Stephen A. Webb is Professor of Social Work at Glasgow Caledonian University. His research interests focus on social work and social theory, with a focus on ethics, power, politics and community. His article on evidence-based practice published in the British Journal of Social Work was the world's most cited article and the most influential publication in social work over ten years. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

The Routledge Handbook of Critical Social Work brings together the world's leading scholars in the field to provide a cutting-edge overview of classic and current research and future trends in the subject.
Comprised of 48 chapters divided into six parts:
Historical, social, and political influences
Mapping the theoretical and conceptual terrain
Methods of engagement and modes of analysis
Critical contexts for practice and policy
Professional education and socialisation
Future challenges, directions, and transformations
it provides an authoritative guide to theory and method, and the primary debates of today in social work from a critical perspective.
This handbook is a major reference work and the first book to comprehensively map the wide-ranging territory of critical social work. It does so by addressing its conceptual developments, its methodological advances, its value-based front-line practice and as an influence on the policy field. By offering a definitive survey of current academic knowledge as it relates to professional practice, it provides the first comprehensive, up-to-date, definitive work of reference while at the same time identifying emerging, innovative and cutting-edge areas.

List of contributors; Foreword: Critical social work and social justice - Jan Fook; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Critical social work and the politics of transformation - Stephen A. Webb; PART I: Historical, social and political influences; Chapter One Welfare words, neoliberalism and critical social work - Paul Michael Garrett; Chapter Two Neoliberal relations of poverty and the welfare state - Sanford F. Shram; Chapter Three Marxist Social Work: an international and historical perspective - Tom Vickers; Chapter Four Critical social work in the U.S.: challenges and conflicts - Michael Reisch; Chapter Five The rise of the global state paradigm: implications for social work - Paul Stepney; PART II: Mapping the theoretical and conceptual terrain; Chapter Six Critical theory and critical social work- Edward Granter; Chapter Seven Reimagining social theory for social work - Christopher Thorpe; Chapter Eight Anarchism and social work - Mark Baldwin; Chapter Nine Relational constructivism and relational social work - Björn Kraus; Chapter Ten Extending Bourdieu for critical social work - Stan Houston; Chapter Eleven Why psychosocial thinking is critical - Liz Frost; Chapter Twelve Feminist contributions to critical social work - Viviene E. Cree and Ruth Philips; Chapter Thirteen The politics of Michel Foucault - Paul Michael Garrett; Chapter Fourteen Resistance, biopolitics and radical passivity - Stephen A. Webb; PART III: Methods of engagement and modes of analysis; Chapter Fifteen Critical race theory and social work - Monique Constance-Huggins; /...part contents.