation of a household. They contribute to it as a resource and can also live off it. With regard to their social provision, it is important that they can be considered as members of a household. The coherence of life determines the relationship of the actors in it. Hans Falck conceived their constant connectedness in the Membership Perspective of Social Work (Falck 1988, 31ff.). The notion of membership does not claim collectivism. Interdependence can be observed individually – in a householding way. Analytically, the scientific concept of the household of persons must be distinguished from the conceptual framing of the family (Bender 1967, 493), of the domestic group (Wilk and Netting 1984, 1 ff.) and of the location of living. Householding includes domestic activities in the residence of persons; outside it, any kind of resource use within the space of common existence. In this respect, householding also includes enterprises and businesses of all kinds. From an ecological perspective, they must be sustainable and not disturb the metabolism between humans and nature. The household is for its members, regardless of their relationships with one another, i.e. internal relations of care, power and domination. In one way or another,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 W. R. Wendt, Ecology of Common Care, SpringerBriefs in Social Work, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65699-7_6

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right or wrong, the actors within the space of coexistence dispose of its resources and decide on their use. By householding, the members of the domestic unit act for their welfare. Distinct from the socioeconomic unit of a private household of one or more persons, a public household or an institutional household as a legal body fulfils other functions, which can, however, also be summarised as the task of maintaining and promoting the welfare of the people. Public and private households are dependent on each other. The relationship is an economic and a political one. The connection has been controversially discussed since Plato and Aristotle, but as early as the city-state of Athens it can be assumed “that the art of the household and the art of politics were not distinct arts” (Ojakangas 2020, 404). The state system shapes the scope of action of personal households; they fill the commonwealth with their human assets. Private households make contributions to public households and are partners and stakeholders of the public services of general interest (also and especially when they become clients of human services). Organised in institutional households, the services are maintained with contributions from both the public and private sides and fulfil their purpose for each party. In the vertical entanglement of the households, interest politics is pursued according to their own disposition. In the intermediary space, undertakings of all kinds draw on the resources and are economising with them (or wasting them). The economy of gainful business intervenes in the household of nature and in the household of the individual people whose employment it needs. The interplay of private and public households has unfolded in the welfare state regime. It is shaped differently. Using the ecological framework, we see that in the welfare regime some functions of individual households are shifted to the institutional space. In it, as an ecosystem, there is social security, social protection and social compensation. It remains controversial whether they are sufficient, just and fair. Insofar as personal support and encouragement are provided, a householding conduct of life is expected from the addressees. In the mixed economy of welfare and for the positive outcome of care, the provisioning system is based on the participants’ own activity. Before a welfare state regime existed, groups of people had already organised joint householding undertakings in the form of friendly societies, cooperatives and mutuals. With them, the theory and practice of the social economy began. Social work often takes place within the framework of social economy enterprises. In the early days of the profession and in the time of the Progressive Era, Edward T. Devine conceived the social economy in this way: Social economy finds its particular field in the study of those conditions, activities, and agencies which promote or hinder the making of every individual into an industrially efficient and hence independent human being, and in the relief of those who cannot by their own efforts realize the social standards of the community of which they are a part. What domestic economy is to the family, what public administrative law is to the state, what political economy is to industry, what sociology is to society at large – all this, by very rough analogy and by very imperfect suggestion, social economy may be said to be to the community in its conscious efforts to promote the social good, to redress injustice, to overcome pauperism, and disease, and crime, to increase the points to beneficent contacts with the physical and the social environment.” (Devine 1906, 18)

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Just as social work can be economically assigned to small and large households, so, too, may other activities for individual and community welfare. In this understanding, the sphere of the social economy includes the structured range and household of welfare-related activities. Among those public, private and common undertakings, agencies that provide human services have the purpose of strengthening, promoting and securing the personal and social assets (of health, knowledge, resilience, employability, etc.). They meet their purpose in the households of individuals who participate in or observe professional interventions. People pursue their own aspirations – and therefore cannot be reached by human services without agreement. This is also done in consideration of households – the addressees as well as the services or the institutions and funds that finance them. Professional activities are carried out knowingly or unnoticed within this economic framework. Within the sphere of social work and its management, a householding practice includes self-care, social caring, health concerns, domestic concerns and concerns regarding sustainability. The ecosocial concept again brings together areas of action that have been differentiated in the modern system of disciplines and professions. In the field vis-à-vis the professional actors, the individual existence of people is a whole entity and not fractionated into problem strands. In the living context (or ecology of individual existence) it must first be determined what form of support and what kind of counselling or treatment can be helpful. The ecological disposition of the extensive subject area of human services and social work requires a transdisciplinary orientation. The generalist nature of social work makes the professionals  in charge of very different problems. Otherwise, the cooperation of different practitioners must be organised on a transprofessional basis. With the participation of many actors, case work and case management at the individual level are integrated into care management and administration at the organisational level and into the social economy of the welfare regime at the macro level. Individual households have an eccentric relationship with a larger municipal and to a  state household and the latter has an eccentric relationship with the global household of nature. Eccentricity here means not to be determined, but to behave in one’s own position with deviations in the larger household. The individual human being is not at its centre. Globally, the human species does not preserve the balance and fails as a great steward in the household of nature. It will not be possible to establish a complete correspondence between the behaviour of individuals and overarching (household) conditions. And the overall household is not at the disposal of the individual participant. For an individual, an eccentric position in life contexts causes an insufficiency. It requires constant adjustments, new orientation and considerate social conduct. The ecosocial approach is neither biocentrically oriented towards nature, nor anthropocentrically oriented towards man as the ruler of nature and independent of it. The human being acts and moves in a natural life context. The reality of "the social", too, is encircled by nature – like the oikos in its landscape once was. Social units have an eccentric position in it and in their relationship with each other. And as a single subject, an individual cannot claim to be at the centre of a

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community. No collective or its organisation can make this claim. That is also true for politics on a global level. In the plurality of states, not one state alone determines world affairs and the fate of nature. But everyone has a share in it and bears responsibility. People are “at home” not only in their domicile, but also in their wider place of habitual residence, with its whole territorial configuration, in an urban setting, in the region in which they move and in the country to which they belong. In the nearer space of a person’s presence, he or she has the relationships in which he or she exists every day. It is a subjectively and objectively shaped social space. Its structures are socially determined and determine the social life. The sphere in which people are socially embedded in a neighbourhood, in a local quarter and milieu and in a political community contains opportunities for personal development, cultural orientation, daily sustenance and support. The space of residence offers resources, but also causes disturbances, obstacles and discrimination. It is an ecological zone of social work. The spatial conditions with which the profession is concerned have been the subject of human ecology since the 1920s (Park, Burgess and McKenzie 1925). After its sociological beginning, with the exploration of the city as a “social organism”, the field of human ecology has undergone an interdisciplinary and transprofessional development in studies on the interactions between man and nature, and between society and environment. Ecosocial theory follows from studies on the spatial and temporal interrelationships between social behaviour and local and global change, misuse of resources, demographic transformation, climate change etc. These facts are a matter of common concern. The ecosocial approach connects this concern with the shaping of care in human services and social work.

References Bender, Ronald R. 1967. A refinement of the concept of household: Families, co-residence, and domestic functions. American Anthropologist 69 (5): 493–504. Devine, Edward T. 1906. Efficiency and Relief. A Programme of Social Work. New York: Columbia University Press. Falck, Hans S. 1988. Social Work: The Membership Perspective. New York: Springer Publishing Company. Ojakangas, Mika. 2020. Polis and Oikos: The art of politics in the Greek City-State. The European Legacy 25 (4): 404–420. Park, Robert E., Ernest W.  Burgess, and Roderick D.  McKenzie. 1925. The City. Suggestions for Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wilk, Richard R., and Robert McC. Netting. 1984. Households. Changing Forms and Functions. In Households. Comparative and Historical Studies on the Domestic Group. Netting, Robert McC, Richard R. Wilk, Eric J. Arnold. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 1–28.

Chapter 7

Differentiations Are Necessary: Domestic and External Relations

Environmental concerns are, in themselves, not the subject of the advocated ecosocial theory. Dealing with the biophysical environment and “environmental justice” is often seen as a subfield of social work (Gray et  al. 2013; Teixeira and Krings 2015; Krings et al. 2018). The ecosocial approach focuses the whole work that is done socially within the framework in which this happens. Natural surroundings concern social practice in the milieu of social and individual living. The ecosocial approach deals with the interrelationships of human existence. Therefore, it is necessary in the scientific discourse to distinguish the ecosocial perspective from diverse environmental science approaches. People live under conditions that are close to them and in which they feel at home. Outside of these conditions are those that people can find and visit without regarding them as their own. In relation to nature, it is quite different to take care of your own garden than to go camping somewhere on holiday. If you camp somewhere, you don’t need to be committed to the place you occupy. The environment stays outside. For the gardener, nature becomes his world. In this sense, the ecosocial approach is life-centred; the movement of thought within it is centripetal, not outwardly directed from the social to the natural environment. The ecosocial paradigm postulates that in the shaping of living together, the human world is the ecological sphere that frames our existence. In the space of a household, a habitat, a tissue of relationships is assumed. Being involved in it avoids a dualism of person and environment. The habitat includes the things and facts and affairs that exist in living together. As Heidegger pointed out, habitare is a “being in”; a person is familiar with the habitat. It is the space of his or her “Dasein, which has Being-in-the-world as its essential state” (Heidegger 1962, 80). Being-in-the-­ world extends beyond a given situation and is pre-set. Responsibility and care are linked to its extension. “Because Being-in-the-world belongs essentially to Dasein, its Being towards the world is essentially concern” (Heidegger 1962, 84) A person can agree with his or her surroundings, deal with them, arrange, befriend, identify. It is by being engaged and operating that humans exist in their world.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 W. R. Wendt, Ecology of Common Care, SpringerBriefs in Social Work, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65699-7_7

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The ecosocial theory covers all the interconnections in the habitat or the milieu that we live in and share. In this respect, the ecosocial approach differs from environmentalism (Martell 1994; Pepper 1996) and from a social ecology (Haberl et al. 2016; Kramm et al. 2017; Stokols 2018) that deals with the relationship between society and the natural environment and analyses the interdependence of social and physical environments. However important a science is that pursues the manifold interrelationships of human existence and external nature, it does not deal with social subsistence within the social structure and in the individual and communal shaping of existence itself. Yet, environmental changes such as the climate crisis are having an impact on the subsistence of the socially disadvantaged groups of the population taken care of by social work. The discourse on environmental social work (Gray et al. 2013) is needed, but it does not play a primary role in the ecosocial theory to be dealt with here. In his discussion of a set of ecologies, Wimberley (2009) assigned social ecology a position between “personal ecology” and “environmental ecology”. Accordingly, this places the perspective of social ecology, “the self and society within the context of a larger whole that encompasses the entirety of the known (and unknown) natural world. Situated within this context, humans find themselves responsible not only for their own fate, but also for the fate of the rest of the natural order” (Wimberley 2009, 35). Hill (2005) argued in a similar vein. He defined social ecology as “the study and practice of personal, social, and ecological sustainability and progressive change based on the critical application and integration of ecological, humanistic, relational, community and spiritual values” (Hill 2005, 49). A communitarian or mutualistic orientation (“cooperacy”) is included. With Wimberley, in the set of ecologies, the societal orientation is being left behind in environmental ecology, which “refers to the entire range of natural ecosystems and their constituents – animate and inanimate – residing upon the planet” (Wimberley 2009, 50). Terminologically, social–ecological approaches also appear under the term “ecosocial” and must be distinguished from the understanding represented here. As an example, in the field of public health, my ecosocial approach differs from an epidemiological “ecosocial theory” of disease distribution in society (Krieger 2011, 202 ff.). For social work, one is usually content with complementing the traditional person-in-environment perspective with the natural environment (Norton 2012). However, since its beginnings, the development of social work theory has included ecological aspects (Närhi and Matthies 2016) in the sense of environmental conditions. In view of those conditions, the course of theory I advocate is related to the studies of Matthies et  al. (2001) in which “the eco-social approach in social work is understood as providing a holistic means of viewing living environments, as a concrete step for increasing involvement in local policy and city planning, and as an attempt to formulate theoretical conceptions of social work that are consistent with the demands of sustainability” (Matthies et al. 2001, 8). Before the environment is thought of as nature, it is already the cultural and economic environment for social action  – the space that is inhabited, farmed, furnished with goods, governed and cared for  – sustainably if possible. “When exploring the social sustainability of

