The Pointillism Approach: Re-imagining the historiography of social care work

The purpose of this doctoral dissertation is to analyze the philosophical underpinnings of ‘social care work’ in Western culture. Thus, the interest in this dissertation is to begin to build a hermeneutic base with which to help frame social care work, in an effort to encourage further development of a more global definition of social care work, to delineate the work of humanitarian care efforts from the already defined praxes of social work and social pedagogy. It is my hope that this dissertation will begin a process that may illuminate the reductivity of current educational paradigms of social care work, and that the Pointillism Approach may help social work and sociology educators to critically re-evaluate current hegemonic narratives to build a more inclusive narrative.