Chapter 10
Achieving human rights
through social work
practice
The previous chapters, in exploring various aspects of human rights
and the implications of seeing social work as a human rights profession, have touched on many important practice issues in relation
to social work. The issues are not new. Ethics, social control, the
place of policy and advocacy, professionalism, the role of expertise,
linking the personal and the politicat cultural relativism, need definition, empowerment and so on are all familiar and are frequently
contested within social work. In the preceding chapters, however,
they have arisen not out of a consideration of social work per se but
rather out of a discussion of human rights and the possible implications of a human rights approach to practice. Various social work
practice principles emerged from these discussions, and the purpose
of this chapter is to bring these together in order to derive an overall
picture of human rights-based social work. This will be done around
three organising themes: theoretical foundations, empowennent and
contextual/universal issues. 215
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Theoretical foundations
Before moving to more directly practice-oriented aspects of social
work, it is important to examine some other more ‘theoretical’
issues that are implied by the discussions of earlier chapters. These
represent important foundations for human rights practice.
Praxis
The idea of ‘praxis’ (Freire 1996) is that theory and practice, or
learning and doing, cannot be separated. It is through theory/
reflection that we develop practice/action, and at the same time
it is through practice/action that we develop theory/reflection. We
learn by doing and we do by learning. Praxis is therefore about both
knowledge and action: knowledge without action would be sterile,
ungrounded and irrelevant, and action without knowledge would be
anti-intellectual, uninformed and usually dangerous. Social work,
however, has frequently seen theory and practice as separate (Pease
& Fook 1999), as is seen in lengthy and tortuous discussions about
how the two can be linked; such discussions would be unnecessary
in a truly praxis-based understanding of social work.
The discussion of human rights in earlier chapters showed a
clear and necessary link between theory and practice: to talk about
human rights means to talk both theory and practice at the same
time and to be constantly weighing each in terms of the other. This
is one of the important contributions that social work can make.
Because of its grounding in the world of day-to-day practice, it cannot afford theoretical formulations that are not similarly grounded
in lived reality. A human rights perspective allows for, and indeed
requires, such a praxis formulation. It is for that reason that this
book has not attempted to separate theoretical exploration from
discussion of practice; one can only be true to a praxis perspective
by talking about the two together.
The praxis orientation also means that there can be no clear
separation between social work education and social work practice.
Social work education can only occur effectively if the student is
able to ground her/his learning in practice and to develop both
‘practice sldlls’ and ‘theoretical understanding’ at the same time,
as effectively the same process. And similarly, social work practice
can only occur in an environment of ongoing learning that does not
stop on graduation day. Social workers are constantly learning and
reformulating their world-views and approaches to practice, as a
direct consequence of their day-to-day work. They are formulating
theories (‘grounded theories’ in research terminology; see Strauss
& Corbin 1990) and acting as researcher/practitioners, not in the
social engineering sense in which that term is sometimes used, but
in the sense of collaborative inquiry. How this is achieved will be
discussed in later sections of this chapter.
Morality
Social work is an essentially moral activity, as it is based on values and on conceptions of right and wrong (though social workers
will not often use these terms). Social workers make difficult moral
judgments, which are often couched in terms of ‘ethics’ or ‘values’
but which require some form of moral reasoning. Hence it is necessary for social workers to have some capacity to engage with difficult
moral dilemmas, to undertake some form of moral argument, and
to make essentially moral decisions.
A human rights perspective provides a framework within which
such moral reasoning and decision-making can take place. The discursive nature of human rights enables a social worker to move
away from the traps of moral absolutism, where ‘right’ and ‘wrong’
are clearly spelled out in an unchangeable moral code, and to feel
more comfortable in the less certain world of postmodernity. This
does not mean, however, that such decision-making by social workers is not strong and robust. One of the characteristics of a human
rights discourse is that the values of human rights are strongly and
passionately felt, and framing values in terms of human rights provides a more powerful base for action than mere abstract ‘armchair’
moral reasoning.
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A human rights perspective also requires that a social worker
not just make decisions in isolation purely on the basis of ‘what
seems right at the time’ – this is the lonely existential decision of
Bauman’s postmodern ethics (Bauman 1993). Rather, it requires
that the worker be able to think through issues of morality and,
more importantly, be able to do so collaboratively with those with
whom he/she has contact. The social worker is a moral agent but,
because of the very nature of social work, not a lonely, isolated one.
It is in a social worker’s capacity to engage other actors in moral
decision-making that the social worker’s effectiveness as a human
rights worker can be judged.
Passion
As suggested above, human rights-based social work is not simply
a case of careful and sterile ‘thinking through’ of moral issues, in a
disinterested academic way. Human rights are something to get passionate about, and indeed they are worth getting passionate about.
Social work is driven not only by careful analysis (important and
necessary though that is) but also by a passion to make the world
a better place, an outrage at injustice and oppression, and a commitment to change. Human rights are important, and historically
have been important enough for people to die for; they cannot be
classified simply as an academic or philosophical problem. Social
work that is based on human rights must thus find a place for the
passion that inevitably goes with ideas of human rights.
The idea, therefore, of a social worker as a detached professional
‘intervening in systems’ (Pincus & Minahan 1976; Compton &
Calaway 1999) on the basis of research-generated knowledge is
not enough. Social work need not apologise that it is driven
some of the noblest ideals of a shared humanity; indeed, it should
pride itself on this heritage. Social workers need not feel guilty
about feeling passionate about the cause of human rights, or outraged at the continued violation of human rights that is evident to
them every day in their practice. The task for social workers is not
to deny the passion and the rage but to channel them into effective
action that makes a difference. It is often by maintaining their rage,
and their vision of a better world, that social workers are able to
keep working in oppressive and dehumanising structures.
Maintaining a passion is therefore an important part of human
rights-based social work. But it is often too easy for the passion
to fade, as the task seems just too hard and as the organisational
demands of social work practice take over more of the worker’s
available energy. For this reason, it is important for a social worker
to remind her/himself of the reasons for choosing social work as
a profession, and to find ways of maintaining a sense of vision,
purpose and passion.
Different workers will go about this in different ways, but it
is often through the inspiration of the example of others that this
can be achieved. The struggles of people such as Aung San Suu
Kyi, Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel, Xanana Gusmao and Martin
Luther King have served as a continuing inspiration for many people committed to social change, including many social workers.
Such examples are compelling and powerful motivators, as is the
work of poets, artists, writers, musicians and film-makers. For anyone concerned with human rights there are many such sources of
inspiration, waiting to be tapped.
But for social workers, in addition, there is the example of many
of the people with whom they come into contact in the course
of their day-to-day work: the parents who are struggling against
all the odds in a severely disadvantaged environment to bring up
their children with values of caring, sharing and social justice; the
carers of people with disabilities from young children with severe
intellectual disability to elderly relatives with worsening dementia –
who are sacrificing so much; the community activists who are committing all their spare time to make their local neighbourhood a
safe, friendly and caring environment; the refugee family that has
battled persecution in one country and persistent racism in another;
the parents who work long hours for low wages to ensure a good
education for their children. One of the privileges of being a social
worker is that it brings one constantly into contact with people
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whose commitment, determination and self-sacrifice provide a daily
lesson in human rights and their importance; from such people one
can learn about human rights, and the day-to-day experience of
human rights, in a way that will never come simply from reading
or academic discussions.