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societies, the entire multidimensional living environment must be taken into account, not just employment and other economic aspects” (Matthies 2001, 128). The social shaping of existence implies, as can be seen in small and large development projects, shaping the world as living space. Environmental problems affect disadvantaged and poor population groups in particular; they have hardly any opportunities to escape. Hence, concepts of environmental justice and social justice overlap (McKinnon and Alston 2016, 2). Social work is committed to both. People are at home in their environment. The social work that is done with them should be too. Therefore, I follow the ecosocial interpretation of social work in texts by Matthies and Närhi (cf. Närhi and Matthies 2001; Matthies et al. 2020): ‘Real social work’ as ecosocial work takes place with the people themselves in their own environment, including all the issues concerned with material and cultural wellbeing. In the case that food security, housing, mobility, health, climate change and subsistence are becoming part of social work agency and research, the profession and the movement, then real social work may be rediscovered” (Matthies and Närhi 2017, 31)

With this content, the connection can be made that Matthies and Närhi (2017) make between social work and striving for sustainability. They provide many examples of ecosocial work at a community level (Matthies et al. 2019). Social sustainability appears to be given here in a combination of “design of the physical realm with design of the social world” (Woodcraft et al. 2011, 16). In this context, the definition of social sustainability in a report of the Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development (OISD) dealing with urban regeneration can be used: Social sustainability concerns how individuals, communities and societies live with each other and set out to achieve the objectives of development models which they have chosen for themselves, also taking into account the physical boundaries of their places and planet earth as a whole. At a more operational level, social sustainability stems from actions in key thematic areas, encompassing the social realm of individuals and societies, which ranges from capacity building and skills development to environmental and spatial inequalities. In this sense, social sustainability blends traditional social policy areas and principles, such as equity and health, with emerging issues concerning participation, needs, social capital, the economy, the environment, and more recently, with the notions of happiness, well being and quality of life. (Colantonio and Dixon 2009, 4)

There are diverse streams of environmentalism, ranging “from Anthropocentrism to Ecocentrism” (Eckersley 1992, 33 ff.), analysing as critical political ecology (Robbins 2004; Peet et  al. 2011) society–nature relations, discussing a “critical hybridity” (White et al. 2016), favouring ecological citizenship (Smith 1998), influencing an environmentally pro-active social work (Ramsay and Boddy 2017) or happening with or without a theoretical basis in another form of eco-activism. Political ecology moves beyond binary thinking in the relationship between society and nature or that between nature and culture (Biersack and Greenberg 2006), or that between human and non-human matter (Bennett 2010), and “combines the concerns of ecology with a broadly defined political economy” (Blaikie and Brookfield 1987, 17). There is sufficient reason to deal scientifically with political decision making according to the interests of the capitalist economy, which are detrimental to the environment.

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The prevailing economy damages the environment and harms the lives of many people. In ecological thinking, the criticism of environmental injustice is rightly combined with the criticism of social injustice. “Green social work” (Dominelli 2012) builds ecologically on a structural analysis of the “neoliberal capitalist modes of production, reproduction, and consumption” and tackles “structural forms of oppression, environmental degradation, and injustice to empower people and promote their well-being individually and collectively as well as that of planet earth” (Dominelli 2015, 386). In fact, structural realities do matter. Ecosocially we are not concerned with the economy of natural processes in themselves but with the economy of social living conditions. The political discussion of these conditions requires an ecological orientation because of the interrelationships of the actions of the economic actors. Politically, the state must ensure equity with them. In complex circumstances (not only in times of the COVID-19 crisis), equity needs to be properly balanced. The function of human services and social work does not fulfil this task. At the political macro level, the aim is to steer and shape what needs to be done economically in relation to nature and in relation to social welfare. Not external effects but internal impacts are of interest. Ecosocial theory encompasses political decision making within the frame of reference of the household. At the macro level, political ecology is thus interpreted economically, just as the governance of the social (i.e. governing activities in society) is considered. Here, we can refer to the historical genesis of modern economic thinking from the requirements of the government of the political body. The task of householding is the subject of political economy – in the sense that Jean-Jacques Rousseau distinguished it from the domestic economy in an article in the “Encyclopédie” 1755: The word economy or oeconomy is derived from oikos, a house, and nomos, law, and generally means the wise and legitimate government of the house for the common good of the entire family. The meaning of this term was then extended to the government of the great family, the state. In order to distinguish between these two senses of the word, the latter is called general or political economy and the former domestic or particular economy. (Rousseau 2009, 37).

A line can be drawn from this assignment via James Steuart (1767) to Adam Smith (1999). He described that area of tasks in more detail in the “Wealth of Nations”: Political economy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or most properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves, and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services (Smith 1999, 5).

The state appears here in its ecological function as a housekeeper (who, with Smith, relies economically on commerce and agriculture). From an ecological point of view, the state is aimed at the sustainment of the well-being of life. The political process within the sphere of the state consists of the vertical dimension in the perception and enforcement of (social and economic) interests and in the horizontal

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dimension in the debate about them. The self-interests of the actors are subject to an assessment in the public awareness of the further contexts of life with which local and global householding is necessary. The political body is the institutional bearer of this task, both internally and externally. However, the ecological modelling of the political body (in an oikos–polis–kosmos relation) (Wendt 2019) is postponed in the ecosocial approach in favour of social action in the household of living together. This thematic subordination is due to the function of the theoretical approach to the science of social work. The ecosocial approach is often perceived by the scientific community of social work as a metatheory because it covers different areas of social, economic and political life and is not limited to professional action in social work. In that view, the approach is placed in relation to theories that occur as action theories of the profession. The ecosocial approach leaves open how professional and methodical action is taken. It offers a lens for the requirements of a productive care provision in the changing social and natural world. In what situations and contexts does the profession operate and what does it refer to in its social work? The field of action is the field of social life and of coping with people’s problems. Present for this purpose is the field of the corresponding services and facilities within the framework of public provision. It can be said that there is an “ecosystem” of informal and formal mastery of life and the processing of its problems in society. This constellation is the subject matter of the ecosocial approach.

References Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press. Biersack, Aletta, and James B. Greenberg. 2006. Reimagining Political Ecology. Durham: Duke University Press. Blaikie, Piers, and Harold Brookfield. 1987. Land Degradation and Society. London: Methuen. Colantonio, Andrea, and Tim Dixon. 2009. Measuring Socially Sustainable Urban Regeneration in Europe. Oxford: Oxford Brookes University, OISD. Dominelli, Lena. 2012. Green Social Work: From Environmental Crises to Environmental Justice. Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 2015. Green social work. In International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, vol. 10, 2nd ed., 385–391. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science. Eckersley, Robyn. 1992. Environmentalism and Political Theory. Toward an Ecocentric Approach. London: UCL Press. Gray, Mel, John Coates, and Tiani Hetherington. 2013. Environmental Social Work. Abingdon: Routledge. Haberl, Helmut, Marina Fischer-Kowalski, Fridolin Krausmann, and Verena Winiwarter, eds. 2016. Social Ecology. Society-Nature Relations across Time and Space. Wiesbaden: Springer. Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell. Hill, Stuart B. 2005. Social ecology as a framework for understanding and working with social capital and sustainability within rural communities. In A Dynamic Balance: Social Capital and Sustainable Community Development, ed. Ann Dale and Jenny Onyx, 48–68. Vancouver: UBC Press.

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Kramm, Johanna, Melanie Pichler, Anke Schaffartzik, and Martin Zimmermann, eds. 2017. Social Ecology. State of the Art and Future Prospects. Basel: MDPI. Krieger, Nancy. 2011. Epidemiology and the People's Health. Theory and context. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Krings, Amy, Victor Bryan, John Mathias, and Brian Perron. 2018. Environmental social work in the disciplinary literature, 1991–2015. International Social Work 0: 2–16. Martell, Luc. 1994. Ecology and Society. An Introduction. Bristol: Polity Press. Matthies, Aila-Leena. 2001. Perspectives of eco-social sustainability in social work. In The Eco-­ social Approach in Social Work, ed. Aila-Leena Matthies, Kati Närhi, and Dave Ward, 127–152. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, SoPhi. Matthies, Aila-Leena, Kati Närhi, and Dave Ward, eds. 2001. The Eco-social Approach in Social Work. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, SoPhi. Matthies, Aila-Leena, and Kati Närhi, eds. 2017. The Ecosocial Transition of Societies. The Contribution of Social Work and Social Policy. Abingdon: Routledge. Matthies, Aila-Leena, Ingo Stamm, Tuuli Hirvilammi, and Kati Närhi. 2019. Ecosocial innovations and their capacity to integrate ecological, economic and social sustainability transition. Sustainability 11 (7): 2107. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11072107. Matthies, Aila-Leena, Jeff Peters, Tuuli Hirvilammi, and Ingo Stamm. 2020. Ecosocial innovations enabling social work to promote new forms of sustainable economy. International Journal of Social Welfare 0: 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijsw.12423. McKinnon, Jennifer, and Margaret Alston, eds. 2016. Ecological Social Work: Toward Sustainability. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Närhi, Kati, and Aila-Leena Matthies. 2001. What is the ecological (self-)consciousness of social work? Perspectives on the relationship between social work and ecology. In The Eco-social Approach in Social Work, ed. Aila-Leena Matthies, Kati Närhi, and Dave Ward, 16–53. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, SoPhi. Norton, Christine Lynn. 2012. Social Work and the Environment. An Ecosocial Approach. International Journal of Social Welfare 21 (3): 299–308. ———. 2016. Conceptual and historical analysis of ecological social work. In Ecological Social Work: Toward Sustainability, ed. Jennifer McKinnon and Margaret Alston, 21–38. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Peet, Richard, Paul Robbins, and Michael Watts, eds. 2011. Global Political Ecology. Abingdon: Routledge. Pepper, David. 1996. Modern Environmentalism. An Introduction. London: Routledge. Ramsay, Sylvia, and Jennifer Boddy. 2017. Environmental social work: A conceptual analysis. British Journal of Social Work 47 (1): 68–86. Robbins, Paul. 2004. Political Ecology. Malden: Blackwell. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 2009. Economy [abridged]. The encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert collaborative translation project. Translated by Stephen J.  Gendzier. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.121. Accessed 18 June 2020. Originally published as "Economie ou oeconomie [abridged]," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 5:337–349 (Paris, 1755). Smith, Adam. 1999. The Wealth of Nations Books IV–V. London: Penguin Books. Smith, Marc J. 1998. Ecologism: Towards Ecological Citizenship. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Steuart, James. 1767. An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy: Being an ssay on the Science of Domestic Policy in Free Nations. In which Are Particularly Considered Population, Agriculture, Trade, Industry, Money, Coin, Interest, Circulation, Banks, Exchange, Public Credit, and Taxes. London: Millar and Cadell. Stokols, Daniel. 2018. Social Ecology in the Digital Age. Solving Complex Problems in a Globalized World. London: Academic Press.

