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Anti-Colonial Perspectives in Social Work, Social Policy and Beyond

  • The history of social work and the modern Western university paradoxically represents both the high point and low point of human progress. Conceived in an epoch of immense human discovery, it is important to understand this period as characterised by white Western Imperialist and Colonial projects and the rise of capitalist accumulation. In combination, these processes, not confined to the geo-political points of origin, continue to have devastating impacts across the world, characterised by the exploitation, displacement, and destruction of human beings as well as natural ecosystems. Hegemonic colonial structures and practices created and reproduced global racialised hierarchies with the dominance of the Global North and the 'Othering' of knowledge forms and ways of life emerging from the Global South. Struggles for decolonisation and anti-racism come from an ongoing refusal by the victims of capitalism and imperialism to accept defeat and to continue to struggle for life, liberty and dignity. In the current moment, especially following the brutal public execution of George Floyd in the US and the Black Lives Matter movement, especially amongst youth, we have witnessed a global response, incorporating gestures of solidarity, through the ‘taking of the knee’ through to direct action to remove statues and monuments celebrating various characters associated with Empire, slavery and colonial exploitation. Decolonial perspectives are often neglected in the Global North. At the same time, activist intellectuals such as Freire, Fanon, and also Gandhi remain important sources for social work practice otherwise. Decolnialism refers both to a specific global conjuncture and to a broad range of theoretical analyses and political dispositions, borne out of the struggle of countries in the Global South to escape from colonial rule and from neo-colonial global power relations. In parallel, post-colonial thought critiques the Northern and Western-centrism of what passes for global knowledge, distrusting particularistic knowledge forms that pretend to a universal understanding and reach and, instead, seek to bring back pluriversal thinking. Crucially, an anti-colonialist paradigm focuses on dismantling global structures of domination – in thought, language, action, suggesting that political and conceptual work is needed, constantly, to challenge the powerful legacies of the colonial past. This bias is as present in social work as it is in other disciplines and practices, eroding the memory and relevance of alternative traditions and practices. Alongside geo-political colonisation there were parallel processes of the colonisation of madness, childhood, sexuality, poverty, gender, disability and old age. In all of these examples, the dominant powers use the same, or similar, patterns of subordinating, even erasing, ‘The Other’, through disciplines of care and control that involve oppression and exploitation. Crucially, the planet, and its finite resources, are being colonised for profit through unfettered extractivist productivism. Social work's emergence as a profession was deeply implicated in social Darwinism and eugenics, trends that have re-emerged in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding global inequality as a phenomenon deriving from colonialism, imperialism and capitalism, this course seeks to address the prosepcts for a decolnial social work, a social work otherise, a social work of the South and the ways these can and should be reflected in social work education, training and rpactice. How can international documents (conventions, treaties etc.) be used to combat the colonialist paradigm? What kinds of alternative understandings of the relationship between people and nature exist and how can these be used as part of the anti-colonial struggle? What are some of the colonising and de-colonising effects of international efforts in social work? How can indigenous wisdom, local and hidden intelligence and skills, be preserved and built upon? How can patriarchal values be turned off and around, providing the openings for values of care, solidarity and kindness? Can minor subversions of social work contribute to major changes?

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Metadaten
Author:Robel Afeworki Abay, Tanja Kleibl, Nikos Xypolytas
Persistent identifier:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354735732_Anti-Colonial_Perspectives_in_Social_Work_Social_Policy_and_Beyond
Parent Title (German):Decoloniality, Social Policy and Social Work
Document Type:Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Year of publication:2021
Release Date:2024/03/15
Institutes and faculty:Fakultäten / Fakultät Angewandte Sozialwissenschaften
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