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The Institute for Comparing Social Work Science and Intercultural/International Social Work published ten volumes during the period of 2002-2008. Apart from the first volume, which is entirely written in German, and the seond, where the files most likely vanished, you can find (partially exclusive) previews in the posts below.

If you like to order one or several of these books, please contact ISIS

Enjoy reading!

ISIS Vol. 1
Thiele, C.: Zur Rezeption des Empowerment-Ansatzes in Deutschland, England und den USA – Ein Vergleich. (The Reception of the Empowerment-Theory in Germany, England and the USA – A comparing study. German only). 2002.

ISIS Vol. 2
Adams, A.: The Modernisation of Social Work Practice and Management in England. 2003.


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[No Bert]

ISIS Vol. 3 (already published in it's 2^nd edition)

Erath, P./Littlechild, B./Vornanen, R. (eds.): Social Work in Europe – Descriptions, Analysis and Theories. 2004.

To examine the state of the theoretical debate in social work in different European countries in times when the emphasis is on pragmatism and cost-effectiveness may be seen as totally distant from practice and therefore fruitless. Nevertheless, we have to consider that a meaningful contribution of social work towards human society can only be a result of the difference between its social function or contemporary attributions and its (theoretical or ideological) self –construction based on the development of its own internal history of ideas and theories.

Within this book which is dedicated to Professor Juha Hämälainen (University of Kuopio, Finland) on the occasion of his 50th birthday National and European colleagues who are working and collaborating with him in different ways since many years want to reflect on the development of, and importance given to, the aspects of building up and discussing theoretical aspects of social work within the academic debate in their countries.

In getting an overview on this subject from different national perspectives – on an analytical, descriptiv and theoretical level – the book will at the same time aid students and lecturers not only to familiarise themselves with common and/ or diverse trends in the field of social work theories in different parts of Europe but also to recognize the importance of a theoretical debate for a better understanding of social work practice.


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ISIS Volume 3 Preview

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ISIS Vol. 4

Chytil, O./Sýkorová, D. (eds.)/Littlechild, B. (co-ed.): Strategies for the Maintenance of Autonomy in Old Age. A Czech Study. 2004.

The international scientific conference „Autonomy in Old Age – Strategies of Its Maintenance”, which took place on the 16th and 17th September 2004 in Ostrava, represents the culmination of the three year research project „Seniors in Society. Strategies of Maintaining Individual Autonomy“, carried out with the participation of the Department of Social Work, Medico-Social Faculty, Ostrava University, and financially supported by the Czech Science Foundation.

The research project was focused on the maintenance of personal independence and social integration of elderly people in terms of their material and social resources. It was based on the aim to understand the way seniors behave and the way they cope with everyday life and life crises. Its focus accentuates serious social and economic aspects of the demographic aging of population and fundamental changes connected with the transformation of Czech society.

The conference has confirmed that the theme of aging and old age in relation to the autonomy of seniors is topical and productive both from the theoretical and empirical perspective, and, inseparably, from the perspective of social practice. The contributions presented by philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, theoreticians of social policy and social work and other fields have demonstrated the usefulness of the multidisplinary handling of the topics, and, “within” the particular subject areas, they have also shown the productivity of applying various theoretical perspectives, paradigms and concepts.

Given the aim of the conference to present the results of the research project „Seniors in Society. Strategies of Maintaining Individual Autonomy“, we regard the contributions of the research team members, Dana Sýkorová, Alice Příhodová, Naděžda Špatenková, Radka Popelková and Oldřich Chytil, as the core of the conference proceedings. These include conclusions deduced from the data obtained from the constituent research projects  of the above-mentioned project, i.e. from research  with seniors, middle generation of adult children and social workers from the seniors and severely disabled people care facilities, and from the investigation into the accessibility of social care institutions for seniors in the Moravian-Silesian region. In her contribution, Ivana Loučková describes and analyzes the methodological frame of the project, the “integrated research strategy”. This strategy consists of  the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods of research in terms of the progression  and the interconnection of facts in the process of data creation, which led to the multiresource design of the research.


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ISIS Volume 4 Preview

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ISIS Vol. 5

Littlechild, B./Erath, P./Keller, J. (eds.): De- and Reconstruction in European Social Work. 2005.

