Oxford Bibliography Online: Social Work
Michael A. Dover
Visiting Assistant Professor, Cleveland State University School of Social Work
HUMAN NEEDS AND SOCIAL WORK
Introduction
Contemporary Human Need[Should it be “Need” or “Needs”? Which should be used throughout the entry?] Theory
History of Needs Concepts in Social Work
Social Policy and Human Needs
Social Work Practice and Human Needs
Human Behavior Content and Human Needs
Empirical Research and Human Needs
Religion, Spirituality and Human Needs
Justice, Rights and Needs
Associations and Organizations
Other Internet and References Resources
INTRODUCTION
This entry provides references valuable to the intersection between social work and the literature on human needs. As a profession, social work has long been concerned with understanding and meeting human needs. The Preamble of the Code of Ethics of the National Association of Social Work states: “The primary mission of the social work profession is to enhance human well-being and help meet the basic human needs of all people, with particular attention to the needs and empowerment of people who are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty.” Nevertheless, there is a scarcity of literature coming from within the profession of social work which addresses human needs explicitly. Accordingly, this entry begins with a section on human needs theory from a variety of disciplines, including. The section includes many contributions from philosophy, the source of growing consensus about the moral and intellectual significance of universal theories of human need. Next is a section on the history of needs concepts in social work, including literature relevant to social work education. Sections on social work practice, social welfare policy and empirical research related to human needs follow. The next section highlights key literature concerning religion, spirituality and human need. The final section focuses on literature on the relationship of human needs to human rights, social justice, and the sources of injustice. The entry ends with a section on various associations and organizations whose work touches on human needs, as well as other internet and reference resources. (Note: In some annotations there are references to other authors; in all cases the year of publication of the other work is in parentheses and the work is referenced elsewhere in this entry, but not necessarily in the same section.)
CONTEMPORARY HUMAN NEEDS THEORY
Human need has long been a controversial topic. Human need was long seen as normative rather than scientific in sociology, as substantive rather than formal and economics, and as utopian or relative to the nature of the means of production in Marxism. Need was also viewed as a universalist deviation from the prominence of 20th century culturally relativism and post-modernism. Within the two decades, however, consensus is emerging from major philosophers, political theorists, and development specialists and is growing among psychologists and social workers that human need as a concept is conceptually robust and essential, although further theoretical development is necessary.
Berger, Sebastian (2008). K. William Kapp's Theory of Social Costs and Environmental Policy: Towards Political Ecological Economics. Ecological Economics, 67(2), 244-252.
Analyzed Kapp's humanistic economics and its view that universal human needs are the normative basis for a substantive rationality.
Berger, Sebastian (2008). Karl Polanyi's and Karl William Kapp's Substantive Economics: Important Insights from the Kapp-Polanyi Correspondence. Review of Social Economy, 66(3), 381-396.
Used unpublished correspondence between Kapp and Polanyi to explore the relationship between substantive economics and Kapp's theory of human needs.
Bradshaw, Jonathan (1972). The Concept of Need. New Society, 30, 640-643.
Distinguished between normative, expressed, felt and comparative needs.
Braybrooke, David (1968). Let Needs Diminish That Preferences May Flourish. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Utilized by Wakefield (1988) in his work on the relationship of psychotherapy to social justice.
Braybrooke, David (1987). Meeting Needs. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Critiqued liberal and Marxist lists of needs as essentially endless and not philosophically rigorous. Proposed course-of-life needs which meet certain standards and criterion and which render a principle of preference that enhances our moral capacity to make useful social policy decisions.
Brock, Gillian (1994). Braybrooke on Needs. Ethics: An International Journal of Social, 104(4), 811-823.
A summary and critique of Braybrooke's On Needs by the editor of Necessary Goods (1998).
Brock, Gillian (Ed.). (1998). Necessary Goods: Our Responsibility to Meet Others' Needs. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
A collection of chapters by philosophers including Braybrooke, Brock, Doyal, O'Neill, Wiggins and others. In her introduction, Brock concluded that if there are arguments that people's needs do not produce social obligations, they will need to be re-worked.
Camfield, Laura, & Skevington, Suzanne M. (2008). On Subjective Well-Being and Quality of Life. Journal Of Health Psychology, 13(6), 764-775.
The concepts of autonomy and eudaimonism (integration of and realization of actualized potential) were used for a conceptual bridge between Ryan and Deci (2000) and Doyal and Gough (1991).
Deci, Edward L., & Ryan, Richard M. (2000). The "What" And "Why" Of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227-268.
