Moving away from globalization and the “flattening” of Social Work: Preserving Context in International Efforts

Abstract

Contextual awareness has been a professional trademark and has differentiated social work intervention from other professions. Context in social work has traditionally included tangible and intangible factors such as an intimate understanding of the cultural milieu, familiarity with local history, languages, traditions, and sensibilities. The current concern is that given the forces of globalization and managerialism, social work practice and education in many countries have distanced themselves from addressing context in curriculum building and have become mechanistic in program design and delivery. This paper contrasts the concepts of internationalization and globalization. The authors concur with the perspective that the movement to globalize society was the result of economic forces and unfortunately spread into culturally embedded fields such as social work. They propose that globalization in social work has changed the direction of former efforts at internationalization, which were designed primarily to develop cross-national perspectives on human experiences. After a review of current trends in globalization, the authors offer cautionary words about well-intended efforts that can easily become educational frameworks imposed from the outside, with the power of disrupting cultures.

Una lúcida conciencia del contexto en el que se practica ha sido el sello diferencial del trabajo social como profesión. En el trabajo social, el contexto incluye factores tangibles e intangibles tales como la comprensión íntima del medioambiente cultural, familiaridad con la historia local, el lenguaje, tradiciones y sensibilidades un pueblo. La preocupación de los autores es que a causa de la globalización y de tendencias administrativas gestoras que dominan ahora a la profesión, la práctica y la educación en el trabajo social en muchos países no se enfocan más en el contexto. El currículo de enseñanza se ha hecho mecánico. Este estudio contrasta los conceptos de globalización e internacionalización. Los autores están de acuerdo que el movimiento de globalización en la sociedad contemporánea fue el resultado de fuerzas económicas que se extendieron a disciplinas como el trabajo social. Proponen que la globalización en el trabajo social ha transformado la dirección de esfuerzos anteriores a internacionalizar la profesión, que estaban basados en la creación de perspectivas cros nacionales sobre la experiencia humana. Tras la revisión de tendencias actuales hacia la globalización, los autores ofrecen palabras de cautela sugiriendo que a menudo estructuras ajenas a una profesión o una cultura acaban disrumpiendolas.

Keywords:

• globalization
• social work education
• technological changes
• hegemonies in social work
• risk management
• cultural change

Palabras claves:

• trabajo social internacional
• globalización
• educación para el trabajo social
• cambios tecnológicos
• hegemonías en el trabajo social
• administración mecanistica
• manejo del riesgo
• cambios culturales
• influencias del Occidente en el trajo social

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Emilia E. Martinez-Brawley is the John F. Roatch Distinguished Professor and Professor of Social Work at Arizona State University (ASU). She was Dean of the School of Social Work at ASU and professor at Penn State, La Salle, and Temple universities in Pennsylvania. She has done extensive international research and is the author of six books and numerous articles and chapters on international issues in social work practice and education. She has written on immigration and paradigms across cultures. She has been a Fulbright scholar in Britain, Spain, Australia, and Israel. She was trained in languages and in social work.

Paz M.-B. Zorita is Associate Professor at the School of Social Work of ASU. She practised social work in Spain and the USA. She taught at Pennsylvania State University and, since 1993, has taught at ASU. She directed many professional and academic seminars in Spain and in the USA. Her publications and teaching are focused on cultural diversity, Latin culture, family functioning, professional ethics, and the humanistic foundations of social work. She was a Fulbright scholar in the USA.

Notes

1. The 1948 Universal Declaration relied on an in-depth exploration of human nature across countries and on a conversation that drew upon the debates of the Pan American Declaration and the 1944 Statement of Essential Human Rights produced by the American Law Institute. The Latin American draft of the Pan American Declaration of human rights represented a synthesis of the Continental European and Anglo-American rights traditions. The thinking of these documents was supranational (Glendon, 2001):

This paper was developed from a presentation on Internacionalización vs. Globalización en la educación para el trabajo social: Implicaciones para el desarrollo de los programas de estudios at the Congreso Internacional de Facultades y Escuelas de Trabajo Social, Murcia, Spain, April 2014.