Does Social Work Ignore Socio-economic Class? An Exploratory Analysis of Selected Literature

ABSTRACT Social work espouses a commitment to social justice, including advocating on behalf of economically disenfranchised populations. This article explores the question of whether this commitment is reflected in selected leading social work journals. A keyword search in Social Work abstracts, a content analysis of three core social work journals, and a secondary thematic analysis of articles in those journals were conducted. The keyword analysis focused on a comparison of class and non-class related article keywords in refereed articles (N = 17,725) from 2006–2015. The content analysis examined 713 referred articles that addressed class-specific content between 2011–2015 from Journal of Social Work Education, Social Work, and Research on Social Work Practice. These same articles were subject to a secondary thematic analysis. Keyword findings indicate that non-class content receives substantially more attention than class-specific content does. Among content that is class-specific, the focus is overwhelmingly on “professional” status. Other aspects of class identity, context, or practice interventions are minimally covered. Based on this study, it appears that at least three of the discipline’s leading journals neglect socio-economic class content to the detriment of practitioners, students, clients and constituents.