Explained self-determination theory and its contention that there are universal psychological needs including competence, autonomy and relatedness.
Doyal, Len (1998). A Theory of Human Need. In Gillian Brock (Ed.), Necessary Goods: Our Responsibility to Meet Others' Needs (pp. 157-172). Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.
Further discussion of the theory of human need of Doyal and Gough.
Doyal, Len, & Gough, Ian (1984). A Theory of Human Needs. Critical Social Policy, 4(10), 6.
An early discussion of the Doyal/Gough theory of human need. Doyal is a philosopher, and Gough is a political economist at the Department of Social and Policy Sciences at the University of Bath.
Doyal, Len, & Gough, Ian (1991). A Theory of Human Needs. New York: Guilford.
Doyal and Gough used philosophical methods and social policy analysis to theorize two primary basic needs (health and autonomy) which must be met to avoid serious harm and engage in social participation. Civil, political, and women’s rights are prerequisites for culturally specific ways of satisfying intermediate needs, including food, water, housing, a nonhazardous environment, health and reproductive health care, security in childhood, significant primary relationships, economic security, and basic education.
Etzioni, Amitai (1968). Basic Human Needs, Alienation and Inauthenticity. American Sociological Review, 33(6), 870-885.
As a contribution to growing concern in sociology about the over-socialized conception of humankind, Etzioni made an explicitly sociological contribution to human needs theory, viewing human needs as universal, met in culturally specific ways, and amenable to empirical testing.
Fitzgerald, Ross (Ed.). (1977). Human Needs and Politics. Rushcutters Bay, N.S.W. : Pergamon Press (Australia).
An early collection on human needs with contributions from philosophy, psychology, political science and economics.
Fortin, Jacqueline (2006). Human Needs and Nursing Theory. In Hesook Suzie Kim & Ingrid Kollak (Eds.), Nursing Theories: Conceptual & Philosophical Foundations (2nd ed., pp. 10-16). New York, NY Springer Pub. Co.
A current and comprehensive literature review of human need theory in nursing.
Fraser, Nancy (1989). Struggle over Needs: Outline of a Socialist-Feminist Critical Theory of Late Capitalist Political Culture. In Nancy Fraser (Ed.), Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis.
Fraser's socialist-feminist analysis of the unequal discursive power wielded during struggles over needs stressed the "in order to relations" of needs, such that A needs X in order to Y. She distinguished between thin (basic) needs and thick needs, which are service or policy needs debated in relation to thin needs.
Fromm, Erich (1955). The Sane Society. New York: Rinehart.
Human needs involve an idealistic striving for needs which transcend physiological needs and are realized by relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, identity, and a frame of orientation and devotion.
Fromm, Erich, & Marx, Karl (1966). Marx's Concept of Man. New York: F. Ungar.
Fromm stressed awareness of true human need, as opposed to viewing need as merely that which must be satisfied in order to survive and produce under conditions of alienation.
Gough, Ian (2003). Lists and Thresholds: Comparing the Doyal-Gough Theory of Human Need with Nussbaum's Capabilities Approach. WeD Working Paper 01, 22 pages. Retrieved from http://www.welldev.org.uk/research/workingpaperpdf/wed01.pdf
A recent explanation of the Doyal/Gough theory and a comparison to Nussbaum (2000).
Hamilton, Lawrence (2003). The Political Philosophy of Needs. Cambridge, UK ;, New York, NY, USA Cambridge University Press.
A political scientist argued counter to the Doyal/Gough theory and orthodox Marxist theories of need that needs are historical, instrumental, normative, and ultimately political in nature.
Haslam, N. (2006). Dehumanization: An Integrative Review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(3), 252-264.
Provided a literature review of theories of dehumanization and presented theories of animalistic dehumanization and mechanistic dehumanization.
Heller, Agnes (1976). The Theory of Need in Marx. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Saw in Marx a qualitative and relativist distinction between the essentially manufactured needs for commodities under capitalism and the system of radical needs which would emerge among cooperating individuals under communism.
Hughes, Jonathan (2000). Capitalism, Socialism and the Satisfaction of Needs Ecology and Historical Materialism (pp. x, 219 p. ;). Cambridge ;, New York: Cambridge University Press.
This historical materialist approach to social ecology criticized Heller (1976) and re-interpreted Marx's view of human need as consistent with Wiggins (1987) and Doyal and Gough (1991) and their concepts of avoidance of serious harm.