Ideology
The human rights perspective outlined in earlier chapters clearly
has ideological implications. The notion of citizenship obligations,
which goes alongside citizenship rights, implies a form of collectivism: we not only have rights we can claim and exercise, but we
have an obligation to exercise those rights and to ensure that the
rights of others are fully realised (Stapleton 1995). Thus there is
an imperative to see oneself not as an isolated individual seeking
to maximise personal gain, if necessary at the expense of others,
but rather as someone who is in a relationship of inter-dependency
with others, through a series of mutual obligations implied by the
rights we hold in common as global citizens. A rugged and selfish
individualism, the assumed foundation of orthodox economic theory and neo-liberal policies, is therefore incompatible with human
rights. A human rights perspective implies at the very least a social
democratic ideological position, if not some form of socialism.
Human rights, therefore, at least in the sense outlined in this
book, are not politically neutral. It is true that a narrow interpretation of civil and political rights can be seen as compatible with
individualism and laissez-faire economics, though even that limited
commitment to human rights involves a level of state intervention
that is incompatible with a pure free-market liberalism (Holmes &
Sunstein 1999). However, once economic, social and cultural rights
are included in the definition, it becomes necessary for there to be
a strong measure of public provision, which the free market has
proved quite unable to provide in a comprehensive and equitable
way.
To adopt a human rights perspective (at least as described in
this book) is thus to take a position that has certain ideological
consequences. Human rights-based social work is therefore
inevitably political social work, committing a social worker to an
ideological position that incorporates at least some degree of collectivism and a strong role for the public sector, in whatever form
this sector may take as a result of globalisation. It seems likely that,
in time, at least some of the functions carried out by the state will
move to either the global or the local level, but in either case a
strong collectivist approach will be necessary if the full range of
human rights is to be realised and achieved.
Many formulations of social work are still constructed within
an apolitical context, with the assumption that social workers may
occupy a full range of ideological positions, or indeed may have
no articulated political position at all. A human rights perspective,
however, specifically rejects this. It sees social work as being about
enhancing human rights; as such, it is about power relationships and
is therefore inevitably political. Further, it to some extent determines what political positions are compatible with social work, and
it identifies individualism and a pure reliance on the free market
as being incompatible with human rights-based practice. Human
rights workers are political workers, and human rights, in the broad
sense, require a political commitment. Politics and ideological critique therefore need to be part and parcel of social work practice.
History
Because human rights are discursively constructed, and therefore
change over time, it is important to have some understanding of
the history of the struggle for human rights – not only in the West,
it should be emphasised – and to place one’s own human rights
work into a historical context. In this sense, the move away from
a positivist framing to a discursive understanding makes human
rights more powerful; rights are not simply ‘things’ waiting to be
discovered and measured, but rather are the result of ongoing historical struggles in which every social worker, in his/her role as a
human rights worker, plays a part. Human rights can therefore not
be properly understood in a static, historical sense. This suggests
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that the study of history is important for social workers, and from
the discussion in earlier chapters such an assertion of the
history can be further justified on four grounds.
First, a historical perspective is important for emphasising
things can and do change. Without a sense of history, it is
think that the existing order is somehow ‘natural’ and 1111111ucdu1e
It is easy for those concerned with progressive social change
become disheartened at a system of inequality and
that seems intractable; to accept the conservative argument
the way things are is the ‘natural’ order of things that cannot
altered; and hence to believe that the way people behave in
modern world is ‘human nature’ and therefore unchangeable.
A historical perspective suggests otherwise. It recognises
many of the things commonly taken for granted are of recent
torical origin, and that in the past there have been very
ways of organising society, in which people behaved very
ently towards each other. A historical perspective also shows
what may seem impossible today can become feasible
The examples of people such as Nelson Mandela (1994) and
Havel (1991, 1992), who dared to envision a different future
time when no such future seemed ‘realistically’ possible, are a
example of the need to think beyond the limits of the prec”niIndeed, it is increasingly clear that the existing global social,
nomic, political and ecological order is so blatantly
that the one thing of which we can be certain is that the
in an ongoing process of historical change is much more
ing than seeing ourselves trapped in an ahistorical present, and
study of history can only help in this regard.
Second, the study of history can be seen as the study ofthe
gle for human rights, which gives an extra immediacy to the 11uurnu
rights issues of the present. It was suggested in Chapter 6 that
of a historical understanding can leave people uncommitted to
cising the human rights for which people in previous
fought and died; the right to vote, the right to form a trade
and the right to education were cited as three examples of cases
where people often forgo their rights with apparent disregard for, or
ignorance of, the struggles of previous generations to establish those
rights. The history of the human rights movement, including struggles for the right to vote, the right to form a union, women’s rights,
the right to political self-determination, the right to education, the
right to economic development and the right to a clean environment, is an important part of our heritage, whatever our national
or cultural background. It is a very important history for any social
workers who identify themselves as human rights workers, and it
can thus be seen as a central component of social work education.
The third reason a study of history is important relates to the
need to deconstruct the Western Enlightenment tradition within
which the human rights discourse was framed and which, as was
pointed out in Chapters 1 and 4, has so limited the understanding of human rights and has led to the criticism of a human rights
discourse as being a discourse of Western domination. One of the
key elements of the Enlightenment was the view of history as necessarily progressive, moving towards greater ‘enlightenment’, each
era being somehow superior to those that have gone before. The
assumption is that, through the achievements of Western science,
art, philosophy, industry, technology and military adventures, the
West has shown itself to be superior or more ‘advanced’ than other
cultures and traditions, and this has provided the rationale for the
imposition of Western cultural values and practices on the rest of
the world (Said 1993, 1995).
This view is deeply embedded in the consciousness not only
of the West, but also of many other cultures, where people have
been socialised into thinking that the more ‘advanced’ societies of
the West have more to offer in terms of education, science, art,
music, philosophy and technology. Such a view, it has been argued,
severely limits the understanding of human rights (Touraine 1995)
and has been responsible for the narrow emphasis on civil and
political rights and the resultant critique of human rights as being
little more than a colonialist discourse of Western domination. The
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study of history is one way in which such cultural blindness can
be overcome, through a study of the ‘history of ideas’ that moves
beyond the boundaries of the Western intellectual tradition and
that incorporates a history of Western imperialism and colonialism
and the struggles against it.
The fourth reason for the importance of history is the extension of the idea of human rights to issues of intergenerational justice, as discussed in Chapter 1. If the present generation is seen as
being responsible for addressing human rights violations in the past
(e.g. the ‘stolen generations’ of Indigenous people), and preventing human rights abuse of future generations (e.g. through protection of the environment and conservation of resources), it is
necessary to include a historical perspective in human rights work.
Social work with any individual, family or community must include
an understanding of their history, including if necessary (and with
Indigenous people in particular it is absolutely essential) a history
extending back several generations, so that human rights issues can
be adequately addressed in their historical context.
The study of history, therefore, can be seen as of central importance to an understanding of human rights. Human rights must be
historically understood and contextualised, and a historical practice can itself be seen as a continuation of human rights abuse by
not aclmowledging the importance of historical patterns of human
rights violations.
