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In this article we revisit 'social work as art', noting that it is just over 20 years since England's book on the subject provided a direction for the profession's early defence against empiricism. Those who picked up the ball handed to them by England tended to focus discussions of social work's 'art' on its soft side, embedding it in notions of 'creativity', 'meaning', 'self‐expression', 'intuition' and 'quality', all of which were said to characterise the 'aesthetic dimensions' of social work practice as a counterpoint to the rising tide of hard empiricism, proceduralism and managerialism. Within these 'aesthetic dimensions', proponents of social work as art sought to resolve tensions through advocating a value‐based 'artistic' approach to care. Against this we argue that art is struggle and resolution, soft and hard, joy and grief. Further, we posit that social work's art lies not in the social worker as artist but rather in social work as the 'work' of art, which is implicitly a 'non‐productivist' endeavour. In a fundamental sense we argue that it is the art of social work and not the social worker that assembles what is practice, that provides bounds and lets everything stand in relation to everything else. This enables us to construct a speculative 'radical agonistics' for social work that draws attention to the relation between art, truth and event. In so doing, we substitute a subjectivist reading of social work as art with an ontological analysis drawing on Heidegger's phenomenology, supplemented by the work of Alain Badiou, to cast social work as art first, as artistic attunement, and second, as an art in the service of a politics of liberation.

Texas horned lizards (Phrynosoma cornutum) were once prevalent throughout central Texas but their population has recently declined in abundance and distribution. Fort Hood lies in the historic range of P. cornutum. The United States Army was concerned about the status of Texas horned lizards on Fort Hood, abundance of primary prey (i.e., harvester ants [Pogonomyrmex spp.]), invasive species (i.e., red imported fire ants [Solenopsis invicta]), and any impacts that military maneuvers may have on this state-threatened reptile. Our objectives were to: 1) determine the distribution and abundance of Texas horned lizards, harvester ants and red imported fire ants and 2) assess the impacts of military training exercises on Texas horned lizards. We walked line transects from 14 May to 21 August 2001. We captured and marked 8 Texas horned lizards (5 males, 3 females) on 11 occasions via road cruising. Age ratio of Texas horned lizards was 3 juveniles and 5 adults. We collected all horned lizards within the Live Fire Area (LFA), which is located in the center of Fort Hood. We suspect horned lizards were found in the LFA because of limited vehicular and foot traffic, the area burned frequently due to artillery, and contained their primary prey species, the harvester ant.

Models of service‐user participation have derived from citizenship or consumerist agendas, neither of which has achieved the structural reforms important for the most marginalised social work clients. This article proposes Fraser's model of 'parity of participation' as an appropriately multifaceted frame for capturing the social justice aspirations of service‐user participation. A qualitative case study compared the experiences and expectations of people who had used Australian mental health services with a sample who had used Australian homelessness services to examine their expectations of participation at individual and representative levels. The findings reinforce concerns from Fraser's research about the tendency for identity‐based consumerist notions of participation to reify group identity. This leads to tokenistic service‐user involvement strategies that have little impact on participation at a structural level. Fraser's parity of participation is shown to have untested potential to reshape service‐user participation to meet the social justice aspirations of social work clients.Key Practitioner Message: ● Innovative, service‐user driven strategies for collaboration will be those which challenge existing power structures; ● Service users want their contributions to decision making to generate identifiable change in the system of social services; ● The success of service‐user participation strategies might be the extent to which political, economic and cultural opportunities are enhanced.