The Tensions between Culture and Human Rights

Emancipatory Social Work and Afrocentricity in a Global World

Vishanthie Sewpaul, Linda Kreitzer, Tanusha Raniga, Vishanthie Sewpaul, Linda Kreitzer, Tanusha Raniga

• Publisher: University of Calgary Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781773851822
• eBook ISBN: 9781773851853
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Cultural practices have the potential to cause human suffering. The Tensions between Culture and Human Rights critically interrogates the relationship between culture and human rights across Africa and offers strategies for pedagogy and practice that social workers and educators may use.

Drawing on Afrocentricity and emancipatory social work as antidotes to colonial power and dehumanization, this collection challenges cultural practices that violate human rights, and the dichotomous and taken-for-granted assumptions in the cultural representations between the West and the Rest of the world. Engaging critically with cultural traditions while affirming Indigenous knowledge and practices, it is unafraid to deal frankly with uncomfortable truths. Each chapter explores a specific aspect of African cultural norms and practices and their impacts on human rights and human dignity, paying special attention to the intersections of politics, economics, race, class, gender, and cultural expression.

Going beyond analysis, this collection offers a range of practical approaches to understanding and intervention rooted in emancipatory social work. It offers a pathway to develop critical reflexivity and to reframe epistemologies for education and practice. This is essential reading not only for students and practitioners of social work, but for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of African cultures and practices.

Table of contents

• Culture, Human Rights, and Social Work: Colonialism, Eurocentricism, and Afrocentricity
• Disrupting Popular Discourses on Ilobolo: The Role of Emancipatory Social Work in Engendering Human Rights and Social Justice
• Nigerian Marital Cultural Practices and Implications for Human Rights
• Socio-Cultural Constructions of Intensive Mothering and Othermothering: Domestic Workers’ Experiences of Distance Parenting and their Conceptualization of Motherhood
• Misrecognition of the Rights of People with Epilepsy in Zimbabwe: A Social Justice Perspective
• Harmful Cultural Practices against Women and Girls in Ghana: Implications for Human Rights and Social Work
• The Intersection of Culture, Religion (Islam), and Women’s Human Rights in Ethiopia: Private Lives in Focus
• The Implications of a Patriarchal Culture for Women’s Access to “Formal” Human Rights in South Africa: A Case Study of Domestic Violence Survivors
• Child Marriage Among the Apostolic Sects in Zimbabwe: Implications for Social Work Practice
• “Everybody Here Knows This, If You Want to Go to School then You Must Be Prepared to Work”: Children’s Rights and the Role of Social Work in Ghana
• Human Rights and Medicalization of FGM/C in Sudan
• Cultural Dimensions of HIV/AIDS and Gender-Based Violence: A Case of Alur and Tieng Adhola Cultural Institutions in Uganda
• When National Law and Culture Coalesce: Challenges for Children’s Rights in Botswana with Specific Reference to Corporal Punishment
• Emancipatory Social Work, Ubuntu, and Afrocentricity: Antidotes to Human Rights Violations