Within the hugely significant processes of globalisation following the breakdown of the Berlin wall and the Eastern bloc, it became more and more apparent that the classical welfare state was in the middle of a crisis. In spite of still significant differences according to the symptoms of that crisis – high rates of unemployment, movement to avoid taxation, cuts within the social security system and the budgets for professional social work, a lack of political control of social processes, increasing disaffection from the state, etc. – all of this points to the conclusion that these developments are different from former attacks on the welfare state, and are symptoms of a fundamental crisis in modern democracy.

The book therefore proposes that the crisis of the welfare state (and therefore of social work as well) is not only a crisis of the traditional model of the different systems of the welfare state and its interventions – e.g. of the Anglo-Saxon, Nordic or corporatistic models – but a crisis of societies and democracy on behalf of their self-understanding of social justice and the fight against social exclusion. This crisis can then be seen as a ‘turning point’ in the fight against social exclusion in democratic societies.

Thus the de- and reconstruction to the different welfare regimes therefore is an objective necessity not only for Eastern European countries, but for all European countries. There are different transformational processes within each country dependent on different traditions, cultures, political and economic situations, etc. but the challenge within all European nations is to preserve social security and social help as far as possible under these new conditions.

According to these themes, the book which is dedicated to Professor Oldrich Chytil from Ostrava University (CZ) on the occasion of his 60th birthday is divided into two parts.

Within the first part fundamental and transnational political, sociological, theoretical questions about the welfare state and its interventions as well as the role of transnational (European) social work will be discussed by Detlef Baum (Germany), Jan Keller (Czech Republic), Walter Lorenz (Italy), Karen Lyons (United Kingdom), and Horst Sing & Peter Erath (Germany).

Within the second part authors from eight European countries will look at different transformational processes within their countries first of all from empirical, ideological, and strategic levels. Then they will discuss the different ways social work is dealing with these theoretical and practical problems internally and externally, and finally they will draw possible consequences for the organisation of social work agencies, employment of social workers in the different sectors, and the effects on social work practice of these changes, and of government policies. The contributors of these texts are: Peter Erath & Horst Sing (Germany), Juha Hämäläinen and Pauli Niemelä (Finland), Rolv Lyngstad, Randi Reese (Norway) & Steven M Shardlow (United Kingdom), Emmanuel Jovelin & Elisabeth Prieur (France), Ewa Marynowicz-Hetka (Poland), Jordi Sabater (Spain), Steven M Shardlow & Adrian Adams (United Kingdom), and Frans van der Veer (Netherlands).


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ISIS Volume 5 Preview

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ISIS Vol. 6

Musil, L.: Coping with Dilemmas. Working Consitions And Interactions Of Social Workers With Their Clients. 2006.

The aim of the study is to review the results of empirical case studies of aforementioned students in systematic manner and – by doing this – to describe ways by which social workers used to avoid their dilemmas between complex and simple aims, quantity of clients and quality of services, neutral approach and favouritism, one-sided and symmetric interaction with clients, procedural and situational approach to the client problems, material and immaterial help, and between acting and not-acting in a response to the client condition. To discuss limits of the “avoiding hypothesis” by Lipsky, the author points out an alternative way of interpreting the everyday working habits of social workers by Laan.


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ISIS Volume 6 Preview

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ISIS Vol. 7

Keller, J.: Modernisation and Transformation of the Social. 2007.


At present, modern society has been undergoing sharp changes comparable perhaps only to those which had occurred at the time of its emergence. The measure of uncertainty which has been accompanying these changes is as high today as it was at the beginning of modernity.

It is a well known fact that modern society gradually succeeded in developing institutions which substantially helped to reduce the measure of uncertainty in life. The Welfare State undoubtedly played an important role among these institutions as it managed to stabilise the balance between the private and the public spheres, contributed to the solving of the Social Question of the 19th century and introduced new mechanisms of insuring against social risks.

It was in this environment facilitated by the development of the Welfare State that social work developed as a more or less systematic and more or less prudent way of intervening into the area of the social. For it turned out that in the social area, the process of modernisation does not automatically bring effects as beneficial as is the case, for instance, in the economic area, or in the area of science and technology development. Social work thus evolved into a discipline which was used to rectify or amend some of the problematic impacts of these modernising changes.

We must keep in mind, however, that the efforts to establish social work as an independent scientific discipline at a practical level, as well as the efforts for its delimitation at a theoretical level, occurred during the period of relative equanimity and stabilisation which followed only after the initial shocks accompanying the arrival of modernity.

