The ethics as the regulator of the processes of action of professional Social Work

Abstract

This article presents a consideration on the Ethics as the regulator component of professional processes within the contemporary Social Work practice, in the context of the professional work confronted with the social and politic conflict, and dissociated from the traditional moral or religious values: the Ethics being the constituent element of the current societies, provoking the configuration of new sociocultural ethos. When the binding conditions that connect the Social Work with the classical ideal of the "good practitioner" (or the virtuous professional whose attitudes are led by external rules and moral -altruistic or charitable- values, and has a missionary character) are cracked or get blurred, another ethics gains strength: the argumentative ethics, ruled by reason located in the uncertainty field whose conditions of existence and possibility are related to a certain time and space, therefore, this Ethics is historical and social. The new Ethics emerges as a collective bet that orientates and enables the profession to represent the general interest and contribute to the democratization of social life, in such a way that the concrete stages of the professional work universe become the room where citizenship can reassert itself and the public sphere is defended. The debate on the ethical dilemmas regarding the Social Work processes is supported -as well- by the consideration about the current pertinence of the profession and its projection in the future, within the framework of social responsibility aiming towards the critical analysis of the impacts that knowledge and action processes generate.