Structural disadvantage
Understanding why human rights are not defined, realised or pro-,
tected for many people requires an analysis of structural oppressio
or disadvantage. This must be at the basis of all human rights-base
social work. Individual accounts of disadvantage, though an impot’
tant part of social workers’ understandings of particular people an
their problems, are insufficient to explain, for example, why man
people are in poverty, why women remain disadvantaged in bot
the public and the private spheres, why women and children rema
the main victims of violence, why Indigenous people continue t
suffer massive disadvantage and discrimination, why there are some
rich countries and some poor countries (significantly affecting the
life chances oftheir citizens), why the colour of one’s skin still determines how one is treated, why globalisation is affecting everybody
(but advantaging some and disadvantaging others), and so on.
It is necessary to have strong analyses of oppression on the basis
of class, race, gender, sexuality, nationality, disability, culture and
age. The people with whom social workers work are victims of such
oppressions, however much they may or may not be aware of these
forces, and we cannot hope to understand, let alone help, them
without a sound understanding of the nature and pervasiveness of
structures of oppression and disadvantage (Mullaly 1997).
It is these oppressive structures that serve to deny many people basic human rights and so, if social workers are human rights
workers, their practice must address these issues of structural disadvantage. Indeed, a practice that does not specifically incorporate
structural analyses of oppression is most likely, unintentionally, to
reinforce oppressive structures. Just as the activism of many earlier
Marxists served to reinforce the oppression of women because these
Marxists were blind to a gender analysis, and conversely the activism
of liberal feminists has, by ignoring a class analysis, done little to
address the needs of working-class women, so any social work practice that does not take due account of all dimensions of structural
oppression will only serve to reinforce some oppressive structures
while addressing others. An important contemporary example is the
tendency for many social activists in wealthier nations to fight for
stronger economic development within their own countries (often
using a rhetoric of opposition to globalisation) so that standards of
living can be raised and human rights protected, while the result of
such activism is the even greater exploitation of people in poorer
countries, since the desired economic development is achieved
at the cost of human rights elsewhere, and of increasing global
inequalities.
All social work must therefore incorporate multi-dimensional
analyses of structural disadvantage, and this must be at the forefront
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of social work thinking, at whatever level the social worker is practising. Structural inequality and oppression are the context within
which social workers practise, and if they do not deliberately seek
to be part ofthe solution, their practice will inevitably become part
of the problem.
Holism
The deconstruction of the Western view of human rights requires
a rejection of the restricted linear thinking that is characteristic of
the Western Enlightenment view of progress and the embracing of
a more holistic understanding. This is reflected in the idea of human
rights implying, and being implied by, citizen obligations, and in the
need to contextualise the articulation of human rights through the
definition ofhuman needs; these can only properly be understood in
a more ecological, holistic framework. Holism is not new for social
workers, and it is important in a number of formulations of social
work practice (e.g. in the ecological model of Germaine 1991).
However, moving beyond linear thinking is not easy for a social
worker educated within the Western tradition because this tradition
has consistently emphasised linear causal relationships, following a
single line of inquiry, and research that ‘discovers more and more
about less and less’ by studying a small part of the overall picture
instead of trying to understand how all the different components
interact and contribute to a whole that is ‘greater than the sum
of its parts’. Social work actually presents opportunities to do this.
For example, in trying to understand a family, a community or an
organisation, social workers will usually try to see it as a complex
whole rather than split it up into its constituent parts and study
them in detail.
One important source of a more holistic and systemic paradigm,
from within the Western context, has been the Green movement
(Goodin 1992; Dobson 1995; Carter 1999; Torgerson 1999). This
has emphasised the essential interconnectedness of everything as
part of an ecological approach and has shown how the pursuit of
purely linear thinking can lead to ecological disaster. The fact that
the Green movement has a strong basis in the physical sciences has
lent holism an extra degree of scientific respectability, and writing
from within the Green movement over the last 20 years represents
a significant challenge to traditional Western ways of thinking (e.g.
Shiva 2005, Macy 2007). This is also important for social workers:
the environmental movement has in many ways been pursuing similar ends (e.g. the building of sustainable communities) and, with
the inclusion of environmental rights within the field of human
rights, the environment becomes a legitimate, and indeed important, concern for social workers.
The other source of a more holistic and systemic world-view is to
be found in non-Western intellectual traditions, such as Buddhist or
Confucian traditions (De Bary & Weiming 1998; Hershock 2000),
which have emphasised harmony and balance (naturally systemic)
rather than growth and progress (naturally linear). Indigenous people have also emphasised oneness with the natural world and the
importance of wholeness and interconnection (Sveiby & Skuthorpe
2006). Indeed, a good case can be made that the Western tradition of linear thinking is really the deviant tradition and is out of
line with the intellectual norms of other cultural traditions. For a
Western social worker to accept such a view requires a modesty and
a humility not generally compatible with Western Enlightenment
confidence and arrogance. However, such traditions are important
for critical social work, and the contributions to social work that
are now being made from various indigenous traditions in particular represent some of the most exciting developments in the social
work profession.
Postmodernism and post-structuralism
One of the themes in the preceding chapters was the inadequacy of
a purely modernist account of human rights and hence of human
rights-based social work. A postmodern understanding is therefore
important for social workers and, as I have argued elsewhere (Ife
1997b, 1999), is an essential component of critical social work
practice. Postmodernism helps social work to move away from the
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single narrative and the obsession with one ‘right’ answer for any
problem towards a view that values multiple voices and allows for
the construction of different meanings and multiple realities.
As suggested in Chapter 7, there is danger in an extreme postmodernism, and indeed there are inevitably different views of what
postmodernism means for social work (Pease & Fook 1999). However, the importance of postmodernism for social work is clear.
Postmodernism accepts ambiguity and celebrates diversity, rather
than trying to bring everything together in a ‘coherent framework’.
It argues for the breaking down of apparently clear and categorical
boundaries in favour of a more chaotic world-view of ambiguity
and uncertainty. That uncertainty is evident in the practice reality of social workers; rather than the neat managerial definitions
of their work in clear empirical categories, social workers live and
work with chaos, uncertainty and ambiguity in a messy and contradictory world, rather than a tidy, ordered and predictable one.
Hence postmodernism provides a potentially promising arena for
social work theorising, in contradistinction to the certain and essentially atheoretical world of evidence-based practice.
The insistence throughout this book on human rights being
discursively constructed, and the emphasis on the discourses of
human rights as changing discourses of power, suggest that a poststructuralist perspective, drawing on the work of Foucault (1970,
1972, 1986, 1991), underlies much of the approach taken in this
book (Parton & O’Byrne 2000). Foucault’s work on discourses of
power and Habermas’ view of discursive rationality (Habermas
1984) are therefore important reference points for anyone interested in developing a strong human rights-based social work practice. Alongside these, however, the analysis of the postmodernists,
regarding construction and deconstruction, ambiguity and the blurring ofboundaries, and constant fracturing and recasting of apparent
certainties, is important in locating social work as relevant to the
conditions of postmodernity.
The importance of such approaches to social and political theory for the development of a conceptually sound social work is not
always recognised in social work education programs, whether at
the level of entry to the profession or as part of continuing professional education. This is partly because of the difficulty many social
workers find in accessing these writers, and one of the contradictions of much of this literature is that, while it is concerned with
liberation and transformation, it remains inaccessible to many of
the people who might most benefit from such an agenda.
