Pioneras del Trabajo Social: Políticas de género, racialización y conocimiento en la disciplina

Recuperar la historia de las trabajadoras sociales es un ejercicio de justicia epistémica que puede contribuir a repensar la identidad profesional de la disciplina. A través de un recorrido histórico con perspectiva feminista, este artículo analiza cómo las políticas de género y racialización han guiado las políticas de conocimiento. Atendemos a los procesos de segregación sexual disciplinar en la institucionalización de la ciencia social: entre una sociología teórico-académica, masculinizada y legitimada, y su cara práctico-aplicada, feminizada y desvalorizada, convertida en trabajo social. Así mismo, mostramos las estrategias y negociaciones de las pioneras articulando, desde centros sociales como la Hull House, la investigación sociológica con la reforma sociopolítica. En concreto, presentamos los aportes teórico-prácticos de las pioneras del trabajo social, principalmente en Estados Unidos, centrándonos en: Edith Abbott y Sophonisba Breckinridge, por su papel en la institucionalización de la disciplina, y en las trabajadoras sociales afroamericanas, por la invisibilización de sus experiencias y resistencias.

Feminist-Pragmatist Reflections on the Filial Obligations of a Filipina American Daughter

In this essay, I reflect on the contradictions that arise from a personal experience of conflict with my father and the clash of traditional Filipino gender norms in the context of the practice of name changes within the institution of marriage and intersecting feminist critiques of patriarchy. My understanding of the Tagalog amor propio is self-love or self-pride within Filipino culture and signifies one's authority, place, and meaning in the community. As a concept of authority, amor propio encourages practices of respect toward the authority figure. In the context of the home, amor propio is attributed to the father, and members of the family ought to respect his amor propio. This essay examines my own conflicted relationship with my father and my attempts to navigate the complex terrain of amor propio, as a Filipina, feminist/peminist, dutiful daughter. Filipino immigrant families face distinct challenges within family life owing to globalization, colonialism, and racism, so I find Jane Addams's social ethics of filial relations helpful in framing the tension between individual and social claims within the specific cultural values expected of Filipina women as dutiful daughters. Addams's feminist social sensibilities in her work at Hull House were attuned to the plight of daughters and the conflicting claims of the family emergent within the crowded immigrant neighborhoods in Chicago. She was able to articulate and sympathetically understand the generational divide within immigrant families at Hull House and sought to bridge these differences within the context of the family. I reflect on her work in my own experience as a dutiful Filipina daughter.

The French maisons sociales, Chicago’s Hull-House scheme and their influence in Portugal

This chapter traces the transnational translation of the settlement house model from the UK and the USA to France and from there to Portugal. The French settlement houses, maisons sociales, that emerged at the end of the 19th Century were influenced by social Catholicism and feminism. They also shared commonalities with, and exhibited divergences from the UK and US settlement house models. While residence, research and engagement in professional training were common, research in the maisons sociales was, unlike in the USA, not a means to further social policies but rather to enhance scientific knowledge. In the mid-1930s, the settlement house model was adopted in Portugal under the aegis of the single-party regime of the Estado Novo. Of the two organisations that engaged in the establishment of settlement houses in Portugal in the following decades, the Institute of Social Work in Lisbon (ISS) was strongly influenced by the French maisons sociales and by social Catholicism.