Is cultural sensitivity always a good thing? Arguments for a universalist social work

The requirement for social workers to be sensitive to cultural difference has now become accepted as an essential component of best practice – indeed, social workers failing to display sensitivity to cultural differences would most likely be seen to be in contravention of most professional ethics frameworks. However, closer scrutiny as to exactly how and to what degree one should display cultural sensitivity in practice reveals a complex set of ethical and philosophical dilemmas for social workers. This chapter is concerned with a discussion of these. The chapter concludes with a call for the reconstruction of a universalist ethics in social work, and offers Nussbaum and Sen’s ‘Capability Framework’ as offering a way in which this could be done in Social Work practice

Safeguarding or Surveillance?:Social Work, Prevent and Fundamentalist Violence

This paper seeks to critically explore the construction of the Prevent counter-terrorism initiative within Social Work in the UK, and to consider the implications this has for Social Work. We begin by discussing the conceptualisation of ‘radicalisation’ in the work of Arun Kundnani, one of the leading critics of Prevent, pointing to the limitations of this as a means of grasping the nature of Salafi-jihadi groupings. We then move to a discussion of the development of counter-terrorism policy in the UK, looking at the way the 2015 legislative guidance has re-situated radicalisation from a ‘security’ issue to a ‘safeguarding’ issue. We see this as significant for the way it has facilitated Social Work being directly drawn into the orbit of Prevent, with radicalisation being re-constructed as part of Social Work’s concern with the vulnerability of children and young people involved in wider forms of exploitation, including Child Sexual Exploitation. We consider the reception of this shift within Social Work as well as look at evidence into how this is working in practice. We then consider challenges to this ‘safeguarding’ paradigm, which argue that this has involved Social Work being drawn into the ideological monitoring of Muslim communities: a ‘surveillance’ paradigm. We conclude by arguing for a critical defence of a safeguarding approach based on the harms which fundamentalist violence clearly represents to children and young people

The intensification of neoliberalism and the commodification of human need – a social work perspective

The drive toward the commodification of human society was first explained by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto as a manifestation of the territorial expansion of capitalist relations across the globe. While this dimension of capitalist expansion continues apace, this paper discuses the further dimension of the way capitalist social relations are intensified in the contemporary period of neoliberal capitalism. This involves reconstruction of subjectivity in the context of the rolling back of the gains from the post-war Keynesian period. We take a critical look at the deployment of terms such as 'empowerment' and 'resilience' in policy discourses and the way these are being used to reconstruct the relationship between the state and citizenry in this period, and the impact this is having on UK Social Work

Social Work through the pedagogical lens of Jacques Ranciere

This chapter offers a discussion of the relevance of Jacques Ranciere's ideas to the theory and practice of Social Work. The chapter seeks to outlines Ranciere's theories of equality and of pedagogy and then apply these to social work practice

The Perils of Fundamentalism in France Interview with Caroline Fourest by Stephen Cowden

Caroline Fourest is a French feminist writer, film director, journalist, radio presenter at France Culture, and co-founder and editor of the magazine ProChoix. She has been a columnist with Charlie Hebdo and Le Monde and has written several influential essays on the political and religious right in France and the US. She is the author of a biography of the far-right politician Marine Le Pen and of a number of books including In Praise of Blasphemy: Why Charlie Hebdo is Not ‘Islamophobic’, Brother Tariq: the Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan and most recently The Offended Generation

Reconciling a Broken Heritage: Developing Mental Health Social Work in Guyana

Guyana’s colonial past has left a trail of economic instability, racial polarization, and physical and mental trauma. Despite the progress made since Guyana’s independence in 1966, the remnants of this colonial past continue to shape present-day Guyana. As a result, violence and trauma continue to impact the mental health of the population. This is manifest in endemic problems of domestic violence and racialized social divisions which have created the conditions for rates of suicide which are amongst the highest in the world. The formal mental health provision which exists in Guyana is based primarily on an individualized and largely biomedical model of care. Despite valuable attempts to develop this provision, the difficulty of physically accessing this for some people and the stigma which surround this means that the capacity of this system to address the serious problems which exist is limited. It is also the case that in times of emotional and psychic distress, and in the context of Guyana being a very religious country, many people turn to traditional supernatural healers and remedies for support. In this paper, we discuss what is known as “Obeah”, noting that while this is widely practiced, it remains something of a taboo subject in Guyana. We consider the reasons why these practices and beliefs continue to be influential. However, what neither these biomedical or supernatural perceptions of mental health are able to address is the sociogenic nature of Guyana’s mental health issues, which we argue emerges out of the historic trauma of Guyana’s experience of colonialism and the violence which it engendered. We argue that profound forms of mental distress which exist in Guyana call for an integrative and holistic practice model that contextualizes these problems through a sociogenic lens. Social workers, working collaboratively with other health-related professions, can occupy a critical role in integrating these different conceptions through developing a rights-based model of mental health where the causes of mental ill-health are understood as socially determined