Conversation analysis for social work: talking with youth in care

What is social work? How should we set about answering this question? Should we develop a series of logically ordered concepts and categories to then generate systematic theories and taxonomies, engaging in what Harold Garfinkel, the founder of ethnomethodology (EM) called 'formal analysis'? Or, should we begin by examining in vivo and situated activities engaged in by those who do social work, paying particular attention to their talk-in-interaction and their reflexive accomplishment of local occasions as accountably social work?

While the first approach comprises most contemporary social science, the latter is grounded in an ethnomethodological re-specification.