Decolonising and Reimagining Social Work in Africa

Alternative Epistemologies and Practice Models

Sharlotte Tusasiirwe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781032202600
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000907605
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores contemporary debates on decolonisation and indigenisation of social work in Africa and provides readers with alternative models, values, and epistemologies for reimagining social work practice and education that can be applicable to a wide range of countries struggling with similar concerns.
It examines how indigenisation without decolonisation is just tokenistic since it is concerned with adapting, modifying Western models to fit local contexts or generating local models to integrate into the already predominantly contextually irrelevant and culturally inappropriate mainstream Western social work in Africa.
By exploring decolonisation, which calls for dismantling colonialism and colonial thinking to create central space for indigenous social work as mainstream social work, especially in Africa, it goes beyond tokenistic decolonisation to articulate some of the indigenous social work practice and social policy models, values, ethics, and oral epistemologies that should take centre stage as locally relevant and culturally appropriate social work in Africa. It also addresses the question of decolonising research methodologies, highlighting some of the methods embedded in African indigenous perspectives for adoption when researching African social work.
The book has been written with both the coloniser/colonised in mind and it will be of interest to all social work academics, students and practitioners, and others interested in gaining insights into how colonisation persists in social work and why it is necessary to find ways to disrupt it.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figure
• Introduction
• 1 Social work in Africa: History and contemporary issues
• 2 Examining approaches proposed to free social work from Western colonial dominance: Indigenisation and decolonisation
• 3 African cultural traditions and decolonising research
• 4 Decolonising social work practice: Indigenous community models, their principles, and applicability
• 5 Decolonising values and ethics of social work: Conceptualising Obuntu-led social work values and ethics
• 6 Decolonising social policy
• 7 Orature (proverbs and stories): Decolonising epistemologies
• 8 Furthering the decolonisation project
• Index