Abstract

This article focuses on several conferences related to social work. Global Social Work Conference was held in Adelaide, Australia, from October 1 to 5, 2004. The theme of the conference was "of Reclaiming Civil Society." The title implied to many attendees that there was a civil society to reclaim which caused some degree of debate and argument. Perhaps it shows how far scholars have journeyed internationally along a social integrationist perspective for social inclusion rather than striving for a redistributionist or radical and critical discourse that seeks first to claim civil societies. This may be a semantic point but is nonetheless important and represented a point made by Evelyn Balais-Serrano of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, Philippines, in the first keynote speeches. In her impassioned plea she claimed dignity and power for marginalized and displaced peoples. The conference emphasized in the plenary sessions and in paper sessions what began in the opening ceremony: a call to honor the land of the indigenous peoples. The article further reports that 1st IRN Conference of International Social Work is to be held from September 30 to October 3, 2005, in Innsbruck, Austria.