CULTURE, THEORY, AND NARRATIVE - THE INTERSECTION OF MEANINGS IN PRACTICE

Two essential characteristics of the human condition important for social work practitioners to remember are (1) human beings build themselves into the world by creating meaning, and (2) culture gives meaning to action by situating underlying states in an interpretive system. Practice is an intersection where the meanings of the worker (theories), the client (stories and narratives), and culture (myths, rituals, and themes) meet. Social workers must open themselves up to clients' constructions of their individual and collective worlds. The major vehicles for this are stories, narratives, and myths. Acknowledging and helping to refurbish them does not doom social workers to psychologizing what are, in part, social and political problems. Social workers can assist in the ''insurrection'' of subjugated meanings and help get them into the agency, school, hospital, commission, institution, community, and profession through externalization. Such an approach to practice helps clients edge into the larger and often oppressive world, strengthens the self, and emboldens the folklore of the group.