An important role for social workers is to take many of the ideas
contained in such literature and help to make them accessible to a
wider audience, through an empowerment-based practice as outlined below. Empowerment is not simply enabling people to take
action to have their needs met; it is also about making accessible the
theoretical basis of an analysis of power, discourse and narrative,
so that social theory can become useful as a way of helping people to contextualise their own situation and develop strategies to
bring about change (Clegg 1989). Social work, therefore, requires
intellectual effort. It is not simply a case of learning how to do it
and then applying principles in a mechanistic manner, nor is it a
case of rejecting theory as ‘not part of the real world’ and therefore adopting an atheoretical (and anti-intellectual) stance. Rather,
it requires a constant engagement with both the intellectual and
the practical, testing each against the other in a constant process of
action/reflection, or praxis.
Empowerment
Following the consideration of a number of foundational or theoretical issues, it is now necessary to move to issues of praxis, which
can be discussed around the idea of empowerment. This has been
inherent in much that has been discussed so far in this and earlier
chapters. While space does not allow a detailed examination of the
concept of empowerment, it is worth noting that it has been of
central concern to social workers for some considerable time (Benn
1981; Rees 1991). Yet it is also a word that has been overused and
is in danger of losing any substantive meaning. Despite this, the
idea of empowerment remains attractive to social workers, and for
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good reason: the simple idea of enabling the powerless to achieve
more power is, for many social workers, exactly what their practice
is all about. And human rights-based practice, as described thus far,
implies a strong element of empowerment; ideas of enabling people
to define their rights and to act in order to have them realised and
protected are the very essence of empowerment.
It makes no sense to talk about empowerment without some
understanding of the nature of power and the different theoretical and political perspectives on power, including pluralist, elitist, structural and post-structural accounts (Clegg 1989). In the
approach to social work described here, the post-structural account,
where power is located within discourse, and relationships of power
are constantly being constructed and reconstructed within an ongoing and changing discourse, has been of particular importance.
However, structural accounts of power, understood in terms of
structural disadvantage on the basis of class, race, gender and so on,
are equally important, and a social work understanding of power
(from which empowerment practice must derive) needs to incorporate both the structural and the post-structural perspectives (Healy
2000). There are a number of aspects to empowerment-based practice inherent in the human rights approach, and these are outlined
below.
Dialogical praxis
The idea of dialogical praxis draws particularly on the work of
Paulo Freire (1972, 1985, 1996) and others who have sought ways
to put his work into practice (McLaren & Leonard 1993; McLaren
& Lankshear 1994). A key element of dialogical praxis is ‘conscientisation’, which can be described as the raising of consciousness
through dialogue, linking the personal and the political in such a
way that it opens up possibilities for action as people become more
aware of the structures and the discourses that define and perpetuate oppression. This is consistent with the critical social science
paradigm as described by Brian Fay (1975, 1987).
However, such an approach to social science, and the very use
of the idea of consciousness-raising, can itself be patronising and
oppressive. It can easily sound as if the worker arrogantly assumes
that he/she has superior consciousness and seeks to impose this
consciousness on the people with whom she/he is working. For
this reason, the idea of dialogue is crucial. This requires that both
the worker and those with whom she/he is working are seen as
having equivalent wisdom and expertise, rather than professional
expertise being privileged over the expertise of others, which is
the more conventional approach. While it is true that the worker
will have specialised knowledge and skills that the client may not,
it is equally true that the client has a range of knowledge, skills
and expertise that the worker does not; namely, the expertise that
comes from lived experience and the survival skills developed out
of necessity.
The notion of dialogical praxis requires that both worker and
client engage in praxis (i.e. both knowledge/theory-building and
action) together. Each learns from the other in a relationship of
shared knowledge and expertise that does not privilege one above
the other. And as a result of that sharing of expertise, they then
act together towards the goal of achieving human rights. This is a
form of practice that aims to achieve human rights and that also
respects and affirms human rights within the actual methodology
that is employed (Narayan 2000).
To engage in dialogical praxis, a social worker has to reject
many of the trappings of professionalism, including the idea of
professional ‘status’ as somehow implying privilege, and the idea
that knowledge acquired through professional education is somehow superior to knowledge acquired through life experience (Freire
1996). This is not to devalue professionally acquired knowledge –
it is important and has a vital role to play in dialogical praxis –
but rather to refuse to privilege such knowledge above other forms
of human knowledge and understanding, in which the client may
well be much more ‘qualified’ than the worker. This letting go
is difficult, given that social workers, like all professionals, are
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readily seduced by the discourse of professional expertise and can
find security as well as status in a ‘professional’ role. Yet it is only
in the letting go of that security and status that it is possible to join
in a truly dialogical relationship with those with whom the worker
wishes to engage.
Given this, the ‘worker’ and the ‘client’ need to establish a
dialogue where the goal is for each to share and learn from each
other’s experience. To do this, the worker needs to be able to
establish empathy and rapport – an important part ofthe traditional
‘social work interview’ (Kadushin & Kadushin 1997) – but beyond
this, the idea of ‘dialogue’ and the idea of ‘interview’ are very
different. An interview is deliberately designed as an interaction
of unequal power, with one person ‘doing’ the interview while the
other is ‘interviewed’. In a dialogue, however, the aim is for an
equal exchange, with each party learning from the other. Hence
the social worker has to be able to give up the need to be (or to
be seen to be) in control, and instead must allow the interaction to
develop in a way that is determined by both parties.
Obviously the social worker, because of employment and organisational constraints, will have certain interests in the dialogue
achieving certain ends. However, this does not mean that the social
worker should seek to dominate or control; it should be just as
obvious that the client also has certain interests in the outcome:
of the dialogue, and these are ultimately more important than the
interests of the social worker, since the client’s needs are the reason for social work in the first place. As well as equality withi
the dialogical relationship (which can be reframed as respectin
each other’s human rights), there is a need to work towards share
understandings, so that the relationship is a genuinely educationa
one for both worker and client. This means that a concentratio
on communication, and a social worker’s interpersonal skills, ar
therefore crucial in the facilitation of dialogical praxis.
But simply reaching shared understandings is not enough. It i:
also necessary to work towards action, since one of the importan.
characteristics of human rights is that they must be not merel
understood and defined but also realised. Social work practice is
about action and change, and hence a social science that only leads
to communication and understanding, while necessary, is not sufficient. It is for this reason that much social theory, which is strong
on analysis but weak on action, can be frustratingly limiting for
social workers, and hence the emphasis needs to be not on dialogue
alone but on dialogical praxis. Ultimately social work leads to action,
taken by worker and client working together in partnership, each
having benefited from the other’s experience and wisdom. True, the
worker and the client will often have different roles in that action –
there are some things the client can do that the worker cannot,
and vice versa – but they will be acting as part of a joint undertaking arising out of their shared wisdom and dialogue, and each can
have her/his humanity enhanced as a consequence. And the goal of
that shared action is, ultimately, the enhancement and protection
of human rights.
The above discussion has used the traditional terms ‘worker’
and ‘client’ to illustrate the nature of dialogical praxis within a
direct-service ‘casework’ form of practice, but it applies equally in
working with families, groups, organisations or communities. The
idea of shared expertise, mutual learning, not privileging professional knowledge over life experience, dialogue so all can learn,
and joint action towards human rights is applicable to all social
work settings except on those occasions where a social worker is
required to act ‘in the best interests’ of a dependent person in order
to safeguard his/her human rights (see Chapter 3). A human rights
perspective, however, warns such a social worker that to ‘act in the
best interests of’ another person can easily become itself a human
rights violation, and that such social work must be undertaken only
with a sense of deep unease and moral questioning.