Ife, Jim (2002). Community Development: Community-Based Alternatives in an Age of Globalisation (2nd ed.). Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson Education Australia.
Needs are not objective and universal but rather a product of normative and technical needs statements, such as population-defined needs, consumer-defined needs, caretaker-defined needs and inferred-needs (needs as deduced by researchers or other observers).
Ignatieff, Michael (1986). The Needs of Strangers. New York, N.Y. : Penguin Books.
Called for a language about needs which can express a human need for a social solidarity consistent with both liberty and justice.
Illich, Ivan (1978). Toward a History of Needs (1st ed.). New York: Pantheon Books.
Illich criticized the health-denying effect of systems of care which reduce the human condition to technical problems which deny the capacity of people to autonomously address their human needs for creativity, dignity, freedom and personal satisfaction.
Kasser, Tim (2002). Psychological Needs. In Tim Kasser (Ed.), The High Price of Materialism (pp. 23-28). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Influenced by Desi and Ryan's self-determination theory (2000), integrated a variety of theories of need into a framework including several sets: (a) safety, security, and sustenance, (b) competence, self-efficacy and self-esteem, (c) connectedness, (d) autonomy and authenticity.
Lebowitz, Michael A. (2004). The Primacy of Needs. In Michael A. Lebowitz (Ed.), Beyond Capital: Marx's Political Economy of the Working Class (2nd ed., pp. 161-167). New York: St. Martin's Press.
Re-interprets Marx's theory of history to identify the primacy of needs, with social change taking place when people recognize that the existing social structure no longer permits the satisfaction of the very needs generated at that point in history.
Lee, Dorothy (1948). Are Basic Needs Ultimate? Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 43, 361-395.
Criticized hierarchies of primary and secondary need as products of Western individualist thought, and as inconsistent with cultural relativism.
Maslow, Abraham H. (1943). A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370-396.
Maslow continued the development of his hierarchical theory of human need (including physiological, safety, belonging/love, self-actualization), and recognized that while human needs are universal, there are culturally different preferences.
Maslow, Abraham H. (1970). Motivation and Personality (2d ed.). New York,: Harper & Row.
The second edition of his 1954 book outlining his overall theories.
Maslow, Abraham H. (1971). The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. New York,: Viking Press.
According to Koltko-Rivera (2006), Maslow (1969, 1971) amended his hierarchy of needs to include self-transcendence.
McMurtry, John (1998). The Question of Need Unequal Freedoms : The Global Market as an Ethical System (pp. 162-166). West Hartford, Conn. : Kumarian Press.
This criticism of the absence of needs concepts in classical and contemporary economics proposed a concept of need associated with the deprivation of conditions that reduce human organic capability. His work was influential for Noonan (2005, 2006).
Montagu, Ashley (1955). The Direction of Human Development; Biological and Social Bases ([1st ed.). New York,: Harper.
Montagu's holistic view of the person as integrated by the pursuit of human needs was been influential on nursing's theory of need (Fortin, 2006).
Murray, Henry Alexander (1938). Explorations in Personality; a Clinical and Experimental Study of Fifty Men of College Age. New York,: Oxford university press.
Murray distinguished latent and manifest needs and conceptualized several psychological needs, including achievement, affiliation, and power. His needs-press model and other work influenced Maslow.
Noonan, Jeff (2006). Democratic Society and Human Needs. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University.
Contended that needs-based concepts are central to moral philosophy and ethics.
Nussbaum, Martha Craven (2000). Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Drawing upon Rawls (1971) and Sen (1985), further developed lists of universal human capabilities, the threshold level of which can be the basis for constitutional provisions.
Pugno, Maurizio (2008). Economics and the Self: A Formalisation of Self-Determination Theory. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 37(4), 1328-1346.
Formalized self-determination theory (Desi and Ryan, 2000) in economic terms in order to explain self-destructive behavior, economic behavior including job satisfaction, and the happiness paradox.
Reader, Soran (Ed.). (2005). The Philosophy of Need. Cambridge, U.K. ;, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Reader's introduction to this Royal Institute of Philosophy conference collection stated that a new consensus to accept the concept of need has arisen amongst philosophers and development and political theorists since the earlier collection by Brock (1998).
Ryan, Richard M., & Deci, Edward L. (2000). The Darker and Brighter Sides of Human Existence: Basic Psychological Needs as a Unifying Concept. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 319-338.
Presented their self-determination theory (SDT) concerning psychological needs, in which autonomy, competence and relatedness are essential to psychological growth and needs fulfillment.