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Teixeira, Samantha, and Amy Krings. 2015. Sustainable social work: An environmental justice framework for social work education. Social Work Education 34 (5): 513–527. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2019. Die Ordnung der Welt in Haus und Staat. Gesellschaftliche Steuerung im westöstlichen Vergleich. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. White, Damian F., Alan P. Rudy, and Bryan J. Gareau. 2016. Environments, Natures and Social Theory. Towards a Critical Hybridity. London: Palgrave. Wimberley, Edward T. 2009. Nested Ecology. The Place of Humans in the Ecological Hierarchy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Woodcraft, Saffron, Nicola Bacon, Lucia Caistor-Arendar Nicola, and Tricia Hackett. 2011. Design for Social Sustainability. A Framework for Creating Thriving New Communities. London: Social Life.

Chapter 8

A Multilevel Construct

At home, people are with themselves, but not only within the narrower sphere of their private space. They also belong to an urban or rural locality, to a smaller or larger political body, finally to a state and ultimately to the oikoumene of the world community. Belonging is perceived subjectively and exists objectively in real relationships and settings. As intermediaries there are civil, work and leisure organisations to which people belong. In such organisations there are different interpretations of what to household with  – with specific concerns, with social affairs, with the business of a company, with fun and entertainment. In everything, subjective interests and objective causes permeate each other. This also applies to human service organisations in activities that are regarded as “social”. If we search ecologically for the social in real life, we will not find it. The social only appears when it is considered separately. It is often seen as a characteristic of subjects, to be found in their attitude, in the good intention to do something for other people or the community. When the social is objectified, it appears reduced as a function in societal processes. For its real occurrence the social is to be sought out in the concrete space of living together. If, according to Niklas Luhmann (2012), the social in its system consists only in communications, the communicative events are understood ecosocially in the personal and material facts and states of affairs that exist ecologically. They fill a more or less extensive space; in antiquity it was the oikos, the life cohabitation with house and yard. In the oikos, there was no extra social aspect. It did not have a system of its own. In modernity, the sphere of action of oikonomia has become differentiated – economically, politically, organisationally and societally. The institutions now lie apart and in layers above and below one another. Nowadays, care work and social work is done and located throughout the ecosystem of the institutions. From its multilevel perspective, the ecosocial theory deals with: • The personal field of life and the framework of action of individuals

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• The field of tasks, the ecosystem of structured physical provisioning, human service provisioning and the operation of social care • The political field of action of welfare production. Action at one level refers to action at the other levels in matters of care and welfare. Whatever vulnerability, exposure to risks and emergencies are assessed in a person’s circle of life calls for professional and political responses. The state-run social security system and the way society deals with it has a general impact on the way people live their lives, for example, on their precautionary behaviour and on social cohesion.

8.1  The Micro Level: Ecology of Personal Life At the micro level, the spatial and temporal extension of existence must be considered ecologically. In both respects, people get along or have problems. To understand the problems, the conditions under which they occur in the spatial and temporal dimensions must be analysed. A person subjectively makes experiences in this extension of his or her existence, starting with the self-conception connected with the sense that the personal “lifeworld” (Grunwald and Thiersch 2009) provides every day. Socio-psychologically, one can speak of an “ecology of the self”: “The constituents of the self, namely others, environments, and things that provide, mediate, and perpetuate social experience, will be described as the ecology of the self. The self both shapes this ecological system and is a reflection of it” (Hormuth 1990, 1 f.). People take care of themselves with their performance in the circles in which they act. By performing in a common household, they dispose of resources in their own household. At the micro level, the individual person is considered with regard to his or her participation in work and gainful employment, in education, in civic, cultural and social life, and in the context of his or her community relations in general. A person or family is more or less well off in those relations. In the case of problems there are often different intersecting factors in the situation. To “well-situate” people is the aim of a social commitment. They should participate in the general (level of) welfare of society. An ecology of participation discovers in spatial analysis the constraints and opportunities of living in participation, not only for persons with a disability. They have a right to integration as participation in the community. “Housing, employment, health services, transportation, education, civic life, recreation and entertainment are the elements of that participation” (Bricout and Gray 2006, 1). Every person needs their place in the world. The human being seeks this place for himself or herself, or the place is given to the person. He or she can use it differently. In ecology, the scope of action is referred to as the niche. The term was introduced by the biologist Charles Elton “to describe the status of an animal in its community, to indicate what it is doing and not merely what it looks like” (Elton

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1927, 63). The theoretical model describes an occupied positional setting that includes functional roles and capabilities. On the “social niche” see Saltz et  al. (2016) For an actor, the niche offers opportunities. It represents positive freedoms, as Amartya Sen understood them, as capabilities. A person’s capabilities open up the realisation of functioning. Realised functionings constitute personal well-being. “A functioning is an achievement, whereas a capability is the ability to achieve” (Sen et al. 1987, 36). Capabilities develop. They can become competencies. A young person usually goes to different places and follows different paths, which provide him with freedom. In this way, the person expands the circle of his or her abilities in social relationships, in the fields of education, in the world of work and on playgrounds for leisure activities. How far and where the person gets depends on the structures of the society in which he or she moves, on whether he or she is hindered or encouraged. An ecological niche is a capability set. With its opportunities it represents a constellation of challenges and satisfaction  – often unbalanced and involving allocation conflicts. They can be resolved if people share the challenges and satisfaction with others in a network. The relationships all around the person have more or less social capital. He or she can use it wisely or household with it. When social support is needed, relatives, friends or committed volunteers provide it informally and it is made available formally through professional services. The digital media offer a spectrum of hybrid advice, but it can be difficult to distinguish its expert, trivial and misleading parts. To help them to get along in life, there is a wide range of confusing advice and action. Ecologically, the relationship between informal and formal care and counselling is of interest: to what extent does one replace the other; to what extent do services strengthen or weaken self-­ sufficiency? That, too, is a household issue. In individual cases, the relationship between coping behaviour and support is very different. It is therefore necessary to act prudently in terms of human service. From an ecological point of view, case management is recommended, which takes into account all aspects of a life situation: internal and external dispositions, space and time available, the life story and a person’s perspectives. By taking care of it comprehensively, something like “ecological caring” comes about (Dahlberg et al. 2016), recognising human existence and well-being within a web of relationships. The extensive field of (informal) caring and (formal) care provision can be regarded ecologically as a “landscape” in which individuals and groups of people move with their needs and professionals with their remedies. By analogy, the term “caringscapes” has been chosen for the field of informal care practice, which contrasts with the “carescape” of formal infrastructure (Bowlby and McKie 2019; McKie et al. 2002; Bowlby et al. 2010). An overarching “care ecology” framework has been offered “to suggest how caringscapes and carescapes interact” (Bowlby and McKie 2019, 533). Informal caring, performing care within the personal or family circle, is exposed to many burdens, both conflictual and crisis prone. The infrastructure of formal care, with its resources and services, is needed to relieve the informal carers. “A particular carescape provides the context for individual caringscapes. The policies and services in a carescape might include formal care services,

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housing, transport provisions and public open space as well as legislation and employers’ rules relating to such issues as rights for carers to flexible hours of work” (Bowlby and McKie 2019, 534). The ecological reflection is used here “to stress the complex interactions between individuals’ caringscapes and the ‘carescape’ within which they find themselves” (Bowlby and McKie 2019, 536). In particular, the gender-specific nature of care is under discussion: the majority of the workforce in the services is female and the domestic “caringscapes” are always run mainly by women. For structuring social policy, the focus must be on their households, rather than on enterprises that turn welfare into a business.

8.2  The Meso Level: Actors and their Networks At the meso level, the local social space is the nearest object of ecosocial consideration. In neighbourhoods, workplaces, schools, territorial, ethnic and religious communities, social processes take place. The offers of human services and social work in  locales of stationary accommodation or ambulant arrangements overlap or diverge with these processes. For needy groups of people, the infrastructure of services and facilities in the local area is designed by social planning. Social organisations become active in it and social work can carry out municipal or public housekeeping in it, as was conceived by women (in the sense of caring for good living conditions in the comunity) in the USA during the Progressive Era (Oakley 2018, 77 ff.). In the welfare state, the organisation, sharing and coordination of social tasks have to be regulated. The tasks are performed within an institutional structure of funding agencies and service providers as entities that institutionally control themselves. They can build an ecosystem of supply in complementarity and networking. Similarly, the commercial sector now conceives an “ecosystem” of a complementary supply of goods (Adner 2017) Care management is appropriate to guide and monitor the use of social services in the various sectors of health care and social care. Circumspection and prudence on the part of operators are necessary for adequate equipment and sustainable development. The social is structured within and outside organisations in networks. Actors are connected in different networks – family network, neighbourhood network, professional and business networks. There is, moreover, networking in the channels of social media. Networks provide opportunities. They can be used by people as an ecosystem of their support and promotion. Their self-management and informed choice in social and health matters draws on navigational networks, insofar as they are linked by coordinating units in the social provisioning system. Active networking is particularly relevant to reaching marginalised groups of people. Often, embedding these groups in one or the other network is a condition for further participation. Human service organisations also function in networks. Their actors maintain informal and formal relationships to fulfil their tasks. The complexity, stability, dynamics, nestedness, coherence or openness of networks is to be examined. From

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the ecosocial viewpoint, social networks are subject to analysis and processing for the benefit of the addressees of human services. The benefit comes from different places in the network, from exchanges with them, from investments in relationships and the return on investments, and exists as a resource called social capital. “Social capital is the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition” (Bourdieu 1986, 248). The ecosystem of institutionalised social supply is based primarily on economic capital. The social benefit system belongs to households with a variety of decisions that are taken in professional governance, in organisational governance and in the governance of political bodies. A theory of social work cannot be limited to the level of professional action as long as this work is carried out in the ecosystem of institutional provision. Even a free engagement in the civil framework presupposes the arrangements of social security and social protection within the existing welfare regime. Householding to meet its own and collective needs is also directly the economic concern of an organisation serving its members through a joint undertaking. Such an organisation does social work, even if not one single social worker is involved. The core domain of the social economy includes cooperatives, mutuals and other social associations and foundations (the “four families” of the économie sociale of French origin). Even if they identify as enterprises in a market, engaged in the production and exchange of goods and services, they shape a productive social household. They meet the needs and aspirations of their members and stakeholders. Many of these organisations are based on collective self-help; others have a public mandate and operate within the social household of the welfare state (such as the Italian social cooperatives) (Borzaga and Galera 2016). In general, the organised fulfilment of social tasks can be discussed from an economic perspective under the umbrella term social economy. Many welfare organisations have a confessional motivation or cultural background. This fact indicates that the institutional order in which people live and act is largely determined by intangible but effective mental causes. They form a framework in the ecology of the conduct of life and social processes. Professional and voluntary helpers are involved. Volunteering means working for the common world and better states within it. The motivations and viewpoints of the individuals and their organisations may be very different; they have their place in the substructure of a welfare regime and fertilise it with their commitment and passion.

