Power knowledge in social work: educating social workers to practice racial justice

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes and interrogates knowledge-production practices in contemporary social work research and practice through the lens of Michel Foucault’s concept of power-knowledge. As a regime of power, social work produces forms of knowledge that stratify human subjects along the social fabric. As a result, social work practice and research alike can perpetuate binaries of human existence expressive of the Western context which fashioned it. To reconcile a contemporary social work professional logic saturated in white supremacy with a longstanding ethical mandate for social justice, this investigation concludes with practice and pedagogical recommendations informed by an anti-racist theoretical framework.

KEYWORDS:

• Social work
• racial justice
• Foucault
• power knowledge
• anti-racism
• decolonization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).