The other occasion when it may seem that dialogical praxis is
impossible is when the organisational context is such that the client
is not free to engage in such a relationship with a social worker;
for example, when the client is a prisoner or a person on probation
and the social worker represents the ‘authority of society’ (Barber
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1991; Rooney 1992). Here, however, it is imperative for a social
worker to ask whether it is truly impossible to develop a dialogical
praxis relationship, at least to some degree. Ifit is indeed impossible,
then one can argue that the client’s human rights are actually being
denied or violated.
In such a case, the task for a human rights-based social work
is clear: not to collude with demonstrably oppressive structures
and practices but to work towards their reform as a matter of
human rights. Thus, in the example of worldng with a prisoner,
the role of a human rights-based social worker is not only to work
with that prisoner but to join, support or initiate actions aimed at
prison reform and at safeguarding the human rights of prisoners.
The movement from casework to policy/program advocacy is thus
a natural consequence of human rights-based practice. It is never
enough simply to help someone survive within an oppressive system; there is an equal obligation on the worker to address systemic
issues.
Participatory democracy
A recurring theme throughout the earlier chapters has been the
idea that a society that respects and realises human rights is a participatory society. This is partly because the discursive nature of
human rights means that it is necessary for all sections of the global
society to be heard in shaping the discourse of human rights, not;
merely the voices of academics, lawyers, politicians and activists!
However, it is also because of the idea of citizenship rights imply
ing citizenship obligations, in the sense described in Chapter 6: th
obligation for people to exercise their rights as citizens in a strong,
active society, and the obligation to create the conditions in whic
others are able to do the same.
Therefore, social work that is based on the idea of human rights
must aim to maximise citizen participation in all aspects of life
This can be done at one level by worldng with individuals: encour
aging community participation by valuing the contribution peopl
can make, maximising their opportunities to do so, and facilitating
participation using a whole range of skills that are familiar to community workers. But it is not only in traditional community work
that social workers have the opportunity to encourage participation. Social workers working individually with clients also have
many opportunities to do so; for example, by putting people in
touch with action groups, by simply bringing together groups of
people with a common problem, by talking with people about how
they might actually be able to make a difference, or by encouraging
them to become part of some program, action or organisation.
This, however, is only one side of encouraging participation. To
see the lack of citizen participation as a result of people’s reluctance to become involved and to work on ‘motivating’ them is
simply to individualise the problem and to blame the victim. It is
necessary to understand the lack of participation as being a result
of structures and processes that militate against participation and
that encourage a society of passive individual consumerism (Beck
1997; Bauman 1999). Such structures and processes can thus be
seen as working against the establishment and realisation of human
rights because they prevent the formation of a healthy participatory
society. Human rights-based social work must therefore seek ways
to confront these structural barriers and change or reform them.
This again has been a recurring agenda within social work, through
social work’s concern for institutional change and reform, policy
advocacy and social activism.
Ideas of participation, and of participatory democracy, are of
course contested, and this has always been a difficult and contradictory area of practice for social workers (Clark 2000). There is no
space here to discuss all the dilemmas and contradictions of participation and of ideas of democracy; what is important in the present
context is to identify it as a significant location for social work practice and for continued struggle by social workers to practise in such
a way that honours these ideals and therefore furthers the cause of
human rights.
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Anti-colonialist practice
One ofthe main criticisms ofthe Western domination ofthe human
rights discourse, and its association with Enlightenment thinking,
has been that human rights thus constructed have been used to reinforce colonialism and the continued colonising of the non-Western
world by Western economic, political and cultural norms (Pereira
1997). This was discussed in Chapter 4, where it was shown how
a reconstruction of human rights, and an understanding of their
discursive nature, can to some extent overcome some of these
difficulties.
However, this reframing is not of itself sufficient to overcome
the problems of Western colonialism in social work, and colonialist
practice remains a significant problem. In this context, colonialist
practice implies any form of practice that assumes that the practitioner is coming from a position of superiority, where the worldview of the practitioner is thereby imposed on others, and where
practice serves to promote the interests and needs of the practitioner rather than those with whom the practitioner is working
(Ife 2002). Colonialism in social work can be subtle and insidious,
and many practitioners are not aware of the colonialist implications of their practice. Other groups, however, are well aware of
such colonialism; this is especially the case with indigenous people,
who have clearly pointed out the ways in which many conventional
practices of professions like social work have effectively colonised
and disempowered indigenous people and their communities.
Similarly, people with disabilities, people from cultural, ethnic
and racial minorities, and almost any other ‘client group’ have found
their genuine lived experiences ‘colonised’ and devalued by mainstream professional practice (whether of social workers or others).
The colonising effect of mainstream social work has been seen historically in the often quite inappropriate imposition of social work
formulations from the US and UK in other cultural and national
contexts, denying the validity of the local experience (Healy et al.
1986).
From this point of view, the lack of awareness by social workers
of the processes and experience of colonialism (Said 1993, 1995) is
major wealmess in most social work education. Social workers who
concerned with practising from a human rights perspective need
therefore to work consciously to counter the effects of colonialism,
and not to practise from a colonialist position.
A key element in anti-colonialist practice is to listen particularly
to the voices of the most oppressed victims of colonialism, namely
indigenous people. Precisely because of their experience of colonisation, indigenous people are in an especially important position to
argue the critique of colonialism and to articulate alternatives based
on forms of wisdom and lmowledge that Western colonialism has
both devalued and suppressed (Knudtson & Suzuki 1992). For this
reason, the voices of indigenous people must be an important part
of the education (both basic and ongoing) of every social worker,
as it is only by listening to the stories and the wisdom of indigenous
people that non-indigenous social workers can begin to understand
the enormous damage that has been (and continues to be) done by
colonialist practice, and the subtle ways in which colonialism can
influence the most well-intentioned social work.
Further, an important part of social work practice must be to
make sure that the voices of indigenous people are validated and
heard not only in human rights and social work discourse but in the
broader society, so that the issue of colonialism remains firmly on
the public agenda (Hazlehurst 1995). This is important not only in
societies where there are significant indigenous populations but in
all societies, since with globalisation the continuing colonisation of
indigenous peoples crosses national boundaries and implicates the
global economic and political system in some of the most devastating cases of human rights violation.
Feminism
Another key element in human rights-based practice, as discussed in
Chapter 3, is feminism. A structural or post-structural feminism is a
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necessary component of the critique of the dominating and oppressive patriarchal structures and discourses that deny human rights
and yet are so much part of the organisations and the societies in
which social workers practise. Patriarchy represents a major human
rights abuse across all categories of human rights, and so challenging patriarchal structures and processes must be a significant component of social work practice. Hence a social work .informed by
feminism is not an optional extra only for self-declared feminists or
for social workers working with women; it must be a central component of all social work. Such feminism helps to challenge some
of the assumptions behind social policies and practices and points
to social work practice that is based on more inclusive, holistic,
non-violent and consensus principles.
Feminism is thus an essential component of social work education and praxis, if social work is to be based on a human rights
perspective. A social worker should therefore ensure that a feminist
analysis is part ofthe process of assessment and analysis (undertaken
in partnership with the client as part of dialogical praxis), and that
feminist forms of practice, challenging patriarchal structures and,
processes, are applied in all social work settings. This should in any
case be natural for social workers; social work and feminism hav
a common concern with linking the personal and the political
making the personal political, and the political personal – a
hence social work’s incorporation of feminism is both natural a
inevitable (Van Den Bergh & Cooper 1986; Dominelli & McLe
1989; Lee 1994).
