The History of Macro Practice?

Hello again everyone! Hope you're all still with me after watching that horribly awkward video below. But if you are welcome to blog post #3! I'm going to try to briefly as possible discuss the history of macro practice. Following the basic guidelines of: Who? What? Where? When? Why? I hope to give you a better historical understanding of macro practice itself.

So let's start from the beginning of: WHO?

Well, a lot of us say that it's hard to pin point the start of social work because people have been helping others for as long as we can remember. But in my perspective it was one woman who decided to look at social work on a community basis and work not just with individuals but an oppressed population of people, that woman? Jane Addams. Often referred to as the mother of social work, Addams was the first one to deal with community organizing. Jane is most recognized for her work in Chicago in poor neighborhoods. She noticed a problem of living situations being ignored by the people of Chicago and a large population of people suffering on the street and formed a plan to help organize and take care of people. But her duties were on a larger community wide scale ... she was made chairman of organizations while still communicating the needs of her Hull-House. I believe she first started macro practice but she worked out how to communicate the needs of an oppressed population, working on the larger scale with organizations while maintaining her bond with the community.

But while looking at the WHO .. you can also look at the oppressed populations because it is them who started macro practice. These communities of people who required help are really the ones who started macro.

On to the next one: WHAT?

Macro practice of course, duh!
This video shows a brief history of macro social work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgt_URMYhds

But really ... let's get into the WHERE?

This one is hard to answer because honestly if you ask where did macro practice start? EVERYWHERE! But if we could pinpoint some specific places that macro practice was born some articles suggest Columbia University which was the first place to offer classes in social work in 1898. These first teachings and ideas of what social work is as a whole, contributed to the start of macro practice and social work itself.
But there are many places where macro social work started itself, where people began advocating for groups of people who needed help:
Such as the woman's rights movement can be traced back as one of the earliest examples of macro social work in history. Women got together, organized protests, conferences and events to raise awareness and advocate for the oppressed population of woman with no rights! How amazing is that? An organization made a plan and found a way to help improve the population of an oppressed population. Sounds like amazing macro practice to me!

okay so, WHEN?

One academic article points the when to around the great depression. Although macro has always been a part of social work is wasn't more commonly recognized until the issues that were brought on by the great depression. For example, the Great Depression introduced the concept that society is now responsible for the well being of the individual. This introduced a new world of social workers that were responsible for things like: welfare, social security and workers compensation. These groups of people and different types of social work introduced the real meaning on macro practice. The G.D. changed social work and macro work onto a much larger, community based scale but also with a lot of community organizing for the oppressed and even the not-so oppressed.


now WHY do we ask?

Simply because the new era demanded for it. As our society developed and adapted to newer technology, demands and problems social workers had to do the same. After the great depression our society was demanding for more work in the communities and with organizing efforts to help oppressed populations. Especially with the recognition of ageism, sexism and racism becoming a precedent in the culture of society. As talked about when reading Sen, as this issues were becoming in the forefront of society, social work had to adapt to support the cultural biases and use leadership skills that would help the people affect by negative policies. The bottom line is, because our society was changing, and oppressing more groups, social work had to change to a wider scale view of communities and help as best as possible.


This is just my little broken up interpretation if some of the scattered history of macro work and how it came to be the values we as social workers value today!

Barker, Robert L. (1998) Milestones in the Development of Social Work and Social Welfare Washington, DC NASW Pres

Eisenberg, B. (1998). History of the movement. Retrieved from http://www.legacy98.org/move-hist.html

"Jane Addams - Biography". Nobelprize.org. 7 Feb 2012 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1931/addams-bio.html

Schoech, D. (2005). Historical development of macro practice. Unpublished raw data, University of Texas, Arlington, Texas. Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/viewera=v&q=cache:PTD0aK09QekJ:wweb.uta.edu/faculty/schoech/cussn/courses/5306/Powerpoint/5306_history_S2005.ppt

Stryaert, J. (2009). History of social work: overview. Retrieved from http://www.historyofsocialwork.org/en/canon.php