by Pranab Chatterjee
Professor
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland, Ohio 44106
As the 21 st Century begins, is it possible to spell out the visions for the profession of
social work? Does this vision vary , depending on geo-political location, or are these visions
universal?
We begin this essay with the statement that the vision of social work is universal, and does not
depend on its geo-political location. Thus, the vision of social work, whether it finds itself in a
capitalist fIrst world country like the United States or in a newly industrializing third world
country like India, remains the same: the vision ofa civil society. The programmatic means to this
end, however, may vary.
What Is a Civil Society
There are many visions of what is a civil society, or what it can be. The visions of the social
contract theorists, like Hobbes
1 and Locke,
2 envisioned a civil society where there is safety in numbers. That is, being a part of
a larger group creates a safety net of a social contract. Attached with this social contract is a
price tag, and this price tag means surrendering either equality or liberty, or both. The vision of
Hume
3 saw a civil society where the price tag was surrendering benevolence. In Rousseau4 it
was the surrender of happiness, and in Marx
5 it was the surrender of ownership of means of production in capitalist hands. In
Montesquieu
6 it was the presence of a locally developed legal infrastructure, and in Mil1
7 it was a form of governance by the majority with provisions for protection ofminority
groups.
At the psychological level, Freud
8 saw a civil society as an individual's suppression of id impulses, acceptance of
rationality and, in turn, of morality. At the social level, Weber
9 saw this as transformation of traditional authority to rational authority.
. . . please contact Pranab Chatterjee (pxc6@case.edu) for information on obtaining the rest of the
document.
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