This logically raises the question of which of these efforts are still valid at a time when modern society has been radically transforming itself before our very eyes while many of the things which were taken for granted in the last century are now being called into question. In order to search for answers to this question, we must first understand the nature of the changes modernity has been going through. Do they occur at random or are the impulses which set them in motion deeply rooted in the foundations of modernity itself?

Asking the aforementioned question, however, only gives rise to a whole number of further questions and these are related to the very essence of the sociological theory. What actually is the social when understood in the narrow sense of this word, i.e. the social which social work deals with? Where is the place of the social area in the structure of modern society? What consequences for the social area may today’s stage of modernisation have? And how are all of these processes linked to the relationship between the public and the private, a relationship which had established during the process of building the Welfare State and which for a long period of time guaranteed the stability of the whole society?

These are the questions raised in this study. Its aim is to analyse those transformations of the present-day society which have a direct impact upon both the theoretical delimitation as well as the practical operation of the activities for which we use the umbrella term Social Work.  Of course this discipline does not develop in some kind of a social vacuum and this is the reason why, for its self-understanding, it is so important to try to understand the deep changes which modern society has been going through and the numerous risks which (not only in the area of social work) have been triggered by them.


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ISIS Volume 7 Preview

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ISIS Vol. 8

Adams, A./Erath, P./Jovelin, E.: Social Work and Science – An uneasy relationship? 2008.

In Social Work and Science – An Uneasy Relationship? a range of European Social Work Educators revisit some fundamental questions regarding the common foundations and diverse history of social work practice and education in Europe. The papers presented here, origionally prepared for presentation at the European Social Work Seminar: Social Work and / within the Scientific Debate, Catholic University of Lille, March 2007, provide an opportunity to re-examine the relationship between knowledge, values and skills in Social  Work practice and education at the beginning of the 21st century.


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ISIS Volume 8 Preview

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ISIS Vol. 9

Jovelin, E./Dequire, A. F./Adams, A./Harris, H./Adams, R.: Evaluation of Services and Initiatives for Young Homeless People in the United Kingdom (Kent) and in France (Nord-Pas-de-Calais). 2008.

The phenomenon of homeless young people is increasing in the Nord Pas de Calais (France) and in East Kent (UK). This book’s  project aims at :

• analyzing homeless young people’s life conditions (homeless young people from 16 to 25 years old)
• understanding the direction they give to their lives and the assistances that are granted to them.
• evaluating and comparing assistance possibilities in favour of these young people in the two areas (Kent and Nord Pas de Calais). We would like to understand the operating mode of accompaniment services, the coordination of these services in order to improve the accompaniment of homeless young people, while taking their experiments and expectations into account.

Our ambition is to understand social structures’ approaches and needs in order to face the problems encountered by homeless young people. The international aspect of this book will make it possible to draw comparisons in the analysis of homeless young people’s living conditions and of accompaniment practices on both sides of the English Channel .


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ISIS Volume 9 Preview

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ISIS Vol. 10

Kähäri, T.: Social work in the context of Imatra-Svetogorsk twin city. 2008.

The focus in this thesis is on social work in the context of the border area. The aim is to analyse the importance of the border area context for social work: What kind of influence does the environment of border area have on content, practices and theory of social work? And on the other hand, what does social work have to offer to the well-being of the citizens in border area?

The data is twofold: it consists of research literature of international social work and twin city together with group interview. In the empirical part the managers of social work are interviewed about their experiences of cooperation with instigators of the social sector in Svetogorsk and their opinions about potential benefits of cooperation. Through theoretical analysis of the main concepts, with empirical data and qualitative approach, I have tried to build up an understanding of the concept of international social work, about social work in the context of twin city as a phenomenon and also how these two are linked.

Social work in Imatra-Svetogorsk twin city can be divided into two levels: national multicultural social work and international border crossing cooperation in social work field. Both multicultural social work and border crossing co­operation can also be divided into two categories: the former into culturally sensitive and antiracist approaches, and the latter into bilateral (Imatra-Svetogorsk) twin city cooperation and multilateral neighbouring area cooperation.

It seems to be obvious that merely the context of border area does not bring out the element of international social work into the practicies of social work. Instead, the cultivation of international social work requires both conscious and target-orientated investment of work and open-minded attitude which empha­sises the importance of reflection. Respectively, if there is desire for deve­lopment of international social work, the operational environment of the twin city creates favourable settings for it: geographical vicinity, relatively high proportion of immigrants and the possibility for funding of neigbouring area cooperation.


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ISIS Volume 10 Preview