XXV años de Trabajo social. El aniversario como rito de pasaje

Abstract

Commemorating a date, thus turning it into an emblematic day, can be considered a «rite of passage» which turns a private event into a public ceremony with a heightened symbolic value. Rites in Social Work are necessary to allow the growth of this profession, a young one barely one hundred years old, and to allow adaptation to new realities. This is how the ritual restores the time of the myth, allowing the old to remain in order to integrate the new, establishing a narration of evolution and growth. Rituals are acts that symbolize, over a sequence of time, the founding myth. They refer to the origins of identity of a profession, in this case, Social Work. Myths have a clear, noble and founding side, and a dark and suspicious side, as if every origin were to lead to a loss of legitimacy and secrets. We will reveal these two aspects, while at the same time we make the founding myth of social work explicit.