Social Work and the ‘Social Doctor’: Bowlby, Social Reproduction and ‘Common Sense’

This article furnishes a critical commentary on the work of John Bowlby. It is argued that social work’s critical engagement with his contributions demands that his ideas are historised. An exploration of his rarely examined early articles reveals a figure preoccupied with the wider social world and not simply the dyadic relationship involving the mother and her child. Viewing himself as a ‘social doctor’, Bowlby was also relentlessly intent on shaping public and professional perceptions within the framework of the ‘Fordist’ economic and social settlement after the Second World War. It is maintained that Bowlby and ‘Bowlbyism’ might be more fully understood if examined through the lens of Marxist feminist social reproduction theory and alongside Gramscian ideas about ‘common sense’.