8.3  The Macro Level: Ecology of Political Decision-Making At the macro level, the ecosocial approach does not cease with the description of welfare state policy, administrative structures and civil society initiatives. In rich countries, the physical subsistence of the population, their supply of food, water and energy, is secured and the necessary infrastructure is available, but this does not

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mean that equity and justice are given equally. To this end, a welfare regime has been introduced that must be constantly adjusted with regard to the allocation and distribution of resources. The governance of social provision processes is included. The need for an overarching strategy across services has been highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Within the framework of the supply processes, the activities of commercial enterprises and social enterprises, which in their own way contribute to welfare, are also considered in ecosocial theory to be within the scope of a household regime. During the COVID-19 crisis, it has become clear which enterprise areas are “systemically relevant” in the provision of general interest and which are not. This is decided by the state based on households (and not on a market). Household based means here: in the interest of the political community and its population. The service for it is “systemically relevant”; corporate interests take a back seat. However, a decline in the commercial economy and the labour market as a whole affects the general welfare. The “ecosystem” of the economy of gainful employment is relevant to it. Interventions in the economic process are particularly justified when the state of nature and human health require them. The health of the population takes precedence over the interests of the profit economy. In the relationship between the market economy regime and the welfare regime, this also means restricting the business practices of commercial enterprises in order to prevent health impairment. In ecosocial terms, business in the cigarette and confectionery industries, for example, and the health behaviour of sections of the population are interrelated. At the macro level, the costs are a burden on the social budget. In householding, the legislator limits harmful consumption. Common care thus does not remain a matter for the health and social departments alone in politics. In a certain sense, social work reaches into the political decision-making process. Here, the civil society discussion and the public play an important role in the bottom-up translation of social concerns. The needs of the surrounding nature must also be translated into the political decision-making process. Ecological sustainability builds on economic sustainability (of the commercial process) and moves into social sustainability, promoted not least by an ecologically informed social economy. Gismondi et al. (2016) presented examples from Canada of how sustainable community development can be achieved through collaborative action, organised in the social economy. The process of sustainable welfare extends from the preservation of the common goods of nature to the social benefits in political design. The horizon of interests to be considered does not remain ecologically limited to the internal conditions in a state in any way. For sustainable welfare, the dispositions of state social policy must also take into account the larger household of living together on earth (Brandstedt and Emmelin 2016; Koch and Mont 2017; O’Neill et al. 2018). In the long run, welfare in rich countries cannot be maintained at the expense of the poorer majority on the planet. Government action plays a part in the worldwide conditions. A demographic regime requires decisions on migration; the pandemic regime changes global economic events with a concern for health; the “New Climatic Regime” (Latour 2018) redirects policy towards the conservation of

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the common goods of the Earth’s livelihood. Such ecological reorientation entails social consequences. The conditions of land use, food, water and energy supply are changing. As in other policy areas, the strategy of householding in social policy must take many aspects into account, keep interests in balance and set priorities. Promoting the health of the population requires education, as well as a broad-based promotion of employment. Poor housing conditions can affect educational opportunities. If the strategy of promotion and support at the macro level is not backed up by appropriate operational implementation at the organisational level and suitable addressee-­ related interventions at the micro level, misinvestments will be the result. Fine-­ tuning top-down does not succeed without precise feedback bottom-up. The individual stakeholders must be enabled to do this – to become a kind of ecological citizenship. Politics in the ecological sense has to find a social expression – and social policy will have to meet ecological demands. Turned inwards into the political body, the ecosocial approach is oriented towards equipping the political community with capabilities for the realisation of individual participation in the shaping of the welfare regime in detail. The operational leeway for this must be prepared. In a sustainably oriented public household, a social infrastructure policy can be more beneficial to welfare than a merely distributive social policy. A well-developed infrastructure of childcare, lifelong learning, promotion of health literacy, care for the disabled and elderly etc. paves the way for individual welfare. It is up to the users how they follow their course. Personal welfare in the sense of “fare well” is a development process; it deserves support, promotion and encouragement. Much and manifold can be contributed to welfare professionally. The advantage of ecological thinking in human affairs is that it is occurring in a transdisciplinary manner. It changes and links the levels at which human and social issues are discussed in different subject-specific, psychosocial, cultural, economic and political ways. The space for new answers is kept open, without having to be disciplinarily fixed to a sector or resort to expertise. Human services must remain flexible as their tasks change. If they look at the context of life, they do not become stuck in their individual moments.

References Adner, Ron. 2017. Ecosystem as structure: An actionable construct for strategy. Journal of Management 43 (1): 39–58. Borzaga, Carlo, and Giulia Galera. 2016. Innovating the provision of welfare services through collective action: The case of Italian social cooperatives. International Review of Sociology 26 (1): 31–47. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986. The forms of capital. In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. Jeremy G. Richardson, 241–258. New York: Greenwood Press. Bowlby, Sophie, and Linda McKie. 2019. Care and caring: An ecological framework. Area 51 (3): 532–539.

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Bowlby, Sophie, Linda McKie, Susan Gregory, and Isobel McPherson. 2010. Interdependence and Care over the Lifecourse. Abingdon: Routledge. Brandstedt, Eric, and Maria Emmelin. 2016. The concept of sustainable welfare. In Sustainability and the Political Economy of Welfare, ed. Max Koch and Oksana Mont, 15–28. Abingdon: Routledge. Bricout, John C., and David B. Gray. 2006. Community receptivity: The ecology of disabled persons’ participation in the physical, political and social environments. Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research 8 (1): 1–21. Dahlberg, Helena, Albertine Ranheim, and Karin Dahlberg. 2016. Ecological caring – Revisiting the original ideas of caring science. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-Being 11. https://doi.org/10.3402/qhw.v11.33344. Elton, Charles. 1927. Animal Ecology. London: Sidgwick and Jackson. Gismondi, Mike, Sean Connelly, Mary Beckie, Sean Markey, and Mark Roseland, eds. 2016. Scaling Up. The Convergence of Social Economy and Sustainability. Edmonton: Athabasca University Press. Grunwald, Klaus, and Hans Thiersch. 2009. The concept of the “lifeworld orientation” for social work and social care. Journal of Social Work Practice 23 (2): 131–146. Hormuth, Stefan E. 1990. Ecology of the Self. Relocation and Self-Concept Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Koch, Max, and Oksana Mont, eds. 2017. Sustainability and the Political Economy of Welfare. Abingdon: Routledge. Latour, Bruno. 2018. Down to Earth. Politics in the New Climatic Regime. Cambridge: Polity Press. Luhmann, Niklas. 2012. Theory of Society, Volume I. Stanford: Stanford University Press. McKie, Linda, Susan Gregory, and Sophie Bowlby. 2002. Shadow Times. The Temporal and Spatial Frameworks and Experiences of Caring and Working. Sociology 36 (4): 897–924. O’Neill, Daniel W., Andrew L. Fanning, William F. Lamb, and Julia K. Steinberger. 2018. A good life for all within planetary boundaries. Nature Sustainability 1: 88–95. Oakley, Ann. 2018. Women, Peace and Welfare. A Suppressed History of Social Reform, 1880–1920. Bristol: Policy Press. Saltz, Julia B., Adam P. Geiger, Raleigh Anderson, Benjamin Johnson, and Rachel Marren. 2016. What, if anything, is a social niche? Evolutionary Ecology 30 (2): 349–364. Sen, Amartya, et al. 1987. The Standard of Living. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 9

An Ecological Orientation for Human Services and the Social Profession

In the overlapping circles of life, individuals are in charge of shaping their everyday life, their work, their education, their health, the care of their natural environment and the culture of their coexistence. Individual competence and responsibility extend into these areas of action. No one is isolated in his or her concern with the goods of welfare. The concern has its extension in the multidimensional social sphere and its welfare regime. The personal space of relationships merges into a community space of relationships. The individual actor will not perceive the transition from personal competence and responsibility to the space of shared competence and responsibility, but it is ecologically constitutive for the services that people perform for each other. The service has its purpose in the relationships of living together. As stated in a discussion of the interactional terrain and the crossroads of services and care: “In an era of hyperindividualism, it is easily forgotten that we experience life in relationships. From the relations of family living and schooling to the relations of work and retirement and the relations of sickness and care, relationships deploy ways of being and prompt directions for action” (Gubrium 2016, 3). From the perspective of the individual actor in the midst of his or her relationships, we move on to the organised body of the community’s view of its members. There is a communal competence for living circumstances – in the coverage of basic physical needs, in residential surroundings, in the working conditions, within the educational framework, within the sphere of health and within the natural environment. In this versatile reference space, human services have their function. They are aimed at improving the living conditions of people. The structured system of human services and social support includes the areas of health care, of housing services, of employment services, of education, of personal social services, and of social security and social protection. In each area, different contexts are important that are beneficial or detrimental to individual welfare. Ecosocially, the respective conditions in which professional helpers and their clientele interact are sought out. In the healthcare sector these are conditions of

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prevention, healing and rehabilitation. Housing conditions are determined by the location, the equipment and the social relationship in and around the home. The promotion of employment depends on the situation on the labour market and on the skills and readiness of the workforce. Educational services have institutional and personal prerequisites which they must take into account. Personal social services intervene in precarious living conditions of disadvantaged, dependent, traumatised or sick people. The system of social security and social protection must be checked for gaps, defects and malfunctions. Ecosocially, the intersectoral coherences and extensive interrelationships in these areas are to be studied. For professional practice, no specific procedure is thus prescribed for action in individual cases. The theory deals with the field of action and orients in this field towards individual and social well-being. In the services, professionals have the skill to work methodically and appropriately towards welfare. Their clientele is interested in this from the outset. The field of service and professional activity intervenes in the circles of people’s lives. Ecologically, households overlap in the intervention and participate in their resources. Take an intensive family preservation programme such as the Homebuilders model, for example (Kinney et al. 2017). The human resources of a service are used to directly strengthen a family household. The restoration of the family is done by implantation of competent householding. In principle, home treatment for mental disorders (Heath 2017) is similar. A medical team from the inpatient care sector applies their competence to the patient’s life circle. In other ways, municipal youth work provides spaces, material and personnel resources for a free flourishing of young life. In the context of workforce development, the integration of people into employment depends on a mutual adaptation of operational circumstances and the behaviour of the individual. The objective and subjective preparation of the task field lays the foundation for the performance of an employee. A respective contextual approach has been presented for occupational therapy in an “ecology of human performance” (Dunn et  al. 1994). To make performance possible, the whole life field with its structures may have to be prepared. In the care of disabled people, it has been clear at least since the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities that the adaptation of public infrastructures is necessary for social participation. The household of personal conduct in the case of disability is dependent on the household of publicly organised cohabitation. Whether with or without disabilities: vis-à-vis the structural and functional arrangements in the care system, the addressees of the services are independent actors within their own frame of reference. An interaction occurs between those who provide services and those who use them. Knowingly or not, they share a common concern and converge on the goal of improvement, support or promotion. Their commitment may differ. As the provision of human services is a shared responsibility, it does not matter to them what obligation a recipient of benefits assumes. However, he or she will be required to take personal care. From an ecological point of view, one’s own concern is encompassed by the commonly established pattern and process of care.