The above paragraphs have outlined the case for including fe
inism as an essential part of social work, quite apart from a
aclmowledgment of gender and the importance of working wi
women and men around issues of gender oppression. For obvio
reasons, this is another important justification for an incorporati
of feminism into social work and only adds to the strength of
argument that human rights-based social work must be inform
by feminism. As pointed out earlier in this chapter, however, it
important that the incorporation of feminism in this way sho
not diminish the importance given to other dimensions of oppression, such as class and race. Discussion of whether any of these
dimensions of structural oppression is more ‘fundamental’ than the
others is both complicated and counter-productive, and can lead to
a dangerous fundamentalism. A much more useful and holistic way
to think about it is to see all of them as centrally important and to
realise that each can serve to reinforce and compound the effects
of the others.
Non-violence
Much of the preceding discussion can also be understood in terms
of the principle of non-violence. Non-violence rests on a rejection
of the distinction between means and ends, and a refusal to accept
that violent means can be justified in order to meet non-violent
ends. The principle of non-violence is that means and ends cannot
be separated in this way, and that to use violent means to reach
non-violent ends will corrupt the ends and will not achieve the
desired outcome (Fay 1975). The idea of violence in this context
extends beyond the simple idea of physical violence to include
structures of violence, and indeed it sees the denial of human rights
as being a form of violence. The education system, for example,
can be seen as a violent system, even if no physical violence is used,
if it is perceived to deny people equal access, to dehumanise those
involved in it, to restrict rather than open up opportunities, or to
reinforce competition and aggression.
Gandhi, the best-known advocate and practitioner of nonviolence, sought always to value the humanity of those who
opposed him, to allow them to exit from a conflict situation with
their dignity intact, to be inclusive rather than exclusive, and to use
methods which were non-violent in the broadest sense of the term
(Gandhi 1964). This involved opposing ideas rather than people,
respecting the human rights of his opponents, and refusing to react
to violence with violence. In that way he sought to break the cycle
of violence and to move towards non-violent inclusive solutions.
The theory of non-violence is that such solutions are likely to last
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and be sustainable in a way that solutions reached through violence
can never be.
Non-violence, understood in this sense, might be seen as another
way offraming the human rights perspective advocated throughout
this book. It certainly involves an absolute respect for the human
rights of others, including those with whom one may be in conflict.
It involves, above all, the intrinsic valuing of other human beings,
and this is inherent in a praxis founded on human rights. Nonviolence has had an important impact on some aspects of social
work, most notably community development through the work of
Indian community workers who have been influenced by the Gandhian tradition (Gaikwad 1981). Its application across all aspects of
social work, however, is obviously both desirable and necessary
from the point of view of a human rights perspective.
In order to practise non-violence, a social worker needs to be
aware of structures and processes that can be described as violent
and must prevent her/his praxis being appropriated by them, as
well as seeldng to confront those violent structures and processes
to establish non-violent alternatives. This can apply across the full
range of social work, whether dealing with violent individuals, violence in families, violence in organisations, violence in communities,
or the valuing and perpetuating of violent ‘solutions’ to social problems. Challenging such violence is an important aspect of social
work and of human rights praxis.
Needs
The definition of need as the way in which human rights are ofte
contextualised was discussed at some length in Chapter 5; wher
the idea of social workers exercising power by assuming the rig
to define needs for others was seen as counter to human righ
principles. One of the important aspects of human rights-base
practice identified there was to allow, and indeed facilitate, peopl
in being able to define their own needs within a context of dialogic
praxis that is a result of genuine dialogue drawing on the experti
of both the social worker and the people directly affected. Hums:
rights are implicit in the definition ofneeds, and one of the problems
with a discourse of human needs is that the human rights that lie
behind assertions of need remain hidden.
The definition of needs is therefore a central component of
human rights-based social work. Social workers, especially when
undertaking ‘need assessments’, should be able to identify the
human rights implicit in any statement of need and should seek
to make those rights explicit so they can be openly acknowledged
and if necessary contested and debated. Social workers should also
be ready to take a long, hard look at the rights implications whenever anybody (client, colleague, supervisor, manager or community
member) uses the word ‘need’. But above all, social workers should
be working to find ways whereby people can have a genuine role in
the definition of their own needs, in the appreciation of the rights
that lie behind them, and in determining what action is required so
that those needs can best be met. Power over definition of need is
one of the most important aspects of human rights practice, since
any practice that does not allow people to exercise such power is
inevitably a denial of their human rights. Need definition may be
seen in the literature as essentially a technical activity, with its own
methods (McKillip 1987), but from a human rights perspective it
is also a moral activity and has to be undertaken as such.
Research
Research has long been an important part of social work, and
social work research has encompassed a wide variety of designs
and methodologies: assessing needs, evaluating practice, documenting the inadequacies of the welfare state, collecting data about
social problems, seeking to understand the experiences of the people with whom social workers work, exploring the dilemmas and
contradictions of practice, and so on (Fook 1996). From a human
rights perspective, social work research needs to address a
human rights agenda, and this can involve a number of different
research approaches:
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• specifically identifying individuals and groups whose rights
have been violated or denied
• documenting the nature and extent of human rights abuses
• providing information for people to be able to articulate the
need for various human rights to be met
• providing a mechanism for the voices of the disadvantaged
(i.e. those whose human rights have been denied) to be heard
and validated
• evaluating policies and programs in terms of their adequacy
in meeting human rights.
All the above imply that the research process is oriented towards
empowerment in human rights terms. It cannot therefore be neutral, positivist, value-free research, but rather research with a clearly
articulated value position. It is aimed at some form of empowerment, and at the realisation and protection of human rights (Fisher
& Karger 1997). Within that overall perspective, however, different
designs and methodologies will be appropriate, depending on the
specific issue being researched. At times, for example, empirical
research can be particularly important in documenting the extent
of human rights abuses for all three generations. More qualitative
methodologies, aimed at providing a space for people to tell their
stories, can also be important in furthering the cause of human
rights.
One of the important aspects of human rights-oriented research
is that it should, where possible, include the people being
‘researched’ in the design, implementation, interpretation and presentation of the research. Social research can often simply reinforce power differentials by being something that is carried out
by ‘researchers’ on ‘subjects’, so that the researcher can gain new
knowledge (and credit, prestige, career advancement), while the
benefit to the researched may be marginal (Kirby & McKenna
1989). The researched are seen as passive providers of data, and
the researcher maintains a monopoly on the collection, analysis and
presentation of the ‘knowledge’ derived from the research process.
Such research, needless to say, is itself counter to human rights
principles and normally does little to further the cause of human
rights. Thus, social workers who are researching from a human
rights perspective need to be paying attention to models of research
that challenge this orthodoxy in research methodology. There are
rnany such approaches, to be found in feminist methodology, collaborative inquiry, participatory action research, grounded theory
research, and so on (Smith et al. 1997). In recent years such
methodologies have been of particular interest to social workers,
and their potential to further the cause of human rights is significant. The same means-ends position, discussed above in relation
to non-violence, applies also to research: research that aims to further the cause of human rights must itself respect human rights
principles in its own methodologies.
