Abstract
The word 'social' in social work practice seems to show what social workers should do, and the uniqueness of social work practice. The purpose of this paper is to explore the meaning of 'social' in social work practice, throughout the examination of perspective on practice. A unifying perspective would help to bind together social workers who are doing various things and to strengthen practitioners' identitity as social workers. For this purpose, this study focused on ecological thinking that influenced perspective on social work practice in the 1960s〜70s. First, this paper look back on Richmond's and Reynolds' views, and reconsider the purpose of social work practice. Socond, it make clear what ecological thinking gave to perspective on social work practice. Third, it examines about perspective for human life, throughout considering how to grasp of the relation between individual and society, and the concept of handicap. With these discussion, this paper suggests that 'social' means the relatedness between oneself and others on the client, and the purpose of social work practice is to encourage reconstruction and development of them.