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The process is called social. The attribute is only granted to the individual actor participating in this process. But a professional assisting person likes to see himself or herself in a sole relationship with the person he or she is helping. In the act of helping, the circumstances become less important. Yet they play their part before, during and after helping. Within the sphere of direct social work, it is primarily single persons and families who are the profession’s main concerns, although the milieu, the social space and other local and regional contexts are also important. When people are involved in the shaping of their care and in decisions about their support and treatment, one can also refer to the closer and further conditions under which a helping process takes place. The sole acts of helping make those engaged and affected forget: the clientele of social work depends on solidarity among people nearby, in the political community and by the regime of welfare in the state. Therefore, the organisational level of the organisation of social service action as well as the macro level of social policy regulation of the field of action in people-related social work must be taken into account. Actors at every level are called upon to avoid marginalisation and discrimination of people and to contribute to their integration and participation. Ecologically, the concrete relationship space in which inclusion is sought and exclusion is to be overcome is considered. Marginalisation and discrimination have to be discussed in the real contexts in which they occur and in the contexts in which integration and participation are achieved. The ecology of the contexts in which help is provided should also be considered in the management of professional deployment. At the individual level, people’s life situations have to be examined in order to determine the need for action. In the theoretical discourse on social work, it is usually assumed that it concerns social problems. These are constructs in which a grievance is recorded by a social or professional collective and assigned to treatment. If we enter into people’s concrete situations, an assumed social problem dissolves in the individual life context, with its circumstances, foregrounds and backgrounds. The German term Lebenslage captures the whole setting of those conditions. The concept encompasses the inner and outer dispositions of a person with his or her life story and perspectives (Wendt 1986, 60 ff.). The concept covers the existence of a person or family in its temporal–spatial extension. The capabilities that form an opportunity set for personal progress are related to the conditions of individual existence. Who and what can contribute to the person’s self-care, informal support, a professional intervention or therapy are kept open ecosocially. Initially, people themselves are concerned about their personal needs and social situation. Personal households contain their own caring arrangements. They are often precarious. Care services are used in a complementary or compensatory way; therefore, they should move as far as possible into the life situations of their addressees. People live in good or bad circumstances. These are to be considered ecosocially in their complexity – as family conditions, employment conditions, housing conditions, education conditions, health conditions etc. They all have a temporal extension, and are not of a momentary nature. Over the course of time every person can learn socially, health-wise, practically and vocationally. Supporting lifelong learning is part of social work. It is taken care of and arranged, and not only in the youth

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welfare service, as long as the individual does not already take care of his own education. The personal and common existence require continuous caring. Social work fits into the continuum of care. Personalised social services are anchored in this continuum as individual facts. But these facts are only an indication of a wider-­ reaching course of affairs. From a supplier’s and professional point of view, each case to be treated is just one in the field of its predisposition. In ecosocial understanding, these conditions are to be discussed and then altered or steered in social work and human services with the aim of new dispositions for well-being. In a local or regional service area, the interaction of services with their users can lead to integrated care with benefits for the health status of the population, for example. In this way, the responsibility for good health is shared between physicians and patients in an exemplary manner in prevention programmes, such as in an organised care network in the Kinzig Valley, Germany (Cohen Marill 2020). Whether in matters of health, education or employment, people shape their own situation in life as far as they can. Social services and health services intervene in it. They use existing means and possibilities and assess the need for supplementation and compensation on the basis of the personal life situation. Social work accompanies the complex conditions in their transformation, initiates them, promotes them and supports them. The success of the assistance and interventions depends on their fitting into the context of individual life. The profession of social work is placed ecologically within a socioeconomic framework. This is how social work has been understood since its founding years. It took over tasks within the household of the public sphere. Jane Addams discussed “civic housekeeping” or “community housekeeping” (Addams 1906; 1913). Edward T.  Devine formulated accordingly: “Social economics may be described as community housekeeping. Social work, to follow the analogy, is its salvage and repair service” (Devine 1922, 1). It deals with “those aspects of community housekeeping which have to do with getting rid of bad conditions or helping people who cannot help themselves” (Devine 1922, 3). In the field of the community, the problems of individual people and groups are perceived. Their well-being is a condition of the common welfare. It is worked towards in a householding manner at every level – in the welfare regime of the state, in the structures of human service provision and specifically in personal care.

References Addams, Jane. 1906. The Modern City and the Municipal Franchise for Women. Baltimore: National American Woman Suffrage Association. ———. 1913. Women and Public Housekeeping. New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association Pub. Co. Inc. Cohen Marill, Michele. 2020. From rural Germany, integrated care grows into a global model. Health Affairs 39 (8): 1282–1288. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.01063. Devine, Edward T. 1922. Social Work. New York: Macmillan.

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Dunn, Winnie, Catana Brown, and Ann McGuigan. 1994. The ecology of human performance: A framework for considering the effect of context. The American Journal of Occupational Therapy 48 (7): 595–607. Gubrium, Jaber F. 2016. From the iron cage to everyday life. In Reimagining the Human Service Relationship, ed. Jaber F. Gubrium, Tone A. Andreassen, and Per K. Solvang, 3–32. New York: Columbia University Press. Heath, David S. 2017. Home Treatment for Acute Mental Disorders. An Alternative to Hospitalization. Abingdon: Routledge. Kinney, Jill, David Haapala, and Charlotte Booth. 2017. Keeping Families Together. The Homebuilders Model. Abingdon: Routledge. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 1986. Die ökosoziale Aufgabe: Haushalten im Lebenszusammenhang. In Umwelt – Lebenswelt. Beiträge zu Theorie und Praxis ökosozialer Arbeit, ed. Albert Mühlum, Olschowsky Gerhard, Oppl Hubert, and Wolf Rainer Wendt, 7–75. Moritz Diesterweg: Frankfurt am Main.

Chapter 10

The Ethical Underpinning

Normatively, the ecosocial approach is based on the question: how can we live and how do we want to live? This is a simultaneously ethically motivated ethical issue for which we are striving. Where does the work in overcoming problems in life lead? Our ecological situatedness provides the motivation and we strive individually and socially for appropriate performance. The ecological orientation connects  – contrary to Hume’s fork – the ought to the is. The ecosocial focus on life circumstances does not take place in value judgement-­ free research, but with the claim of a sustainable positive shaping of individual and common existence in those contexts. How we can live refers to the living conditions in the ecological contexts of our existence. To this end, facts must be found, analysed and assessed in their contexts. In view of the changes in the contexts of life on earth, of our economy, of demographics, of the protection of nature, conclusions must be drawn for our way of life. These are ethical conclusions. Socially, we arrive at ethical decisions by referring to a common ethos (Wendt 2016). In an archaic sense it means a pasture ground, a nurturing place where we are with our conditions of existence. “Ethos” (ἦθος) originally denoted “dwelling”, the place to which the human being belongs. Ontologically, Martin Heidegger understood it in this way: “Ethos means abode, dwelling place. The word names the open region in which man dwells” (Heidegger 1977, 233). We humans exist ethically in the manner of our abode. Interpreted ecologically, existence consists of temporally and spatially extended participation in other and common life, nourished by it and nourishing it. Ethically, we live in the world in the way in which we inhabit it. From the way in which we inhabit ourselves physically and mentally, to the more extended householding way of living, with the goods of common life, locally and globally. Who dwells is inside. Insiderness includes in the life world of people all references in which a person adheres to common values, rules and habits in their behaviour. People’s orientations are diverse and depend on the social and cultural milieus in which they live or feel they belong to. In “Habits of the Heart” Robert Bellah et al. described the “subtle ties that bind human beings to another” (Bellah et al.

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1985, 284). What is found is a web of moral understandings and commitments that is given the term moral ecology. In the case of the authors, the discussion has been directed against the increasing individualisation in society; the other side of moral ecology is the commitment to the civic and natural basis of living together. In it, the ethos of adequate and good “dwelling in the world” is opened. The ethical character of human dwelling  – living ecologically thoughtfully  – implies a formative task. A person settles in, makes connections, cares for and arranges an ambience, and deals with what he or she encounters. In the formative assessment of what a person cares about, he or she agrees or disagrees ethically with other people. The space of ethos is a field of care and work, of engagement, confrontation and convergence. A person or a family is not alone in it, but finds itself in the ethos of a larger community. Being in the world individually means that the ethical horizon extends beyond local and temporal limitations. Being in the world ethically for human professional action means not to perceive and judge the personal situation of its addressees in isolation from the state of the world in which that situation occurs. Dwelling ethically in the world requires socially improving liveability, providing security for people, and avoiding marginalisation, exclusion and any form of discrimination. Ethics becomes ecological when it extends to the overall shaping of common life. Ethos  – as a “dwelling place”  – is given to the special way in which I know myself at home. In my home I am or have been cared for. The space of care is the actual ethical space. For a long time, people in need of care were accommodated in institutions called “homes”. Most of the time this was a euphemism, but at least the “home” denoted the claim to be received, included and accepted. This claim is met by professional care in the relationship to which the person being cared for is invited. In a hermeneutically designed study on “home as ethos”, Hilli and Eriksson (2019) found that this describes a dimension in which nurses share their inner “at-­ homeness” with patients. The investigation is in line with other Scandinavian studies on “at-homeness” as an essential aspect of well-being (Zingmark et al. 1995; Öhlén et al. 2014). At the socio-political level, the involvement of Swedish professionals with the home (hem) refers to the Swedish “people’s home” (folkhem) as a welfare regime.  It does not only have pleasant features, as it proves in times of pandemic. In any welfare regime, well-being at the individual level will initially be sought outside institutional placement. In practice and in perception of the social profession, it is first of all necessary to understand the situatedness of the life (Lebenslage) of a person, a family, or a target group. How they want to live is one point; how they are able to live is another. What are the contextual conditions of their “pasture grounds” (in housing, employment, income, education, health etc.)? And what are the wider (economic, political, natural) circumstances in which these conditions arise and in which they can be improved? In which direction and with which actors can collaboration be organised for the individual and common welfare? Ecological rationality underpins social thinking and social action by pointing out what to think and act about. We bear responsibility for the world in which we live. The task is to keep this world habitable and hospitable now and in the future. This

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concerns the narrower world of family, neighbourly, local coexistence and the wider world in its civilisation and nature. The ethos of living is not limited to personal comfort and social work is not just about improving it and compensating for disadvantage. The ethos is extended to the state of habitation, of everyday work life, of civil life, of the shaping of togetherness, to the upholding of culture, to the integration into the diversity of natural life and its maintenance. In this extension, the situation is to be assessed in which a person or a group of persons is found, in which they participate or should participate. Individual well-being does not come about in a one-dimensional supply relationship with society and the environment, but results from the dynamics of multifaceted involvement. Conflicts of interest, crises, confrontations and other quarrels are part of the dynamic. The ecosocial approach is occasionally accused of being uncritical and seeking harmony. The matter of ecosocial theory is not taking a stand for just one side. The controversies, the struggle for advantages and against disadvantages, and the discrimination of people, are judged ecologically from the point of view of a household of living together. In this respect, social justice must be sought in individual cases and in the "dwelling place" for everyone.

References Bellah, Robert N., Richard Madsen, William M.  Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M.  Tipton. 1985. Habits of the Heart. Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1977. The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays. Transl. William Lovitt. New York: Garland Publ. Hilli, Yvonne, and Katie Eriksson. 2019. The home as ethos of caring: A concept determination. Nursing Ethics 26 (2): 425–433. Öhlén, Joakim, Inger Ekman, Karin Zingmark, Ingrid Bolmsjö, and Eva Benzein. 2014. Conceptual development of “at-homeness” despite illness and disease: A review. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Health and Well-being 9 (1): 23677. https://doi.org/10.3402/qhw. v9.23677. Zingmark, Karin, Astrid Norberg, and Per-Olof Sandman. 1995. The experience of being at home throughout the life span. Investigation of persons aged from 2 to 102. International Journal of Aging and Human Development 41 (1): 47–62.

