1242 Sarah Banks explore and describe how practitioners conceptualize and tackle ethical issues in their day-to-day practice and uses this to critique ' textbook accounts of ethics. It falls into the category of what philosophers call descriptive or 'empirical ethics(describing people's ethical values, beliefs and actions), as opposed to meta-ethics(conceptual analysis of ethical concepts such as'rights', responsibilities, "professional integrity or normative ethics (prescribing what people should do in terms of ethical principles, rules and specific actions) The role and validity of 'empirical ethics, and how, if at all, it relates to what has traditionally been conceived of as' philosophical ethics, is an area of debate within moral philosophy and other fields of professional ethics (Hope, 1999; Widdershoven and Van Der Scheer, 2004; Smajdov et al. 2008). The issues are complex and would benefit from further attention in relation to social work. This is particularly important, as empirical studies with a focus on aspects of social work ethics are growing(for recent examples, see BankS, 2004, pp. 125-78: McAuliffe, 2005: Strom- Gottfried, 2006: Jawad, 2007: McLaren, 2007) and look set to expand as empirical research in social work grows and a number of doctoral students are choosing research topics related to social work ethics Hitherto, there have been few specialist research monographs or advanced texts on aspects of social work ethics (either theoretic empirically based). Baptistas(1998)specialist book in Portuguese on the relevance of the moral philosophy of Levinas for social education work is one example. Books by Clark (2000), Banks(2004 )and Hugman(2005) could be regarded as advanced texts, which, although still general in cope, eschew ethical decision-making models and offer more in-depti critical analysis than introductory textbooks. We might expect and hope for more such contributions in the future as the subject area matures and develops and some of the empirically focused doctoral dissertations are written up for publication. Indeed, this is needed to broaden and deepen 9569 social work ethics as a subject area Content: taking account of character, care and context 8 The most interesting aspect of the thinking and literature on social work ethics is obviously its substantive content, and what this tells us about how the subject area is changing and developing as an academic professional discourse. Not surprisingly, developments and trends in philosophical ethics, including moral philosophical analyses and studies in cognate areas of professional and applied ethics (particularly medical, nursing and health care ethics), comprise one of the main influences on theoretical approaches to social work ethics. In philosophical ethics, there las been a challenge to the dominance of principle-based theories of ethics such as Kantianism(focusing on respect for persons and duty) andexplore and describe how practitioners conceptualize and tackle ethical issues in their day-to-day practice and uses this to critique ‘textbook’ accounts of ethics. It falls into the category of what philosophers call ‘descriptive’ or ‘empirical’ ethics (describing people’s ethical values, beliefs and actions), as opposed to meta-ethics (conceptual analysis of ethical concepts such as ‘rights’, ‘responsibilities’, ‘professional integrity’) or normative ethics (prescribing what people should do in terms of ethical principles, rules and specific actions). The role and validity of ‘empirical ethics’, and how, if at all, it relates to what has traditionally been conceived of as ‘philosophical ethics’, is an area of debate within moral philosophy and other fields of professional ethics (Hope, 1999; Widdershoven and Van Der Scheer, 2004; Smajdov et al., 2008). The issues are complex and would benefit from further attention in relation to social work. This is particularly important, as empirical studies with a focus on aspects of social work ethics are growing (for recent examples, see Banks, 2004, pp. 125–78; McAuliffe, 2005; Strom￾Gottfried, 2006; Jawad, 2007; McLaren, 2007) and look set to expand as empirical research in social work grows and a number of doctoral students are choosing research topics related to social work ethics. Hitherto, there have been few specialist research monographs or advanced texts on aspects of social work ethics (either theoretically or empirically based). Baptista’s (1998) specialist book in Portuguese on the relevance of the moral philosophy of Levinas for social education work is one example. Books by Clark (2000), Banks (2004) and Hugman (2005) could be regarded as advanced texts, which, although still general in scope, eschew ethical decision-making models and offer more in-depth critical analysis than introductory textbooks. We might expect and hope for more such contributions in the future as the subject area matures and develops and some of the empirically focused doctoral dissertations are written up for publication. Indeed, this is needed to broaden and deepen social work ethics as a subject area. Content: taking account of character, care and context The most interesting aspect of the thinking and literature on social work ethics is obviously its substantive content, and what this tells us about how the subject area is changing and developing as an academic– professional discourse. Not surprisingly, developments and trends in philosophical ethics, including moral philosophical analyses and studies in cognate areas of professional and applied ethics (particularly medical, nursing and health care ethics), comprise one of the main influences on theoretical approaches to social work ethics. In philosophical ethics, there has been a challenge to the dominance of principle-based theories of ethics such as Kantianism (focusing on respect for persons and duty) and 1242 Sarah Banks at Fudan university on January 6, 2011 bjsw.oxfordjournals.org Downloaded from