Evil's Place in the Ethics of Social Work

Face-to-Face: Social Work and Evil

“…This scenario was replicated elsewhere, in the removal of aboriginal children in Australia (Hugman 2013) and Romany children in Europe (Hugaas 2010). The degree of culpability accruing to social workers in liberal democracies is greater than that of social workers in totalitarian regimes since in the former there is leeway to challenge and change state policies without sacrificing life or livelihood.…”

“…Failure to respect this asymmetry enables evil-qua-atrocity to slide into evil-qua-immorality (Hugaas 2010) or to encompass the omissions of bystanders paralysed by the evil of others (Vetlesen 2005). Evil remains a valid and valuable notion for atrocities -we cannot extirpate the reality of evil by jettisoning the word which describes it (Formosa 2008), and it is ironical that efforts to 'unname' evil have coincided with an era which has unleashed the greatest evils (Adams & Balfour 1998 p. xi).…”

“…Here it is explored as a secular phenomenon denoting the grave harms which are inflicted by and upon individuals and groups, having been stirred in a cauldron of socio-emotional deficits, socio-economic deprivation or socio-political duress. A renaissance of evil can also be discerned in discourses about public sector management (Adams & Balfour 1998) and the work of caring professionals in health (Austin 2011), psychotherapy (Goldberg 1996;Means & Nelson 2000) and social work (Blackstock 2009;Hugaas 2010;Preston-Shoot 2011). Although psychotherapists address the concept of evil with reference to clients who may be construed as perpetrators or victims of evil, elsewhere the focus is on evils committed by caring professionals in the public sector.…”