1 Ethics and Social Welfare Call for Papers Special Issue: “More-than-human ethics for social work” Guest Co-Editors: Heather Lynch, Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland Tina Wilson, University of British Columbia, Canada Background, rationale & purpose of special issue In the face of the existential threats of climate emergency, global pandemics, and machine intelligence, the anthropic principle has been called into question. Scholarship that calls for the de-centering of ‘western man’, as the ideal measure, is evident in sprawling interdisciplinary scholarship conducted under the rubrics of posthumanism, more-than- human thought, feminist new materialism, the ontological turn, the relational turn, and the environmental turn. In the intergenerational relations of academic work, these conversations reinflect, recombine, and extend ongoing debates in critical social theory (see e.g., Wilson, 2021). For example, much of the scholarship that takes account of the more- than-human came through feminist, disability, Indigenous and postcolonial scholarship as an attempt to undo the order that centres not just humanity, but specific forms of humanity at the expense of others (see e.g., Tronto, 2010, St. Pierre, 2015; Murray, 2020; Jackson, 2020). This work presents a radical decentring of hierarchical norms, as such, it intuitively aligns with social work values of equity while also challenging its anthropocentrism. Social work’s dominant ethical codes draw on Kant’s proposition that individual humans are ends in themselves and entitled to transcendent rights. This premise was adopted as it challenged exploitative human hierarchies and created the basis for establishing the welfare structures through which contemporary social work developed. Post- or more-than-human thought that decentres humanity demands consideration of non-human beings. This proposition calls for a revolutionary shift that generates soul-searching ethical dilemmas for professional social work. While more-than-human thought seeks to elevate marginal positions and locate human life in the context of all life, some scholars (Hornborg, 2021) argue that affording agency to non-human actors risks overlooking, or excusing problematic human behaviour. This debate presents questions for social work. Is it possible to seek justice for those marginalised, if we cannot leverage their rights as humans over all else? What harms do we contribute to in the name of human wellbeing (Lynch 2019)? What is the human, or agential human freedom, in highly curated, mediated, dependent, and contingent worlds? How might more-than-human thought reconfigure our major guiding ethical anchors of rights, justice, and virtue?