Social Professional Activity: The Search for a Minimum Common Denominator in Difference

There is an ongoing debate on the question if professional activities in the field of the social do actually have a genuinely ‘own’ scientific basis or if their academic standing depends entirely on other disciplines as sociology, economics, administration or law. The present book offers an answer - by actually twisting the question into another direction: the question for the common denominator should not be employed by looking for the original disciplinary basis. Instead, it is more important to look at a common point of reference towards which activities - and research - can be geared. The editors propose human rights as such reference and make in their own introductory contribution clear that any contemplation on such rights cannot be limited on abstract moral and normative questions nor can it be left to the arbitrariness of cultural relativism. It is proposed to develop a systematic approach, not starting from a translation of abstract principles into their application in concrete situations. On the contrary, the concrete human practice and its analysis has to be taken as focal point. Some of the contributions directly take this topic up as matter by way of engaging in a general methodological discussion whereas other contributions deal with specific aspects of a field of social professions, showing the necessary variety of the pieces of a jigsaw on its own. The volume motivates students, scholars and professionals researching and working in the social array to think outside their ancestral box, focussing on sound and reasoned values rather than allowing abstract professional standards to take over.