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Toward a Third Space: Improvisation and Professionalism in Social Work

Pressured to be a “proper profession,” social work often failed to attend to its ambiguous and improvisational nature. In this article, the author recasts social work in a performance framework and repositions the profession between traditional categories such as art or science. In an indeterminate “third space of the borderlands” the critical yet unrecognized improvisational arenas of social life and social work become visible. Exploring improvisation, the author discusses theater literature and provides insights as to how social work is an improvisational profession that always performs and re-forms various identities.