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14 Int'l Soc. Work 1 (1971)

handle is hein.journals/intsocwk14 and id is 1 raw text is: EDITORIAL AN international journal of this size is confronted with a problem: such large and varied world to represent, so many aspects to cover, (and so few pages). How can we understand the problems of social work training in any country without considerable knowledge of its social ser- vices? How can we understand its welfare, problems without knowledge of its economic situation? Every contributor has this pro- blem of the vast background required for the appreciation of the subject in his fore- ground. Kenneth Borelli provides a useful model for the solution of these issues. He presents his account of the social welfare provision in five Central American countries in the con- text of a sophisticated discussion of social security planning priorities in an area with very limited resources and severe social pro- blems, and with due regard to socio-economic factors, ethnic heterogeneity and political structure. We are indebted to him for his masterly digest of a vast amount of factual information concerning the countries in ques- tion, which helps us to understand their poli- cies and the limitations of the provision they have so far been able to make; and for his radical suggestions for co-operative planning and implementations of social security. It seems appropriate to include in the same issue Abraham Monk's fascinating, though depressing, paper on an abortive project of community consultation in another South American country, Argentina. He brings into sharp focus the crucial problems at the heart of community work : What do we mean by community? Who is the client? For Professor Monk, the community was the local population of Rio Turbio, and his client was an exogenous factor, a Minister of the Federal Government, who had complete formal control of the community in question. The problem for this client was the unor- ganized, passive, functional resistance, in terms of labour turnover and low produc- tivity, which eluded his control and marked the limits of his formidable power. No doubt the Minister also considered himself a repre- sentative of the community - the popu- lation of Argentina as a whole; whereas his consultant, as a practitioner of community work, felt a greater loyalty to the local employees. These were for him not only the community, but also his natural client - hence the construct client-object - for whom the problem was the tyranny of the client-subject. This tangle of human meanings reminds us, if we need reminding, that social work, specially in the community ReId, cannot hope to ignore political situations, or to maintain a neutral stance towards them. The client-subject had safeguarded his posi- tion by confining his consultants to a purely diagnostic and advisory function. Even had there been no revolution, it is doubtful whether, in a situation of such acute con- flict of interests and unequal distribution of power, the recommendation for radical changes of policy and practice, jointly for- mulated by management, consultants and workers (with built-in safeguards to ensure ample community participation) would ever have got beyond the nearest pigeon-hole,

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