Decolonizing Social Work

  • Over the last three decades, “decolonization” has become an increasingly emergent framework in tracing and addressing the complex mechanisms of coloniality of knowledge and power (Mignolo, 2011; Quijano, 2000). Surprisingly enough, decolonial perspectives have hardly been considered in Social Work education, research and practice (e.g. Harms-Smith & Rasool, 2020; Kleibl et al., 2020; Gray et al., 2016; Tamburro, 2013; Lutz, Sachau, & Stauß, 2017). Even though, there is a growing body of literature that addresses the need for decolonization of Social Work with indigenous people (e.g. Tanemura et al., 2016; Ives & Thaweiakenrat Loft, 2016) or individuals and communities in and from the Global South (e.g. Noyoo, 2020; Kreitzer, 2016; Freire, 1970), many Social Workers in the Global North (both in academia and practice) argue that the need for decolonization does not apply to their work. This is particularly true in countries of the Global North that claim to have had little engagement with colonialism (e.g. Ranta-Tyrkkö, 2011). Historically, much of Social Work theory and practice was developed in the Global North and exported across the globe as a byproduct of colonization and – in the postcolonial era – in form of development aid (Schirilla, 2018). Within the hegemonic discourses, knowledges produced at the peripheries and in the context of social struggles has been delegitimized and rendered invisible. Therefore, Social Work remains dominated by Euro-American perspectives, which oftentimes reproduce epistemic violence (Spivak, 1988). This acknowledgment, then, calls for a critical analysis of Social Work education, research and practice as well. Recent emerging discussions on implementing decolonial approaches in Social Work (Harms-Smith & Rasool, 2020; Tamburro, 2013; Lutz, Kleibl & Neureither, 2021) have drawn the attention to the possibilities of “epistemic disobedience” (Mignolo, 2009: 8). They brought forward Afrocentric approaches to pedagogy (van Wyk 2014; Watson-Vandiver & Wiggan, 2021), pedagogies that centralize the oppressed (Freire, 1970; Kohan, 2021), non-extractivist research approaches and methods that focus on embodied knowledge and corporeal emancipation (de Sousa-Santos, 2018), as well as creating South-South links (Rivera, 2012).

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Metadaten
Author:Tanja Kleibl, Robel Afeworki Abay, Anna-Lisa Klages, Sara Rodríguez Lugo
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing
Document Type:Book
Language:English
Year of publication:2024
Release Date:2024/03/21
Faculties and institutes:Fakultäten / Fakultät Angewandte Sozialwissenschaften
Institute und Zentren / Institut für Angewandte Sozialwissenschaften (IFAS)
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