Conversation Analysis for Social Work

Gerald A. J. de Montigny grew up in a proud working class family, with parents, Monty and Betty, who supported his socialist activism. When still 19 he met Andrea, who remains his partner and love, and together they have three adult children, Brendan, Julia, and Sarah. With a MSW completed in 1978, he worked in child protection, mental health, and forensic psychiatry, and began teaching social work in 1985. Gerald uses a Marxist materialist analysis which begins with people’s living practices and social interactions, as bringing about their experienced worlds. He was fortunate to have studied with Dorothy Smith and Mary O’Brien, both second wave feminists.

Acknowledgements; Chapter 1: Conversation Analysis: Categories, Contexts, and Reality; Chapter 2: Structures of talk-in-interaction; Chapter 3: Accounting for Conversations; Chapter 4: Topic as a resource for coherence; Chapter 5: It says here...Techniques of Textual Absorption and Resistance; Chapter 6: Getting Started: Writing and Erasing Youth's Stories; Chapter 7: Relationship in an Interview; Chapter 8: Child protection and entries into Care; Chapter 9: Stories of Coming into Care; Chapter 10: Social Workers and Children and Youth in Care; Chapter 11: Conclusion: Seeing ‘the social’ in social work; Appendix A: Interview Guide; Index