Chapter 11

The Turn of Ecological Thinking in the Anthropocene

Ecological thinking has long assumed a complementary function in the social debate. It attributed a setting in space and a multidimensional extension to social action. In the face of the prevailing economy, it positioned the demands of the natural environment. The complementary role is now turning into a constitutive role in the discussion of human life in the context of the future of life in general. In the Anthropocene the separation of nature and society is no longer tenable (Brown 2016, 4). Individual and social behaviour interferes (our food, plastic waste, traffic, tourism) directly with nature and its transformation interferes (climate change and decreasing biodiversity) directly with our lives. Responsible behaviour must be ecologically proven. In the challenge of the Anthropocene, the ecosocial approach coming from the close social life context of the oikos meets planetary social thinking (Clarke and Szerszynski 2020) coming from the opposite ecological direction. The one thought requires the other. The ecosphere appoints humans as its steward. For a long time, man has intervened in the natural contexts of life in a damaging way; as a result, they have an impact on the social contexts of human life. With its crises the nature appropriated by man is now his. The climate crisis has made it clear that a “relay between social struggles and ecological struggles” (Latour 2018, 56) is underway. Every individual and every community has an ecological base, both proximate and extensive, and must take care of it for the sake of their own existence. The human being has subjected nature and the whole sphere of life to human work and man now bears responsibility for the common life on the planet. Each level of social action and behaviour is involved in ecological responsibility. The crisis of global governance of environmental problems (Bruckmeier 2016) includes the crisis of societal problem solving. And the societal transformation process towards sustainability needs to be carried out by taking care of the natural environment and living with it (Sato et al. 2018). In the ecological and social transformation, the households of nature and society must be considered equally. The complex

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socio-ecological adjustment process on a large scale at the macro level requires a continuous process of ecosocial adaptation at the micro level in people’s households. The adjustments in personal households are not trivial. The continuous change destabilises the existence of man. The demands on individuals to get along in life are increasing. They are expected to be flexible and resilient. The patterns of care are affected. The requirements on the organisation of public provision and on the political steering of the community are growing. “The task of housekeeping, as a result, involves both caring for our bodies, our families and communities, and everything that surrounds us. No wonder that life itself has become the center of debates on governance and the relative merits of public trust, markets, and states” (Palsson 2016, 177). Today, the COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the mutual commitment of the state and the citizens to the governance of health. In a householding order to cope with the crisis, many regulations were needed to shape living together in a new way. The regulations concerned the economy of enterprises, environmental behaviour and social interaction in equal measure. Like the oikonomos in ancient households, the state authority has determined what is allowed and what is not. And the people expected such instructions. Individual freedom of behaviour makes the order function ecologically necessary. In a world where livelihoods are in question, all actors must adapt to them anew. The social relationship and social belonging are included in a world relationship and in belonging to the one and only world. This means that social intentions cannot be pursued independently of local and global ecology. Conversely, more and more social dispositions occur because of developments in the environment and nature. Global climate change requires investments in the transition from cars to bicycles and trains. A change in consumer behaviour and dietary changes will be necessary. Some economic competition is prohibited because of the overhead costs. International relations are being tested for their compatibility with common life. And this impact assessment pervades all levels and areas of action in its intercorrelation. It is becoming increasingly clear that the horizontal negotiation of practices is being replaced by a vertical adjustment of procedures regarding the affairs of living that matter as a whole in the common house of the planet. Our ethos is determined by the fact that we stay everywhere in life within its house and housekeeping is entrusted to us. The ability to fulfil this task requires ecological competence, ecological literacy, and a cognitive and emotional attitude named “earth in mind” (Orr 2004, 212). The inner and outer dispositions of man are affected by this mindset. “Nature becomes an object of identification. For the individual, this has extraordinary conceptual ramifications. The interpretation of life experience transcends social and cultural interactions” (Thomashow 1996, 3). The change in mentality provides a new basis for social sustainability. Individual and common welfare result less from the consumption of goods than from the creation, maintenance and sharing of common goods. This includes both the proactive care of social cohesion and the proactive care of nature. As the surrounding nature is the home for our existence, it is, as can be seen in climate change, the common ground of our way and pattern of life. And climate change will not be arrested

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without a change in our way of life. Social action is generally gaining an ecological profile. The changed mindset focuses on a hybrid of ethics and economy. This hybrid is based on the ecosocial approach to householding. How we want to live and how we can live require an economic answer. The individual human being must provide the answer himself or herself taking into consideration his or her physical, mental and socio-cultural capabilities. A civil entity and society finds the answer with regard to its maintenance and development options. Overall, the human potential is related to the resources of the local and global ecosystem. The sharing of these resources has been discussed and practiced in the mode of commoning in recent years (Bollier and Helfrich 2015). In relation to the commons, we are called to a partnership in which we carefully cultivate and use what we have in common: spaces of nature, culture, commodities and social relationships. Omnia sunt communia (De Angelis 2017). This insight can become a professional attitude: social workers are commoners. As De Angelis (2017, 15) explains: “I see my work as a contribution to a common cause, as much as seeding wheat and harvesting by a convivial collective is a contribution to the common cause of living”. In the process of commoning, the social undertaking and the economic undertaking identify each other from an ecological perspective. The practice is one of “sharing in common”. The co-activity and the co-obligation nourish each other (Dardot and Laval 2019, 10f.). Conceived as a solidary, partnership-based work for a subsistence and for well-­ being, commoning extends to individual participation as well as to the actions of a group and to community development. Social work appears in it as an activity within the framework of solidary-based economic activity or social economy. Whatever is done for social cohesion and well-being is part of the social economy. When people come together to shape their lives or contribute to their livelihood in a new way, social innovation and economic innovation are mutually grounded. This happens, for instance, in cooperative urban gardening. Projects in Canada show many good examples of an ecological fusion of social and economic action: “If you volunteer in your community, you are part of it. So, too, if you are a member of a credit union or a non-profit society. You encounter the social economy if you participate in a community centre or support a women’s shelter, live in a housing co-­ operative, or shop at a social enterprise” (Gismondi et  al. 2016, 9). The digital infrastructure today facilitates and supports such value-added participation. In an “ecosystem of value-creation” (Bauwens et  al. 2019, 11 ff.), civic engagement, human services and social work can interfere in the household or network of relationships in which people participate and are productive for themselves and peer-to-­ peer, and the community. The intention of commoning is the transition to another society, tentatively.

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References Bauwens, Michel, Vasilis Kostakis, and Alex Pazaitis. 2019. Peer to Peer. The Commons Manifesto. London: University of Westminster Press. Bollier, David, and Silke Helfrich, eds. 2015. Patterns of Commoning. Amherst: Commons Strategy Group. Brown, Bruce (ed.). 2016. Futures. Imagining Socioecological Transformation. Abingdon: Routledge. Bruckmeier, Karl. 2016. Social-Ecological Transformation. Reconnecting Society and Nature. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Clarke, Nigel, and Bronislaw Szerszynski. 2020. Planetary Social Thought. The Anthropocene Challenge to the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Polity Press. Dardot, Pierre, and Christian Laval. 2019. Common: On Revolution in the 21st Century. London: Bloomsbury. De Angelis, Massimo. 2017. Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism. London: Zed Books. Gismondi, Mike, Sean Connelly, Mary Beckie, Sean Markey, and Mark Roseland, eds. 2016. Scaling Up. The Convergence of Social Economy and Sustainability. Edmonton: Athabasca University Press. Latour, Bruno. 2018. Down to Earth. Politics in the New Climatic Regime. Cambridge: Polity Press. Orr, David W. 2004. Earth in mind. In On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect. Washington, DC: Island Press. Palsson, Gisli. 2016. Nature, Culture and Society. Anthropological Perspectives on Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sato, Tetsu, Ilan Chabay, and Jennifer Helgeson, eds. 2018. Transformations of Social-Ecological Systems. Studies in Co-creating Integrated Knowledge Toward Sustainable Futures. Singapore: Springer Nature. Thomashow, Mitchell. 1996. Ecological Identity: Becoming a Reflective Environmentalist. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chapter 12

Back to Care and Social Work

From an ecological point of view, the concerns that many individual people have to face are raised to the level of common care. The terrains to take care of are the extended conditions in which we live. Within them moves every particular care of a human service. The specific task is set on the horizon of common situations. In this, one asks: • • • • •

How can children grow up and develop well in our times? Which hindering and which supporting circumstances have to be considered? How are we to cope with the ageing of society in demographic change? What can be done to combat widespread drug dependence? How can the segregation of population groups be overcome in order to achieve social cohesion?

The major social tasks are of public and political concern and require the processing of a wide field of contexts in the ecosystem of society. In the past, various social movements have been devoted to this work, such as the Sanitary Movement or the Settlement Movement in Britain and, on a broad scale, the Progressive Movement after 1900 in the USA, which also promoted the professionalisation of social work. Without understanding a consistency of common care, the interaction of the actors has brought about a transformation in social life and in the areas of human service provision. As in earlier social movements, social work takes place in the building of an alternative new relationship and in the necessary ecological transformation for our times. The work has a share in the quest for sustainability and liveability. The care for this intended abilities occurs mainly outside human services and their professional activity. But the presence and functioning of services is part of the quality of life that it is socially intended to maintain. The services would do well to report back to the public on the conditions, requirements and deficits of their client-related or patient-related engagement.

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The professional social work is carried out in personal and joint life circles, whether methodically as case management, in group work or for community development. Apart from singular counselling or one-off assistance, the professional does not do the social work alone. It comes about in cooperation with an addressee, relatives or other parties involved. With their different points of view, they can examine a problem area together and work towards a solution during their consultation. An ecological analysis of the settings in which the participants find themselves and move shows life contexts that are given before the action, while they exist and considered for the time afterwards. Current care in the work on welfare expands to common care with regard to the life contexts of well-being. On the basis of commonality, services must be provided in the real, cultural, normative and psychosocial space in which people conduct their lives. Within this framework, their situation must be assessed and plans made with them to change and to do something for their well-being. Professional care is linked to the concern and the caring attitudes of clients, which requires a translation of the mutual understanding and clarification of interests and intentions. They are to be interpreted in the extensions of the way of life. This means following clients in the contexts of their lives and their life world in which they are at home and to which professionals can connect because they share a larger “home” with them. In it extend the references of a common ethos, with the recognition of human rights, the pursuit of justice and the sustainability of common life. By moving from the context of the collective conduct of life to the context of the individual conduct of life, professional social work includes in its commitment to its circle of action the commitment of other actors who belong to it. The profession acts on the basis of principles. The definition of social work, given by the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) 2014, states the principles as follows: Social work is a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that promotes social change and development, social cohesion, and the empowerment and liberation of people. Principles of social justice, human rights, collective responsibility and respect for diversities are central to social work. Underpinned by theories of social work, social sciences, humanities and indigenous knowledge, social work engages people and structures to address life challenges and enhance wellbeing. (IFSW 2014)

The ecosocial approach discusses the challenges of life in the real coherences. Its conditions must be worked on at every level. The theory captures the complex structural, economic, political, sociospatial, natural and cultural conditions in their entire extension  – and thus corresponds to the endeavour, “that social services must become an inclusive, universal service, not a residual and stigmatized one” (Dominelli 2012, 4). The reduction of social work to a commitment against capitalist structures of production and power does not meet the entanglements in which social care must be provided. Promoting empowerment and liberation of people cannot be achieved in one-dimensional confrontations, but rather takes place prudently, involving many moments. In this extension of ecosocial theory the object and the function of the social profession are discussed. Interventions are carried out in life situations and in life courses that continue. What social work does should therefore be considered

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ecologically in terms of sustainability. Social workers know the feeling of exhaustion when they help again and again without lasting effectiveness. In a continuum of care, it is personally only achieved through lifelong learning, constant networking, preservation of participation, maintenance of identity and cultivation of being in the world, i.e. in the conduct of life in an extended existence. This is also valid when working with groups and on the development of the community. Sustainable social work is an ungoing work on welfare. In this sense, social work was understood in a science of social economy by Edward T. Devine in the early days of the profession “in its conscious efforts to promote the social good” (Devine 1906, 18). At the time, the effort was directed at both reforms in society as well as support from case to case. In the extension to one side and to the other, care concerns the wider and narrower living conditions. Aligned to the individual situation, the provision of care can be derived from striving for a general improvement and it proves itself at the individual level. Taking care of the social good of individual welfare is the task of human services in general. Their specific caring work is included and linked to home caring practice. Here as there, understanding care is not limited to providing care for the vulnerable or to “dependency work”, as Kittay in “Love’s Labor” understands, “the work of caring for those who are inevitably dependent” (Kittay 1999, IX). Care in general encompasses “all actions that improve the experience of humans in their processes of living” (Coxon 2017, 6). With the outreach into the life processes, the foundation for an Ecology of Care can be laid, which is as a research concept an “ecology based on Care” (Coxon 2017, 5). Similarly, Berenice Fisher and Joan Tronto have defined an extended understanding of the practices of care in a very stimulating way: “On the most general level, we suggest that caring be viewed as a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web” (Fisher and Tronto 1990, 40). The world we live in gives us cause for concern. The quality of our lifeworld is the social good to be worked on. If the ecological framework is in place, it can be discursively advanced in the “multi-dimensional nature of care” from caring about living conditions to institutionalised caring for people and the realities of care giving and care receiving (Tronto 2010, 160). Following Tronto in her political and economic concept of care, Harcourt and Bauhardt (2018) formulated an equally broad definition within the framing of feminist ecology: “Care is about how communities organise their community and their livelihoods. Care is about looking after and providing for the needs of human and non-human others” (Harcourt and Bauhardt 2018, 3). In community the maintenance of life is cared for. This means in a narrow sense: care for health, care for education, care for food and housing, care for social cohesion and care for the natural environment. Even though it concerns the individual person, it also concerns society. In this sense, social work is based on and proceeds in commonality. Caring, understood as a general obligation, forms social citizenship as a care citizenship.

