SOCIAL WORK AND SUSTAINABLE LOCAL DEVELOPMENT IN ITALY: TOWARDS ECOSOCIAL WORK? (ECOSOW)

RESEARCH AIMS AND BACKGROUND The central aim of the project is to empirically investigate the involvement and role of social work in practices of sustainable local development in the Italian context in order to understand how social work can contribute to ecosocial innovation and to connecting social, economic and ecological sustainability on the local scale. In the Italian social work debate questions of sustainable development and ecosocial approaches have hardly been addressed so far. At the same time, the Italian context increasingly shows innovative experiences and community-based bottom up approaches to sustainable local development in which social and community workers are involved as actors, network partners and promoters of ecosocial innovations intersecting the different dimensions of sustainability in local communities and contexts. By exploring these experiences the project will provide empirical accounts of emerging practices and patterns of ecosocial work and contribute to a better understanding of social work in contexts of sustainable local development. METHODOLOGY The research project will be based on a multiple case study approach suitable to study innovative practices from below and in real life contexts. The case studies will analyse a set of carefully selected cases and provide concrete, contextual, in-depth knowledge about social work as being practically involved in sustainable local development. Selected cases will be studied focussing on different analytical dimensions (actors and networks, community involvement and participation, spaces and effective strategies, professional competence). The case studies will gather qualitative data using different methods such as the analysis of primary and secondary document sources, qualitative interviews, focus groups and participant observation. Based on the analysis of innovative practices, empirical accounts and conceptual frameworks of ecosocial work will be elaborated. These findings will be presented and discussed with the wider professional and scientific social work community in Italy in order to collect additional material about social workers’ reactions and debates regarding the profession’s place and contribution to sustainable local development and ecosocial innovation. EXPECTED OUTCOMES The project is expected to make an important contribution to pointing out how social work can be involved in sustainable local development and in promoting ecosocial innovation. This way the project will fill a void in the Italian social work debate taking up discussions on ecosocial approaches in social work and empirically grounding them in innovative experiences of sustainable local development within the Italian context. The findings will be interesting also to those engaged in processes of sustainable local development and to the wider debate on sustainable local development as a necessarily collaborative and networked endeavour.