한국 사회복지학의 정체성 : 역사적 특수성과 가능성을 중심으로 = The Identity of Social Welfare Studies in Korea

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper explores the identity of social welfare studies in Korea, that are now being taught in more than 60 colleges and universities mainly at the undergraduate level. The points are made from a comparative historical perspective, that social welfare studies in Korea is unique in its scope and breadth of concern it covers as well as in the socio-political status of the leading academicians with social welfare background as compared with cases in the U.S., U.K., Japan, and Germany.
Social welfare studies in Korea incorporates not only thee professional model of American social work, but also the notion of German social policy and British social administration. Japan is the case where social policy and social work are completely separate with little communication. And unlike the case of the U.S., the U.K. and Japan, not to mention Germany, all the major leading universities in Korea have the department of social welfare and usually have academic Ph.D. programs. In terms of the higher education administration, social welfare studies in Korea is structured as a part of main stram social science studies, which is not the case where social work is educated at the professional schools, if not the vocational schools.
Despite of these relatively favorable features of social welfare studies in Korea, however, it is quite weak as an independent and coherent academic discipline. Four issues of disciplinary identity have been taken: 1) independence versus interdependence from and with other related disciplines; 2) internal consistency as a systematic body of knowledge, for instance between clinical social work and policy analysis; 3) relevance of theory and practice, balance between science and art; 4) the issue of cultural indigenousness and generality versus specificity.