THE AUTOPOIETIC PARADOX IN SOCIAL WORK: AN EXCUSE TO REFLECT UPON PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY

This presentation, submitted as part of the celebration of the Social Worker Day is a product of the reflection of "Research Promotion Group Autopoiesis", belonging to the "Social Work and Human Development" research line, Department of Human Development of the Universidad de Caldas. Under the principle of autopoiesis, the construction of Social Work identity is considered as a paradox from five contingencies: multiplicity, generativity, opening-closing, interaction and autonomy. These contingencies define and are defined by two cognitive routes that are interwoven as variants around the co-construction of ethics and the professional's own motivational system, in order to re-define it. This leads to leaving open the reflection on action and professional training processes (autopoietic paradox): trained for something (what should be) and acting in something different (not-being), which is defined by the professional ideology and the social worker as a thinker, who from the double contingency (being one within the multiplicity), is presumed to be, based on the idea of autonomy (independence) and co-dependence, a synthesis. It leads us to think, not only for the training of social workers, but for social practices, in propaedeutic cycles, as a strategy for the re-construction of professional identity, representing the configuration as an interaction autopoietic reflexive system.