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The social profession can redefine its position in communities of care. They exist in the networking of informal care, peer support, neighbourhood assistance, civic engagement – without or in conjunction with professional services that guide their activities, provide counselling and sustain their commitment. Professional social work can trigger and catalytically promote the connection between the participants. They can all see themselves as co-workers in the extensions of caring processes. As a result, the caring community is the socially accomplished work. Once established, what the profession has campaigned for is continued. The work – networked care, based on everyday life solidarity – remains a permanent organisational and mobilisation task (Yoder et al. 1985). The profession takes part. The ecosocial approach positions social work in an ecology of care, on the one hand to embed social work theoretically in the societal care and household of services of general interest and on the other hand to understand social work as work on the conditions of society and the common life within it. Ecologically, the engagement has a certain outreach, depending on how much or how little public opinion values it. In the field of its deployment, social work has its value in the assets of life to which it contributes. This can mean an increase in education, a gain in health, a portion of rehabilitation, a preservation of autonomy, less dependence and more social cohesion. The assets exist for those involved; increasing participation expands social work in the common world. The extension arises in times of climate crisis and a pandemic. They frame the social task in a new sense. To act in that extension is to act in a common situation regardless of whether someone is personally affected. Solidarity is demanded in reference to a common exposure. All people are expected to behave in a certain way; organised care must adapt to this requirement. Places and processes of childcare and schooling adapt to social distancing rules. Elderly care requires special protective measures, which must be observed not only by professional providers but also by younger people in general. Access to services is changing for everyone. The self-care of users and the outreach of the providers are adapting to this. Infrastructurally appropriate ways of dealing with the changed leisure and holiday behaviours need to be prepared. Those are just a few traits of ongoing change. The ecosystem of formal and informal care and their relationship with one another are being transformed. Social work can be integrated into this change to the extent that it is not only understood in a professional function but also as contingency work of many participants. Common care is the term used to describe this general active participation.

References Coxon, Ian Robert. 2017. Care as human Being: Introducing a new field of study and practice. Fusion Journal 12 (2017): 4–20. http://www.fusion-­journal.com/ care-­as-­human-­being-­introducing-­a-­new-­field-­of-­study-­and-­practice/.

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Devine, Edward T. 1906. Efficiency and relief. A programme of social work. New York: Columbia University Press. Dominelli, Lena. 2012. Green social work: From environmental crises to environmental justice. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fisher, Berenice, and Joan Tronto. 1990. Toward a feminist theory of caring. In Circles of Care. Work and Identity in Women’s Lives, ed. Emily K.  Abel and Margaret K.  Nelson, 35–62. Albany: State University of New York Press. Harcourt, Wendy, and Christine Bauhardt. 2018. Introduction. Conversations on care in feminist political economy and ecology. In Feminist Political Ecology and the Economics of Care. In Search for Economic Alternatives, ed. Christine Bauhardt and Wendy Harcourt, 1–15. Abingdon: Routledge. IFSW, International Federation of Social Workers. 2014. Global Definition of the Social Work Profession. Online: ifsw.org/what-is-social-work/global-definition-of-social-work. Kittay, Eva Feder. 1999. Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency. New York: Routledge. Tronto, Joan. 2010. Creating caring institutions. Politics, plurality, and purpose. Ethics and Social Welfare 4 (2): 158–171. Yoder, Jonathan M.L., J.A.  Jonker, and Robert A.B.  Leaper, eds. 1985. Support Networks in a Caring Community. Research and Policy, Fact and Fiction. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.

Chapter 13

Working in Stewardship

Personal and community existence, being in the world, is the object of care. In the family, in the community, in civil society and in the state there are arrangements and structures of care that follow normative models. A guiding principle is equity, a needs-based justice. The requirements must be weighed – in a process of procedural fairness. Equity in care relationships includes a fair allocation of resources and distribution of burdens and benefits among those involved. The norms of a caring regime are not fixed, but are subject to social change. Responsibility is shared with the distribution of care work. The sharing takes place in vertical relationships (between the state and individuals) and in horizontal relationships (at the individual level and at an organisational level). Each side trusts and relies on the other, more or less. Overarching responsibility, co-responsibility and self-responsibility belong together. The one reaches out to the other. Certainly, the relations of care are also relations of power and dependence. They are often imposed, constrained and unjust. Burdened people deserve support and advocacy. How does the helping service appear in the field of deprived circumstances? Which topos or figure of thought can be used to characterise the conduct of the professional in his or her sphere of action? In ecosocial theory, I use the German term Wirt, derived from the ancient oikonomos, to concretely define the responsibility in which people provide for the upkeep of life and thereby stand up for community, for oneself and for others (Wendt 2018, 78 ff.). A Wirt is competent for living correctly in the world. The function of a Wirt is associated with normative expectations. The Wirt is a steward who is motivated to act by his responsibility for common and personal assets. Stewardship seeks to maintain or achieve its expansion. “Stewardship begins with the willingness to be accountable for some larger body than ourselves” (Block 2013, 16). It can be an organisation, a company, a community, or individual life. With the practice of a Wirt or steward, social equity and the well-being of people are nurtured. Social professionals are stewards in the preservation and promotion of welfare. They can notice it whenever they reflect on the contingency of their particular helping action.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 W. R. Wendt, Ecology of Common Care, SpringerBriefs in Social Work, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65699-7_13

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A social professional does not become a steward solely by virtue of his or her goodwill for helping other people. The professional is either a public employee or takes part in freely organised engagement. Hence, his or her welfare-related mission is determined. The professional, operating in service, moves in the ecology of conditions in the community and is concerned with the special conditions of problematic people or groups of people. The competence of a social professional as a steward consists of achieving coping and developmental capabilities for the clientele within this frame of reference. The Wirt, steward, opens up or receives the necessary “wirtliche”, hospitable, space. The term “steward” is used differently in environmental thought and in a broad range of disciplines (Enquist et al. 2018, 17 ff.). Like the ancient oikonomos, a steward as a “housekeeper” takes care of the needs of a household. A steward protects and develops its resources. Stewards are expected to manage economic and social sustainability. Similarly, the figure of the steward has been used socio-ecologically for the care of nature and the environment. In literature, “social and environmental stewardship” is a frequent topos (Svendsen and Campbell 2008; Bennett et  al. 2018). Every day, anyone becomes an environmental steward if he or she avoids plastics as much as possible, drives fewer cars, eats less meat and buys local food. Local environmental stewardship can be defined “as the actions taken by individuals, groups or networks of actors, with various motivations and levels of capacity, to protect, care for or responsibly use the environment in pursuit of environmental and/ or social outcomes in diverse social–ecological contexts” (Bennett et al. 2018, 597). This stewardship is also referred to under the term “civic ecology” (Krasny and Tidball 2015), as “biodiversity stewardship”, “forest stewardship” and “earth stewardship”. “Earth stewardship is the active shaping of trajectories of change in coupled social-ecological systems at local-to-global scales to enhance ecosystem resilience and promote human well-being” (Chapin III et al. 2011, 45). The ecological constitution of an agent, who understands his responsibility from his affiliation, intrinsically motivates him or her to take care of the needs in the area of his or her assignment. The stewardship theory of the governance of a company (Davis et al. 1997) or of serving the public interest (Saltman and Ferroussier-Davis 2000) fits this view. In the field of social work, the client can be regarded as a steward in the use of capabilities. He or she acts in the interest of his or her own well-­ being. The person is responsible for his or her own welfare with his or her conduct of life. The responsibility is shared by his environment. In it the human service also provides a stewardship dedicated to the client. It includes support, advice, guidance, encouragement and other forms of assistance. As a steward, a social worker provides support to refugees in their integration into the host society. As a steward, he or she ensures the participation of disabled people. Or a professional accompanies substance abusers in steps towards weaning them off drugs. Youth workers can be stewards at recreational events, in a youth centre or on a youth farm. Counselling and placement in the workplace can be understood as a stewardship of good employment. At the same time, the service is aimed at the welfare of the community to which both the clients and their professional assistants belong.

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A steward can be expected to act sustainably – in the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainability. To this end, stewardship shall call in parties at every level of their competence. In other words, the individual citizen (client or not) is responsible for his or her household, the suppliers have their own budget and the state manages its social budget. With its dispositions an appropriate stewardship can be exercised in the community and individually. Every person is self-active or is, accompanied by others, socially taken along; there is civic engagement and public infrastructure and supply policies. In their mutual relationship they can hold each other accountable. In their respective fields of action, they can make their contribution to shaping our existence. They use their strengths, means and possibilities. Therefore, “Wirtlichkeit”, a hospitable life quality, occurs and should be maintained.

References Bennett, Nathan J., Tara S.  Whitty, Finkbeiner Elena, J.  Pittman, H.  Bassett, S.  Gelcich, and E.H.  Allison. 2018. Environmental stewardship: A conceptual review and analytical framework. Environmental Management 61 (4): 597–614. Block, Peter. 2013. Stewardship. Choosing Service over Self-Interest. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. Chapin, F. Stuart, III, Steward T.A. Pickett, Mary E. Power, Robert B. Jackson, David M. Carter, and Clifford Duke. 2011. Earth stewardship: a strategy for social-ecological transformation to reverse planetary degradation. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 1: 44–53. Davis, James H., David F. Schoorman, and Lex Donaldson. 1997. Toward a stewardship theory of management. Academy of Management Review 22 (1): 20–47. Enquist, Johan Peçanha, Simon West, Vanessa A. Masterson, L. Jamila Haider, Uno Svedin, and Maria Tengö. 2018. Stewardship as a boundary object for sustainability research: Linking care, knowledge and agency. Landscape and Urban Planning 179 (1): 17–37. Krasny, Marianne E., and Keith G. Tidball. 2015. Civic Ecology: Adaptation and Transformation from the Ground Up. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Saltman, Richard B., and Odile Ferroussier-Davis. 2000. The concept of stewardship in health policy. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 78 (6): 732–739. Svendsen, Erika S., and Lindsay K. Campbell. 2008. Urban ecological stewardship: Understanding the structure, function and management. Urban Ecology 1 (1): 1–32. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2018. Wirtlich handeln in Sozialer Arbeit. Die ökosoziale Theorie in Revision. Barbara Budrich: Opladen.

