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Journal article
A systematic literature review of love and social work: Towards a love informed anti-oppressive ethical positionality
The British Journal of Social Work, Vol.56(1), pp.6-25
2026
Appears in UniSC Supported Open Access Outputs
Abstract
Social work is premised on the key values of social justice, respect, and professional integrity. Social justice is crucial for anti-oppressive practice because it draws attention to issues of inequality and violence in peoples' lives and in professional contexts. There is an absence of love as a key value, as well as a relative lack of discourse about love in social work. This was recognized by Morley and Ife (2002) when they argued that a love of humanity needs to inform social work. A systematic literature review is undertaken on social work scholars' understanding of love and social work with the aim of building on current understandings to make love relevant for anti-oppressive practice. The review led the authors to believe that love as an ethic and a set of socio-political practices is directly relevant for social work. An insight arising from the review is that love needs linking with nonviolence and social justice (including species and environmental justice) to enable an ethical stance for anti-oppressive social work.
A literature search is conducted to explore what social workers think about love and how they use it in their practice. There was a forming agreement that love has a place in social work when considered as a set of caring actions for others, with the aim of ensuring social wellbeing and justice. Challenges related to unconducive political contexts and social workers needing to maintain their professional boundaries while showing love to service users.
Details
- Title
- A systematic literature review of love and social work: Towards a love informed anti-oppressive ethical positionality
- Authors
- Dyann Ross (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Law and SocietyDilip Karki - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Law and Society
- Publication details
- The British Journal of Social Work, Vol.56(1), pp.6-25
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Date published
- 2026
- DOI
- 10.1093/bjsw/bcaf113
- ISSN
- 1468-263X; 0045-3102
- Copyright note
- © The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Association of Social Workers. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial reproduction and distribution of the work, in any medium, provided the original work is not altered or transformed in any way, and that the work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site—for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com.
- Grant note
- A $2,000 (AUS) School of Law and Society, University of the Sunshine Coast research grant was used to undertake the systematic literature review.
- Organisation Unit
- School of Law and Society
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991144237202621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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