HEORIES OF SOCIAL ACTION AND SOCIAL WORK INTERVENTION STRATEGIES

In this work, Genaro Zalpa recovers the importance of the conception of the nature of human beings and their social life as central perspectives in the understanding of the history of social work as a contemporary discipline and to delineate the practices of intervention on social problems.
The author investigates the Chicago School, analyzing the relationships between the theory and the intervention practices of the residents of the Hull House, founded by Jane Addams -recognized pioneer of the professionalization of social work in North America-, and at the same time, he presents a critical review of several contemporary social theories: Marxism and systems theories (but without addressing the Frankfurt School or the Foucauldian perspective), the sociological theory of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, the structural functionalist theory of Talcott Parsons, the sociological phenomenological exposition of Schütz, Berger and Luckmann, better known as social constructionism, and the social thought of Bourdieu. Zalpa outlines an unpublished social theory based on the concept of strategies as an essential component of the theory of action, in such a way that intervention strategies are not a derivative of the theory of social action, but are conceived as one of its essential components.
Genaro Zalpa's critical and propositional treatment is always threaded from three dimensions: concepts and categories of analysis, strategic perspective of social intervention and problematization of the theoretical, methodical and scientific view for Social Work professionals.
Leticia Cano Soriano
Director of the National School of Social Work UNAM