Chapter 14

Conclusion

In the self-contained, pre-modern household, the management of a smart oikonomos meets the requirements of living together. Without ecological awareness, nature was included. In modern times we are all “released” into open living conditions and dependent on social deliberation. With the progress of economic development, we have run into crises in society and in the natural environment. Ecological enlightenment (Beck 1995) is the way to reconnect and to re-embed the moments in the household of communal and individual life that have become independent in the segments of modernisation. In the sphere of social welfare efforts, it is economic, political, socio-cultural and ethical moments that come together in the landscape of human service and shared care. Ecologically prepared, we can strive for a social practice that meets the conditions and the possibilities of welfare in a versatile connection. The ecotheory of the “social” places it in the local and temporal reference space of the various actors, their interests and ambitions, their means and possibilities, and orientates them towards sustainability. The striving for justice in overcoming backwardness, exploitation and oppression belongs to it. With an endeavour focused on the future, welfare requires sustainability. Social work is directed towards sustainable welfare in the details of problem-solving, which is entrusted to the profession in personal service and in community projects. Committed to welfare, social work, in the discourse of its profession and science, does not stop at the functions officially assigned to it, but reaches out to the pursuit of welfare in common life. The ecosocial approach draws a wide circle around individual services and work on individual social problems in the space of living together and in the politics and economy of a welfare regime. Ecologically, social work and human services are embedded in the household of widespread caring for the well-being of people and for the common life in our world. This caring includes concern for health, food, housing, work, culture, protection and security, the preservation of diversity, and the development of personal and community life. All this occurs in small and large households, which contain the conditions of existence in the world. Adequate social

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14 Conclusion

acting, treatment of problems, support and promotion consist of dispositions about the means and possibilities in households and in the transaction between them. Householding, in its repercussions on the existence, livelihood and liveability of all stakeholders, even the most remote ones, is seen as the key to social equity and justice and as an obligation for those involved. The theoretical claim is not to justify one social service or another. It is directed towards the design of care in relation to individuals, in relation to institutional structures and in relation to the state of the common world. In it, the entangled living conditions and circumstances of existence matter. Their multi-perspective consideration brings together social, economic, political and ethical aspects. They must be dealt with in their relationship with each other. The panoramic view of the theory is already necessary because the visibility of the practitioner in his or her everyday tasks is usually limited. Each profession belonging to the ecosystem and working within the space of common care has its own specific competence. It must be further developed in the direction of welfare and sustainability. The ecosocial approach illuminates the proximate and wider landscapes of care and concern with a reconstructive intention and for the purposes of being appropriately and fruitfully active in them. The approach is expandable in the ecological discourse in general and in the specialist discourses of social policy, social work and human services, and civil participation in the arrangements of caring. We cannot offer a finished theory, but instead a progressively probing one.

Reference Beck, Ulrich. 1995. Ecological Enlightenment. Essays on the Politics of the Risk Society. London: Humanities Press.

Index

A Action theory, 8 Active networking, 44 Anthropocene, 59 At-homeness, 56 B Biodiversity stewardship, 70 Biology, 4 C Care, 2, 65, 66, 74 Care citizenship, 65 Care ecology, 43 Care economy, 2 Care management, 44 Carescape, 43, 44 Care services, 51 Caring, 2, 43, 65 Caring community, 66 Caring regime, 69 Caringscapes, 43, 44 Caring work, 65 Civic housekeeping, 52 Civil society, 69 Client’s ecosystem, 13 Climate change, 60 Climate crisis, 59 Common care, 2, 4, 18, 46, 63, 64, 66, 74 Commoning, 61 Community housekeeping, 52 COVID-19, 46, 60

D Digital infrastructure, 61 Digital media, 43 Domestic economy, 36 Domestic science, 12 Dwelling place, 55, 56 E Earth stewardship, 70 Ecological caring, 43 Ecological life, 4 Ecological rationality, 56 Ecological responsibility, 59 Ecological sustainability, 46 Ecological thinking, 2, 12, 36, 47, 59 Ecology care, 2 classification, 14 client functions, 13 definition, 11 economy, 12 environmental science, 1 household, 11 human life, 4 life model, 12 personal, 14 science, 1 situatedness (see Situatedness) social, 1 society, 1 sustainable ecology, 14 Ecology of mind, 12

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 W. R. Wendt, Ecology of Common Care, SpringerBriefs in Social Work, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65699-7

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Index

76 Ecology of personal life capabilities, 43 caringscapes, 43, 44 case management, 43 coping behaviour vs. support, 43 ecological caring, 43 ecological niche, 43 niche, 42 participation, 42 self-conception, 42 social niche, 43 social support, 43 Economic capital, 45 Economic sustainability, 46 Economy, 11, 12 Economy of nature, 11 Ecosocial approach care, 74 common care, 18 development, 9 evolution, 9 household, 3 human services, 2, 8 insiderness, 8 living together, 73 multilevel theory, 19 oikos model, 18 participation, 8 social practice, 11 social work, 1–3, 7, 8, 11, 18, 34 welfare, 2 welfare-oriented action, 8 Ecosocial theory, 7, 8, 19, 32, 34, 36 Ecosocial thinking, 7 Ecosocial work, 35 Ecosystem, 17, 37, 44, 46 Ecosystem of care, 66 Ecosystem of value-creation, 61 Educational services, 50 Elderly care, 66 Employment, 50 Environmental changes, 34 Environmental ecology, 34 Environmentalism climate crisis, 34 ecological thinking, 36 political body, 37 political ecology, 35 social ecology, 34 social work, 34, 35 Environmental justice, 33, 35 Environmental social work, 34 Environmental steward, 70 Equity, 69

Ethos care, 56 dwelling, 55 dwelling place, 55, 56 habitation, 57 home, 56 social work, 57 F Forest stewardship, 70 G Green social work, 36 H Habitat, 33, 34 Habitation, 57 Health action, 3 Healthcare sector, 49 Healthcare system, 3 Health systems, 3 Home as ethos, 56 Homes, 56 Home treatment, 50 Household, 4, 11, 18 activities, 21 belonging and membership, 23 business activities, 27 co-resident domestic group, 23 ecological enlightenment, 73 economic processes, 26 ecosocial approach, 22 family, 29 family life, 21 home, 23 human society, 21 individual, 22, 31 institutional, 30 internal spaces, 22 living together, 57 members, 29 oikos, 22–24 oikoumene, 23 personal conduct, 50 personalised social services, 27 physical, 23 political community, 46 politics, 30 public and private, 30 private/personal, 22 resources, 24–26

Index social, 23 social practice, 22 social work, 31 socioeconomic unit, 30 welfare-related activities, 31 Householders citizens, 27 domestic life, 26 healthcare system, 25 householding, 25, 26 managers, 26 pandemic, 27 social work, 27 Householding, 60, 61, 74 assets, 21 businesses, 29 definition, 21 domestic activities, 29 domestic life, 26 ecology of care, 21 economy, 23 enterprises, 29 interdependence, 29 maintenance, 23 oikonomia, 23 practice, 31 prepare a home, 26 process, 26 social connections, 25–26 social economy, 30 social policy, 47 Household of caring, 73 Housekeeper, 36, 70 Housekeeping, 60 Housing conditions, 47, 50 Human being, 59 Human community, 13 Human dwelling, 56 Human ecology, 12, 32 Human resources, 50 Human service organisations, 44 Human services, 1–4, 8, 18, 22, 27, 31, 36, 47, 63, 65, 73 shared responsibility, 50 structured system, 49 welfare regime, 52 well-being, 52 Hyperindividualism, 49 I Individual households, 31 Insiderness, 55 Institutional households, 30 Intensive family preservation programme, 50

77 L Landscape, 43 Life model, 12 Liveability, 8, 63, 74 Livelihoods, 60, 74 Living conditions, 73, 74 Local environmental stewardship, 70 M Market economy, 46 Membership perspective of social work, 29 Metatheory, 37 Money-making, 23 Moral ecology, 56 Multi-dimensional nature of care, 65 Multilevel theory, 19 macro level (see Political decision-making process, macro level) meso level (see Networks) micro level (see Ecology of personal life) oikonomia, 41 oikos, 41 social, 41 N Needs, 25 Networks active networking, 44 actors, 44 care management, 44 economic capital, 45 ecosystem, 44 human service organisations, 44 human services, 44 meso level, 44 self-management, 44 social, 45 social capital, 45 social economy, 45 social household, 45 social organisations, 44 social work, 44 welfare organisations, 45 O Occupational therapy, 50 Oecology, 12 Oikonomia, 23 Oikonomos, 60, 69, 73 Oikos, 18, 22–24, 41, 59 Oikoumene, 23, 41

78 P Personal ecology, 14 Personal households, 51, 60 Personalised social services, 52 Personal social services, 50 Personal welfare, 47 Person-in-environment, 13, 34 Political body, 37 Political decision-making process, macro level civil society, 46 costs, 46 COVID-19, 46 demographic regime, 46 ecological sustainability, 46 ecological thinking, 47 ecosystem, 46 government action, 46 household, 46, 47 human services, 47 personal welfare, 47 population, 46 social economy, 46 social expression, 47 social infrastructure policy, 47 social provision processes, 46 sustainable welfare, 46 welfare regime, 46 Political ecology, 35, 36 Political economy, 35, 36 Politics, 47 Practices of care, 65 Private households, 30 Professional care, 56 Professional social work, 66 Public health, 34 Public households, 30 Public welfare, 8 Pursuit of welfare, 73 R Resource requirements, 25 Resources, 24, 25 Responsibility, 33, 49, 69, 70 S Situatedness, 17, 55, 56 clients/patients, 19 common care, 18 ecosocial theory, 19 ecosystem, 17 household, 18 human services, 17, 18 social services, 18 social work, 17

Index spatio-temporal contingency, human life, 17 Social, 13, 41, 51 Social action, 59, 61 Social actors, 7 Social affairs, 22 Social and environmental stewardship, 70 Social budget, 46 Social capital, 45 Social care, 2, 7 Social conditions, 4, 9, 27 Social context, 25 Social–ecological approaches, 34 Social–ecological theorems, 1 Social ecology, 34 Social economy, 30, 45, 46, 52, 61, 65 Social equity, 69 Social household, 45 Social life, 7 Social networks, 45 Social organisations, 44 Social organism, 32 Social practice, 11 Social problems, 51 Social profession, 52, 56, 66 Social professional, 70 Social protection, 45, 50 Social provision processes, 46 Social security, 45, 50 Social service action, 51 Social services, 18, 52 Social space, 51 Social support, 43, 49 Social sustainability, 34, 35, 60 Social tasks, 63 Social welfare, 8, 73 Social well-being, 50 Social work, 1–3, 7, 8 access to services, 66 care, 52, 65, 66 climate crisis, 66 common care, 66 community, 18 community development, 64 ecological thinking, 12 ecological transformation, 63 ecosocial approach, 34 ecosocial theory, 19 environmental justice, 33 life model, 12 liveability, 63 material and cultural wellbeing, 35 metatheory, 37 milieus, 11 pandemic, 66 person-in-environment, 13, 34

Index political decision-making process, 46 practice, 17 practice-based profession, 64 practices of care, 65 professional, 66 professionalisation, 63 roles, 13 situational settings, 17 social conditions, 27 social economy, 27, 65 social problems, 51 socioeconomic framework, 52 solidarity, 51, 66 supporting lifelong learning, 51 sustainability, 63, 65 sustainable welfare, 73 Societal transformation process, 59 Society, 65 Solidarity, 51, 66 Solidary-based economic activity, 61 Stewardship caring regime, 69 civic ecology, 70 community, 71 Earth, 70 economic and social sustainability, 70 equity, 69 housekeeper, 70 responsibility, 69, 70 social professionals, 69, 70

79 social work, 70 sustainability, 71 welfare-related mission, 70 Wirt, 69 Supporting lifelong learning, 51 Sustainability, 65, 73 Sustainable ecology, 14 Sustainable social work, 65 Sustainable welfare, 46, 73 T Transprofessionals, 31, 32 V Volunteering, 45 W Way of life, 55 Welfare, 8, 25, 56 Welfare organisations, 45 Welfare-oriented action, 8 Welfare regime, 49, 52 Welfare services, 4 Well-being, 8 Wirt, 69 Workforce development, 50 World Health Organization, 3