ABSTRACT
The Routledge Handbook of Postcolonial Social Work reflects on and dissects the challenging issues confronting social work practice and education globally in the post-colonial era. By analysing how countries in the so-called developing and developed world have navigated some of the inherited systems from the colonial era, it shows how they have used them to provide relevant social work methods which are also responsive to the needs of a postcolonial setting.
This is an analytical and reflexive handbook that brings together different scholars from various parts of the world – both North and South – so as to distill ideas from scholars relating to ways that can advance social work of the South and critique social work of the North in so far as it is used as a template for social work approaches in postcolonial settings. It determines whether and how approaches, knowledge-bases, and methods of social work have been indigenised and localised in the Global South in the postcolonial era.
This handbook provides the reader with multiple new theoretical approaches and empirical experiences and creates a space of action for the most marginalised communities worldwide. It will be of interest to researchers and practitioners, as well as those in social work education.
Introduction: setting the scene for critical new social work approaches in the neoliberal postcolonial era (Tanja Kleibl & Ndangwa Noyoo); Section I; Postcolonial Social Work: Perspectives and Approaches; Introduction: Postcolonial Social Work. Perspectives and Approaches (Tanja Kleibl); 1. Colonisation as collective trauma: fundamental perspectives for social work (Francine Masson and Linda Smith); 2. The relevance of Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire for a postcolonial education politics (Peter Mayo); 3. Colonialism and the colonisation of childhood in the light of postcolonial theory (Manfred Liebel); 4. Social work co-option and colonial borders (Linda Briskman); 5. Development. A postcolonial approach (Ronald Lutz); 6. Towards a decolonial feminist approach to social work education and practice (Roxane Caron and Edward Ou Jin Lee); Section II; Postcolonial social work and social movements; Introduction: Postcolonial social work and social movements; (Benjamin Bunk); 7. Conceptualizing the relation of postcolonial social work and social movements: subaltern answers from within exclusion and the theoretical ambivalence between postcolonial critique and social work practice (Benjamin Bunk); 8. Orientations from social movements: a postcolonial feminist perspective on human trafficking and social work (Anne C. Deepak); 9. Epistemic decoloniality as a pedagogical movement: a turn to anticolonial theorists such as Fanon, Biko and Freire (Linda Harms Smith); 10. Heterogenity within social movements: a reflection on pre, post, anti, and decolonial feminisms and womanisms emerging from Africa (Shahana Rasool); 11. Collective learning in and from social movements: the Bhopal Disaster survivors (Eurig Scandrett); 12. Social movements as pedagogical spaces: „Só lixo – just waste". The transformation of normative orientations under conditions of change between biographical plausibility and social evidence in Brazilian recycling cooperatives; (Benjamin Bunk); Section III; Indigenisation; Introduction: Indigenisation (Ronald Lutz); 13. Latin American social work as part of the struggles against professional imperialism (Gianinna Muñoz Arce); 14. We are beauty and we walk in it: Native American women in leadership roles (Hilary Weaver); 15. Liberation from mental colonisation: a case study of the indigenous people of Palestine (Mazin B. Qumsiyeh and Amani I. Amro); 16. Border thinking and social work in practice – is it possible? A deconstructive perspective of a case example (Anna Pfaffenstaller and Jacques Love Babatoundé Zannou); 17. Whose society, whose work? Seeking decolonised social work in Nepal (Mel Gray and Raj Kumar Yadav); 18. The relevance and purpose of social work in Aboriginal Australia – post- or decolonisation (Dawn Bessarab and Michael Wright); 19. Women’s empowerment: unravelling the cultural incompatibility myth in Zimbabwe (Rose Jaji and Tanja Kleibel); 20. Pushing for autonomous African development (Ndangwa Noyoo); Section IV; Case studies and innovation from Africa; Introduction: Postcolonial social work in Africa (Ndangwa Noyoo); 21. Decolonising social work practice and social work education in postcolonial Africa (Ndangwa Noyoo); 22. Social work with communities in Uganda: indigenous and innovative approaches (Janestic M. Twikirize); 23. Social work in Southern Africa in the postcolonial era: rekindling debate on the quest for relevance(Rodreck Mupedziswa); 24. Postcolonial dimensions of social work in Central African Republic and its impact on the life of hunter-gatherer children and youth – a critical perspective (Urszula Markowska-Manista); 25. A collaborative partnership as an effective model of foster care – a case from Alexandra Township in South Africa (Boitumelo Khothatso Seepamore and N. Seepamore); 26. Complementary and indigenous practices for advancing social work with vulnerable communities in South Africa (Yasmin Turton ); 27. Decolonisation of community development in South Africa (Kefilwe Johanna Ditlhake); 28. The search for relevance: social work supervision in a social development approach in South Africa (Mpumelelo Ncube and Ndangwa Noyoo); Conclusions; Problems, challenges and the way forward in accepting and thinking postcolonial within social work systems (Tanja Kleibl, Ronald Lutz, Ndangwa Noyoo, Boitumelo Seepamore, Annika Dittmann and Benjamin Bunk); Index
