Undoing privilege in Western social work: implications for critically-reflective practice in China

Abstract

Critical reflection is promoted by many Western social work writers as a process for facilitating practitioners' capacity to reflect upon their complicity in dominant power relations. However, the Western social work literature tends to focus on those who are disadvantaged, oppressed and excluded. Those who are privileged in relation to gender, class, race and sexuality, etc. are often ignored. Given that the flipside of oppression and social exclusion is privilege, the lack of critical reflection on the privileged side of social divisions allows members of dominant groups to reinforce their dominance. This article interrogates the concept of privilege, as it is manifested in the West and examines how it is internalized in the psyches of members of dominant groups. Chinese readers are invited to consider how this concept may be relevant to social workers in China. The article concludes by encouraging social work educators in both the West and the non-West, to engage in critical reflections about privilege when teaching social work students about social injustice and oppression.

许多西方社会工作学者皆认为批判性反思是一个重要的过程以助实践者反思他们与权力宰制的共犯。可是，西方社会工作文献倾向聚焦于弱势、被压迫和被排挤的群体，往往忽视了在性别、阶级、种族和性倾向等方面有特权的群​​体。特权其实就是压迫和社会排斥的另一面，缺乏对社会分化中特权一方进行批判性反思，意味允许宰制群体强化了他们的宰制。本文质疑西方显明的‘特权’概念，审视它如何根植于特权群体的灵魂。作者邀请中国读者思考这个概念与中国社会工作者的关连性。本文鼓励西方和非西方的社会工作教育者在教导社会工作学生有关社会不公和压迫的时候，加入对特权的批判性反思。

Keywords::

• critical reflection
• privilege
• intersectionality
• internalized dominance
• complicity

Acknowledgements

The writing of this article has benefitted from discussions I had with the social work staff at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and local social workers who attended the seminars on privilege and engaging men in pro-feminist practice that I presented there in April 2013.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. For a more detailed and in-depth critical analysis of privilege in the six intersecting areas of Western dominance, class elitism, white supremacy, patriarchy, hetero-privilege and ableism, see Pease 2010.