The Scope of Clinical Social Research

This chapter outlines the necessity of Clinical Social Research in today’s highly complex social environment of extensive global interactions and networks—social, communicative, economic, etc.—Particularly important is the positioning of understanding social and cultural pathology as central to a critical social approach. Clinical social researchers from various disciplines have long transcended the narrow boundaries of the methods associated with the individual disciplines with various methodological tools. Clinical Social Research can also include the critical and interventionist social practices of social medicine and law, especially those who participate in and develop solutions in conjunction with the social world and institutions of civil society.