Social work indigenization in Mainland China: Towards a state-led decolonizing framework

Abstract

Summary

The tension between indigenizing versus internationalizing social work knowledge, resulting from local-specific sensitivity, has been a contemporary dispute in the Global South where there are diverse geo-historical backgrounds. This is the case in China, where the mainstream international narrative surrounding social work development has been configured by the normative values and knowledge of a Euromodern origin. Such misrepresentation rarely reflects indigenous voices from the local social work academy. Informed by Foucault’s thesis of power/knowledge, this article first compares the model of state social work in China and the world. Then, as a decolonizing project, a narrative review of 26 Chinese language articles was conducted.

Findings

Distinctive service and policy practices in the Chinese traditional helping system were identified to illustrate how western social work was ethnocentrically repositioned in the “post-socialist” China. These initiatives include micro-level “Civil Affairs” services, meso-level “mass work” practice, and macro-level “Minsheng” State and crossregional Pairing Aid Programs, which are rooted in the cultural (Confucianism), economical (socialist market economy), and political (Marxism) ecosystem in China.

Applications

Through an indigenized epistemological stance, a state-led anti-colonial framework is presented to unveil the making of social work indigenization and social welfare development that de-centers Eurocentric hegemony. To reorient social work knowledge apart from persistent neo-colonialism in the form of academic imperialism, social work development should be tailored into a locally responsive and geopolitically appropriate models in the non-western world.

Keywords

Social work critical social work Culturally sensitive,knowledge transfer cross-cultural social work history international social work constructivist

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