Three Concepts of the International Flow of Social Work Practice in an Egyptian Context

Abstract

Within the context of the continuously 25 January 2011 Egyptian Youth Revolution, an urgent need has arose to re-read, re-cast and re-structure the available knowledge in relation to the current Egyptian Life Parameters (ELPs; e.g. Dix, 1984), because the current ELPs have proved useless and failed to achieve what the Egyptian people have been hoping. Research has sought to re-understand the significance of youth to public discourse in Egypt. It found that Egyptian youth exceeded the conceptual categories of social scientists and Western observers, definitively demonstrating youth as subjects and agents of history (El Shakry, 2011). The current article is another example of this urgently needed revolutionary re-reading, re-casting, and understanding. It introduces new and innovative concepts such as transmission (transplantation) in relation to international flow of social work practice. It refuses the concept of “professional imperialism” as the only way of understanding this process. It also introduces and detailes the non-traditional authentization (e.g., to follow four steps). It clarifies how the three concepts of transmission (transplantation), authentization, and indigenization originated and produces a unique understanding of these three concepts that have been already differentiated from what has been found in the previous literature related to these concepts.

Keywords:

• Social work practice
• Egypt
• transmission
• transplantation
• authentization
• indigenization
• international social work