Contextual/universal issues
A further set of praxis principles can be grouped under the heading of contextual/universal issues, as they deal with contextual/
universal dualisms in various forms. The need to break down, transcend or cross those dualisms has been a recurring theme in earlier chapters, and these issues must now be considered together as
important principles ofsocial work practice. Human rights are commonly constructed as universals, and yet the era of postmodernity
is seeing the increasing fragmentation and localisation of multiple
narratives and an increasing emphasis on context and relativism.
Confronting such universal/contextual dualisms, and exploring how
social work theory and practice can understand human rights as
both universal and contextual, as outlined in Chapter 4, is therefore a major challenge for human rights-based social work.
The personal and the political
The link between the personal and the political is central to social
work: understanding the personal in terms of the political, understanding the political in terms of the personal, and acting to bring
about change at both levels (Van Den Bergh & Cooper 1986;
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Dominelli & McLeod 1989; Fook 1993). This is particularly important within a human rights framework, since human rights also
need to be understood as both personal and political. They are personal because they affect personal well-being, security, survival and
self-actualisation, representing as they do a series of statements on
what it means to be human. And they are political because human
rights are about power and its distribution, about how power is
constructed and enacted, about who has and should have the rights
to exercise power, and in what circumstances. Human rights are
therefore by their very nature both personal and political. They
must be understood in both contexts, and one can only be an effective human rights worker if one can work with both the personal
and the political.
Because this link is central to social work, social workers are well
equipped to be human rights workers. However, if they are to fill
that role, their praxis must constantly maintain both the personal
and the political focuses. More significantly, social workers need
to be able to link the two, insisting that each can only be fullX
understood in terms of the other. Human rights provide a soli
foundation for such a link. This link is one of the most problemati
for a society entering the era of postmodernity (Bauman 1999), a
hence it is a very significant role for social workers to play.
In practice, this means that social workers must always be arti
ulating the political aspects of the personal and the personal aspe
of the political. The person who is unemployed, for example, m
be understood both at the personal level of the implications
self-esteem and for income security and also at the political le
of the reasons for high unemployment, the structure of the labo
market, the impact of globalisation, education and training OPP’
tunities, workplace relations, labour commodification, and so o
The human rights involved in such a case can be understood
terms of the individual’s rights to meaningful work, to earn
income, to self-esteem, to social security, to participation in
economy. There may also, in particular cases of unemployment,
other rights in relation to freedom from discrimination on the basis
of age, sex, race, disability, sexuality, religion.
All these ‘personal’ rights have their political implications in
terms of the obligations on the state and other actors to meet those
rights: to provide work opportunities, to ensure adequate minimum
wages, to prevent discrimination, and so on. To work for human
rights requires that a social worker work both with the individual
to ensure that his/her rights are adequately met and protected, and
also with the institutions of the state and the labour market to
ensure that the political obligations implied by human rights are
adequately met. In doing so, it is inevitable that a social worker
will seek to help the individual to see her/his rights in a political context, and to assist the structures of the state and private
sector actors to see their actions in light of the impact on people’s human rights and their obligation to meet and uphold those
rights.
The linking ofthe personal and the political is itself a radical act,
as it flies in the face of the dominant social and political order which
seeks to divide the two, to see people’s personal lives and concerns
as ‘no concern of the state’, and to see politics as something that is
engaged in only by a minority of people who are politically active,
and therefore need not be the concern of the majority. Feminism
has for a long time used the idea that the personal is political as
a way to challenge this dominant ideology, through its questioning of patriarchy and through its framing of patriarchy as being
responsible for the separation of the political from the personal.
The radical, and some would say dangerous, act of linking the personal and the political is therefore not undertaken lightly. Neither
is it a simple matter, since it will involve social workers coming up
against many vested interests and many structures and discourses of
power. But this is a crucial arena for social work struggle, whether
through the actions of individual social workers or through social
workers working collectively through organised groups, unions or
professional associations.
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The private and the public
As was pointed out in Chapter 3, the traditional Western understanding of human rights has concentrated on civil and political
rights in the public sphere and has tended to overlook the human
rights abuses, particularly of women and children, in the private
or domestic sphere. By contrast, social work has often tended to
define its primary activities as in the private or domestic sphere;
it has been more concerned with domestic violence, child abuse
and similar issues than it has with the more public face of civil and
political human rights.
This is perhaps why social work has not readily identified itself
as a human rights profession, and why social workers have tended
to identify a concern for human rights within their role as ‘concerned citizen’ rather than their role as professional social worker.
However, the approach to human rights described in earlier chapters requires that human rights be extended to cover the private
domestic sphere; and similarly, the concern discussed above that
social work be about both the personal and the political brings the
human rights and the social work discourses together and emphasises the important role social work can play in human rights, as
well as the important position human rights can occupy in social
work.
The practice implications of the linking of the private and the
public are similar to those of linking the personal and the political. It
is important that social workers insist on an understanding of human
rights that extends to the private as well as the public arena, and
that they seek to break down the private/public dichotomy whic
has effectively prevented the pursuit of human rights in the pri~
vate sphere, because it is seen as ‘no business of the state’. Indeedj
the construction of the public and the private has been importan
in divorcing many areas of social policy from the realm of publi
debate, and also in marginalising the concerns of women and chil
dren as ‘not really counting’ in the forums that are considered ‘reall
important’. Breaking down this dualism, in dialogical partnersh’
with those most affected, is therefore an important task for social
workers concerned for human rights.
Cultural relativism
Issues of cultural relativism and human rights have been addressed
in some detail in Chapter 4 and so need not be revisited at length
here. There are, however, very important implications for practice.
For social workers who are confronted with cultural practices that
they feel contravene human rights, this is a very real and immediate
practice concern. The norms of cultural groups around issues of
women’s role, men’s power and authority, the raising of children,
bodily mutilation, care of the aged, gay and lesbian issues, education
for girls, child labour, corporal punishment, distribution of labour
within the family, and so on can all confront the human rights
values of a social worker from a different culture, yet rights to
self-determination and cultural integrity seem to cut across such
concerns.
As described in Chapter 4, it is necessary to move away from
a world-view that reifies culture or that sees cultures as static and
monolithic. Cultures are characteristically changing and pluralistic,
and a broad human rights framework allows social workers to understand that oppression and human rights abuses occur across cultural
boundaries and that the struggles for human rights and social justice transcend cultural difference. At the same time, abuses occur
within cultural contexts, and the way in which, for example, struggles for the liberation of women are located in different cultures
needs to be understood by social workers.
Practice in such contexts is always complex and involves difficult moral choices for a social worker. But it is important also, as
discussed earlier in this chapter, to move away from the notion of
an individual social worker malting a lonely moral choice and taking
independent action, moving instead towards a model of dialogical
praxis where the moral decisions are made in collaboration with
the people concerned and where dialogue is the vehicle whereby
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both worker and client can become more informed and can seek
common understandings and common action. In accordance with
Bauman’s postmodern critique of ethics (1993, 1995), there
be a single authoritative ‘answer’ to such a practice dilemma;
answer must be discovered through dialogue and mutual education.
