Social Work and the Environment

Michael Kim Zapf is a Professor Emeritus of Social Work with the University of Calgary. Building on his early practice years in the Yukon Territory and three decades in academia, his research and writing have focused on social work practice and education in rural, remote, and Aboriginal communities.

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction: The Environment, Social Work, and Ecological ThinkingThe Environmental Imperative and Social WorkAuthor and VoiceOrganization of the BookThinking EcologicallyChapter One: Smoke and Mirrors: How the Environment Became the Social EnvironmentThe Effect: Personal Observations of the Vanished EnvironmentBeginnings: Lighting the MatchThe 1980s and 1990s: Still Smokin'The 2000s: Illusion ReaffirmedVariations on the IllusionChapter Two: False Starts and Sputterings: Partial Efforts to Include the Physical EnvironmentThe Physical Environment as Window DressingThe Physical Environment Limited to Agency or Client EnvironsDiagrams and the Disappearing Physical EnvironmentAssessment and the Absent Physical EnvironmentCase Studies: Physical Environment as a Rurual ConsiderationEnvironmentalist or Social Worker?Chapter Three: Clearing Space in the Conceptual Brambles: Incorporating the Physical EnvironmentBeginningsMid-1990s ForumEnvironment as CentralPlace and Space in Social WorkChapter Four: Rural/Remote Social Work: Environmental Context and PlaceRurality and Rural Social WorkDivergent Paths for Rural Social WorkA Personal Example from the Northern Canadian ContextRemote PracticeA Sense of PlaceChapter Five: Environment as Sacred: Spirituality, Deep Ecology, and Aboriginal PerspectivesSpirituality and Social WorkSpirituality and the Environment: Smoke and Mirrors Again?Spiritual Interventions and the EnvironmentDeep EcologyAboriginal Social Work: Traditional Knowledge, the Land, and IdentityChapter Six: International Social Work: Environment, Devleopment, and SustainabilityInternational Social Work and Global Environmental CitizenshipDevelopment and the EnvironmentInternational Voices for Sustainable DevelopmentInternational Social Work Organizations: Glimpses of the EnvironmentChapter Seven: Perspectives from Other Disciplines: The Environment and a Sense of PlacePainting: Encounters with LandscapeFilm: Telling a PlaceMusic: Soundscapes and Expressions of LocalityViticulture: Terroir and Place ValueSociology: Habitus and Embodied Sense of PlacePsychology: Environments, Place, and BehaviourEnvironmental Design: Placemaking and Positive SpaceGeography: Earthkeeping and Places that MatterEducation: Wayfinding and Living Well in PlaceSummary: Place, Sustainability, and Multidisciplinary EffortsChapter Eight: Language and Disfluency: Expressing the Environment in Social WorkVisual Cues: Punctuation and CapitalizationLanguage and LimitationsPrepositions and PropositionsDisfluency and Environmental DiscourseChapter Nine: People as PlaceReclaiming the Environment: Recognizing Place and StewardshipModels and Metaphors: Retiring ""Person-in-Environment""Social Purpose: Living Well in PlaceImplicationsReferences

This is a paradigm-breaking book that overturns a foundational metaphor and confronts the boundaries of dualistic thinking, thereby enabling social work to engage in the significant social/environmental issues facing the planet today. Building from Zapf's rethinking of the importance of 'place' in social work theory and practice, the profession can break from the constraints of tradition and finally move forward to respond effectively to the pressing issues of environmental destruction, sustainability, and spirituality."" - John Coates, Department of Social Work, St. Thomas University, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada