scholarly journals Reply to “Do We Always Practice What We Preach? Real Vampires’ Fears of Coming Out of the Coffin to Social Workers and Helping Professionals.”

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Laycock
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Cultural Authority ◽  
Helping Professionals ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Critical Social Work ◽  
Established Order ◽  
Critical Social

This reply analyzes criticism of the article “Do We Always Practice What We Preach?  Real Vampires’ Fears of Coming Out of the Coffin to Social Workers and Helping Professionals” published in Critical Social Work (2015), 16(1) by DJ Williams and Emily E. Prior. That article was widely publicized and received a seemingly disproportionate amount of criticism from both religious and secular voices. This reply applies Peter Berger’s notion of anomie to suggest that critics of the article felt threatened by the implications of tolerating emerging identity claims, such as those made by self-identified vampires. By attacking Williams and Prior as unreasonable, these critics suggest that an individual’s ontological status is taken-for-granted rather than socially constructed. Paradoxically, their protests also suggest an awareness that ontological status actually is socially constructed and that helping professionals, such as Williams and Prior, are imbued with cultural authority that can alter the established order. This reply suggests that the ontological threat presented by helping professionals is what is actually at stake in these critiques. Critiquing the article appears to be not only a call for the continued medicalization of self-identified vampires as deviant, but more importantly a strategy of repressing the realization that norms are socially constructed and therefore susceptible to change.

scholarly journals The Intrepid Elective

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2/3) ◽  
pp. 708-729
Author(s):  
Alexis Jemal ◽  
Jenna Frasier
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Social Work Education ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Critical Social Work ◽  
Work Education ◽  
Critical Social

The field of social work has a professional and ethical commitment to social justice. However, scholars have identified potential dangers that may threaten that commitment. To transform dangers into opportunities that strengthen social justice service, schools of social work could incorporate critical pedagogy within the Master of Social Work (MSW) curriculum. By training future social workers in critical social work practice, social work education becomes an advocate for marginalized populations. If not educated from an anti-oppressive framework, social workers have the potential to harm, oppress, and control rather than support and serve. The weight of this responsibility and firsthand social work education experiences led to the development and implementation of an elective course in critical social work informed by the Critical Transformative Potential Development (CTPD) Framework. The course follows a method that puts the CTPD theory into practice to bridge the micro-macro divide by engaging students in actively dismantling ideologies and practices of dominance. The course aims to produce anti-oppressive social workers who can better navigate social justice terrain. A student’s perspective on the course highlights strengths and areas for improvement. Future iterations of this class or similar courses of study could be adapted by and adopted for other social work education institutions. Because social work education is fertile ground to plant seeds that will grow social workers rooted in anti-racism and anti-White supremacy, there is the opportunity, with a radical education, to transform the field in a critical direction, better prepared to overcome the social justice challenges of the era.

scholarly journals Reframing Spirituality, Reconceptualizing Change: Possibilities for Critical Social Work

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michèle Butot
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Individual Change ◽  
The Past ◽  
Critical Social Work ◽  
Spiritual Issues ◽  
Critical Social

This article examines the possibilities and potential of spirituality in critical social work, both in relevant literature and in the views of participants in a research inquiry undertaken over the past two years. My purpose is twofold: first, to explore how critical conceptualizations of spirituality might alter the ways in which social workers frame social and individual change; and second, to suggest that it is imperative for critical social work to address spiritual issues.

scholarly journals The Education of Social Assistants in Portugal: Trends in Critical thinking

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cláudia Mônica dos Santos ◽  
Alcina Maria de Castro Martins
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Professional Education ◽  
First Century ◽  
Critical Social Work ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Critical Social

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to highlight critical influences on professional education in the twenty-first century, in Portugal. It contextualizes social work by highlighting critical inheritances in the education of social workers. It then looks at critical trends in the current education of social workers. It finds that so-called Critical Social Work encompasses different and diverging trends, which are quite diluted in Portugal, expressed by a limited number of professors and individualized methods.

A Case for Critical Social Work Action

2019 ◽  
Vol 100 (3) ◽  
pp. 248-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lia Levin ◽  
Adaya Liberman
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Main Part ◽  
Training And Education ◽  
Pedagogical Action ◽  
Inhibiting Factors ◽  
Critical Social Work ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Social

Despite critical social work’s (CSW) growing popularity, its praxes and associated policies have thus far remained largely discursive. This situation can be attributed to several factors, including social workers’ attitudes, training, and education and the nature of the systems and organizations employing them. In this article, we contend that besides these viable inhibiting factors, CSW has yet to become a widely used praxis as a result of some of its intrinsic characteristics and the encounter between them and the social work profession. The main part of this article offers guiding principles for promoting critical social work action (CSWA). These principles, which are largely based upon and inspired by fundamentals of Paulo Freire’s genuine pedagogical action, include dialectic practice and policy-making; impatient patience; exemption from neutrality; redefining rationality; humanization, liberation, and transformation; and the formulation of alternatives to silence.

Anticipated Alienation and Critical Social Work: Ex-Offenders’ Perspectives on Re-entry

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adi Barak ◽  
Amy Stebbins
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Halfway House ◽  
Minority Communities ◽  
Qualitative Research Study ◽  
Critical Social Work ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Critical Social

Abstract The criminal justice system constrains social workers’ ability to practice critical social work. Given the increased rates of re-entry from prison into disenfranchised, minority communities in the USA, knowledge about re-entry should be made available to social workers wishing to assist those who suffer from extreme marginalisation and oppression during re-entry. In this qualitative research study, we interviewed American male halfway house residents (N = 21) in the lead-up to their release about their perspectives on returning to their communities of origin, settling into other communities and meeting individuals from outside of their immediate social networks. Our results demonstrate that research participants anticipated experiencing social alienation in all three domains. Our discussion contextualises these findings within two dimensions of critical social work: critical consciousness and critical social policy.

Drowning In Neoliberal Lies: State Responses Towards People Seeking Asylum

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 908-925
Author(s):  
Belinda A Green
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Cultural Logic ◽  
Social Work Educators ◽  
Critical Social Work ◽  
The Social ◽  
Work Education ◽  
State Responses ◽  
Critical Social

Abstract This article argues that further enhancement of critical social work education and practice is needed to counter politicised and restrictive policies towards people seeking asylum in advanced globalised market economies. This means social workers giving more emphasis and prominence to the role of neoliberalism rather than solely focusing on the adverse moral and mental health impacts of state responses. Drawing on current debates and practices within critical social work and seven years’ experience in the Australian refugee sector, this article will demonstrate the punitive and deterrent configurations adopted by states like Australia to respond to people seeking asylum. The article then highlights the importance of social workers critically analysing historicised discourses which normalise such people as ‘dangerous’, ‘illegitimate’, ‘othered’ and a ‘burden’. Further interrogation of the social and cultural logic(s) of neoliberalism which serve to justify the former discourses will also be included. Finally, reflections on a range of strategies and solutions will be presented for critical social work educators and practitioners to resist and subvert neoliberalism and to secure better outcomes for people seeking asylum in Australia and elsewhere.

Applying critical social work in direct practice with families

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Idit Weiss-Gal ◽  
Lia Levin ◽  
Michal Krumer-Nevo
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Direct Practice ◽  
Critical Social Work ◽  
Critical Social
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