Macro and micro practice
The discussion throughout this chapter suggests strongly that th~
traditional division between ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ social work prac~
tice is artificial and does not serve the ends of human rights-base
praxis. Social work, from the perspective of this book, must alway:
be concerned with both the personal and the political, and w’
inevitably operate at both micro and macro levels. A social case,
worker simply cannot afford to see the ‘case’, whether an individ
ual or a family, in isolation from the broader societal context, an
she/he will need to engage in practice that moves beyond the sirn.
ple counselling approach. Indeed, in most social work roles, th
capacity of a social worker to help a person or family is determine<
far more by that social worker’s ability to work in organisation
systems, to operate in team meetings, to advocate with a range
community services, and to build strong community supports t
it is by his/her capacity to work interpersonal magic in a counsell’
interview. Also, if a social worker is to avoid the conservatis’
and disempowering constructions of individualism (which is usua
part of the problem rather than part of the solution), it is necess
to seek more collective forms of action, working in solidarity w;i
consumer groups, colleagues, activists and other professionals.
Similarly, a ‘macro’ social worker, worldng in community or P
icy work, cannot afford to ignore the understandings and skills;;
‘micro’ practice. The community worker, for example, constan
uses interpersonal skills in a wide variety of contexts, though th
are unlikely to be constructed as interviews in the conventio,
sense. And if a policy worker or activist lacks the skills to cq
municate effectively with those he/she wishes to influence,
worker’s effectiveness will be severely handicapped.
This may seem obvious, and it has indeed been reiterated
by many social work writers over the years (Compton & Galaway 1999). Yet there is an apparent reluctance on the part of
social workers, students or educators to abandon this macro/micro
dichotomy, and a corresponding persistence in defining oneself as
primarily in one or the other. A human rights perspective adds an
extra impetus to breaking down this dichotomy. In order to do
so, social workers perhaps need to stop using the terms ‘macro’,
‘micro’, ‘casework’ and ‘community work’, and to refuse to be so
categorised. There is certainly a need for social work education to
take stronger steps to overcome this dichotomy and to encourage
students to see themselves as necessarily practising at both macro
and micro levels, whatever their field of practice. Working towards
such a basic shift in the dominant social work discourse is therefore a major task facing social work. A human rights framework,
by emphasising the connectedness of practice at all levels, should
assist this process.
The global and the local
The above dualisms have been faced by social workers for a long
time, and there is a significant social work. literature about the
need to transcend them. A new concern that has emerged only
in recent years, with the advent of globalisation, involves social
work practice in a globalised world. As was argued in Chapter 1,
globalisation has lent a new urgency to the cause of human rights, as
the form of globalisation currently experienced is seen as counter to
human rights principles and as diminishing human rights. It was also
suggested in Chapter 1that one ofthe important reactions to globalisation has been localisation, and that with the ‘hollowing out’ ofthe
state (Jessop 1994) there has been increasing activity at the more
local level as people who feel that the global economy no longer
meets their needs seek to establish their own community-based
alternatives (Ife 2000). With this change, the important sites for
resistance to globalisation and also for social work practice become
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the global and the local, since these are the locations where practice
is more likely to bring about change.
Practising at the local level is nothing new for social workers,
but the global/local issue raises two important new areas for social
work: practising globally, and linking the global and the local. If
social work is to remain relevant in a globalised world, and especially if it is to see itself as a human rights profession, then practising
globally and linking the global with the local in everyday practice are important priorities for the development of future social
work.
Practising globally requires that social workers engage with new
(and not so new) global structures, whether these be UN agencies,
regional groupings such as the EU and ASEAN, economic organisations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and
the World Trade Organisation, or NGOs such as Amnesty Inter-,
national, Greenpeace and Oxfam. Social work voices are, by and;
large, not well represented in these forums, yet it should be clear
that social workers have a good deal of expertise to contribute,
and these are crucial organisations in shaping the future of huma
rights. Further, global practice requires that social workers facilita
the input of the voices of the disadvantaged and the marginalis
into these forums. Such voices are conspicuously lacking, yet mu
be heard and validated if the goals of human rights are to
realised.
The other aspect of social work practice in the globalised wor
is to be able not only to operate at global and local levels, but a
to link the two in a form of creative practice that transcends t
local/global divide. This requires the capacity to see local probl
also as global problems, to see that they can only be adequat
addressed by action at both global and local levels, and to find W
to link the two. This of course cannot be done simply by a wor
acting alone. It requires him/her to work cooperatively at two lev
first by working dialogically with the people most affected (cli
community, etc.), and second by forming partnerships with o
workers and clients or communities elsewhere in the world who
facing the same issues. In Chapter 3 the example of child welfare
was used- the linking of child welfare and ‘rights of the child’ issues
across national boundaries in an attempt to seek action solutions to
common problems.
In an increasingly globalising world, social work practice that
does not do this but concentrates only on the local is likely
to become increasingly irrelevant and ineffective. Social workers
engaged in dialogue, partnerships and collective action now need to
join Castells’ ‘network society’ (1996, 1997, 1998) and to establish
and use their own networks of power for furthering a human rights
agenda. A human rights basis for social work, where human rights
are by their very nature universal, requires such creative global/local
practice (Lawson 2000).
Conclusion
This chapter has brought together many of the practice principles
identified in earlier chapters, to provide an overall picture of what
it means to think about achieving human rights through social work
practice.
Many of these practice principles are not new and have been
discussed by social workers in other contexts, for example feminist
social work, radical social work, critical social work, postmodern
social work, and counter-oppressive practice (Fook 1993; Fisher
& Karger 1997; Ife 1997b; Mullaly 1997; Gil 1998; Pease & Fook
1999; Healy 2000). Similarly, most ofthe social work skills involved
in such practice are not new. Human rights-based social work does
not necessarily require social workers to be doing much that they
are not already doing, though the emphasis on particular activities,
the purpose of various practice methods, and the overall framing of
the social work task may well be different.
Skills, of course, will vary with context, and hence in a book
like this it would be both inappropriate and misleading to spell out
specifically ‘how to do’ human rights-based social work. Practice
principles, as discussed in this chapter, represent the limits to which
one can be prescriptive, and the actual processes and methods to
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be used will vary with different workers, different organisational
locations, and different cultural and political contexts.
The principles in this chapter can be readily applied in specific practice contexts. One could consider, for example, a child
protection case involving an Aboriginal family, a rural community
whose economic base has been eroded by large-scale agribusiness,
an elderly dementia patient requiring nursing home care, a worker
made unemployed as a result of economic downturn, street violence between rival gangs from different cultural origins or a case
of domestic violence. In each of these cases one can ask questions
about human rights, and how those rights can be articulated. There
are particular challenges as to how this can be achieved in a genuinely dialogical way, and how each of these practice principles
might be applied.
There is another level, however, where human rights principles
inform social work practice. The emphasis in this chapter has been
on social work as a means to achieve the realisation of human rights.
But as we have seen, means and ends cannot be so easily separated,
and it is therefore important to examine the impact of human right~~
principles on the practice of social work itself. This is the subject
of the next chapter.
Further questions
The main question that arises from the material discussed in thi
chapter relates to maldng connections: between the personal an
the political, the macro and the micro, private and public, lod
and global, needs and rights, and so on. The principles discusse
here require a holistic rather than a linear perspective. There a
many questions that need to be dealt with at the same time, and i
cannot be a matter of taldng them one at a time and dealing wit
them ‘in sequence’. The constant moving from one lens to another~
the constant asldng of different questions, and the continuing nee
to make connections require a level of mental gymnastics on th
part of a social worker. And it is a matter of ongoing questioning
do not provide easy answers; rather they ask tough
How can a social worker hold all this in her/his head at
The answer to that question, at least in part, lies in
of the doing of human rights practice, which is the
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