Disrupting Whiteness in Social Work

Focussing on the epistemic – the way in which knowledge is understood,constructed,transmitted and used – this book shows the way social workknowledge has been constructed from within a white western paradigm, andthe need for a critique of whiteness within social work at this epistemic level.Social work, emerging from the western Enlightenment world, has privilegedwhite western knowledge in ways that have been, until recently, largely unexaminedwithin its professional discourse. This imposition of white westernways of knowing has led to a corresponding marginalisation of other formsof knowledge. Drawing on views from social workers from Asia, the Pacificregion, Africa, Australia and Latin America, this book also includes a glossaryof over 40 commonly used social work terms, which are listed with their epistemologicalassumptions identified. Opening up a debate about the receivedwisdom of much social work language as well as challenging the epistemologicalassumptions behind conventional social work practice, this book will beof interest to all scholars and students of social work as well as practitionersseekingto develop genuinely decolonised forms of practice.