Hegemonic discourses and ideologies of social work in South Africa, arose from the
racist capitalism of colonialism and apartheid. Imperatives for social justice and
social change therefore require that social work education reflect on and develop
discourses of radical and critical knowledge and practice. The main aim of the study
was to explore the extent to which South African social work knowledge and
education, as reflected in various formal and narrative discourses, meets critical
imperatives for social change and transformation. The study was qualitative in
nature, using a depth-hermeneutic approach, with various interrelated, coherent
empirical processes. These include reviewing extant theory to contribute to a
framework of knowledge and practice constitutive of social change, conducting a
politically engaged, critical thematic analysis of social work discourse constitutive of
social change, as reflected historically in a selection of formal South African social
work texts and in the narratives from group conversations among South African
social work educators. Early South African social work knowledge and practice had
emerged from the ‘social hygiene’ and eugenics movement, but later, Afrikaner
nationalist ideology and liberal and racist capitalism shaped social work. In postapartheid
South Africa, discourses of social development and reform within a free
market rational economy; ideologies of liberalism and capitalism as solutions to
structural social problems, neo-liberal discourses of individual responsibility and
valorisation of agency, social control and regulation, are prevalent. Social work
knowledge and practice consistently supported hegemonic ideologies of the state.
Throughout the history of social work however, there was evidence of counterhegemonic,
radical and critical discourse, albeit suppressed and hidden. Knowledge
and practice constitutive of social change can be positioned on a continuum from
oppressive, domesticating and colonizing knowledge and practice, to coercion and
status quo maintenance, to institutional and societal reformist knowledge and
practice; to transformational and critical knowledge and practice; and to radical and
revolutionary knowledge and practice.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/12875 |
| Date | 23 July 2013 |
| Creators | Harms Smith, Linda |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf |
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