Services humains - études des femmes

...

Resistance lies in self-conscious engagement with dominant, normative discourses and representations and in the active creation of oppositional analytic and cultural spaces. It is effective when it is mobilized through systemic politicized practices of teaching and learning. We must begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A civilisation can flounder as readily in the face of moral and spiritual bankruptcy as it can through financial bankruptcy. If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class and our nation. We have to develop a world perspective. The main reason why we have not experienced a revolution of values is that a culture of domination necessarily promotes addiction to lying and denial. Lying takes the form of mass media creating the myths that feminist movement has completely transformed society, that racism does not exist anymore, that everybody has equal opportunities to achieve economic self-sufficiency. It means that our capacity to face reality is severely diminished as is our will to intervene and change unjust circumstances. Hooks p.1, 7,8

Human services education and learning to transgress

Ø There is biases that uphold and maintain white supremacy, imperialism, sexism and racism that distorted education so that it is no longer about the practice of freedom. The call for a recognition of cultural diversity, a rethinking of ways of knowing, a deconstruction of old epistemologies, and the concomitant demand that there be a transformation in the classrooms, in how one teach and what one teach, is a necessary revolution. We have to acknowledge that the education most of us had received or is giving was not and is never politically neutral. As backlash swells, as budgets are cut, as jobs become even more scarce, many of the few progressive interventions that were made to change the academy, to create an open climate for cultural diversity are in danger of being undermined or eliminated. We should not change our collective commitment to cultural diversity because we have not yet devised and implemented perfect strategies for them. To create a culturally diverse academy, we must commit ourselves fully. Learning from other movements for social change, from civil rights and feminist liberation efforts, we must accept the protracted nature of our struggle a be willing to remain both patient and vigilant. To commit ourselves to the work of transforming the academy so that it will be a place where cultural diversity informs every aspect of our learning. We must embrace struggle and sacrifice. We cannot be easily discouraged. We cannot despair when there is conflict. Our solidarity must be affirmed by shared belief in a spirit of intellectual openness that celebrates diversity, welcomes dissent, and rejoices in collective dedication to truth. When we try to make culture an undisturbed space of harmony and agreement where social relations exist within cultural forms of uninterrupted accords we subscribe to a form of social amnesia in which we forget that all knowledge is forged in histories that are played out in the field of social antagonisms. If we fear mistakes, doing things wrongly, constantly evaluation ourselves, we will never make the academy a culturally divers place where scholars and the curricula address every dimension of that difference.

All of us in the academy and in the culture as a whole are called to renew our minds if we are to transform educational institutions, and society, so that the way we live, teach, and work can reflect our joy in cultural diversity, our passion for justice and our love of freedom. Professors who embrace the challenge of self-actualisation will be better able to create pedagogical practices that engage students, providing them with ways of knowing that enhance their capacity to live fully and deeply. See Index. Hooks p. 5, 9, 10, 11.

Oppression

Ø When a person acts or a policy is enacted unjustly against an individual or group because of their affiliation to a specific group. The effect of disadvantage results from oppression. Baines p.2 and Notes Unit 1 p.18

Effect of disadvantage

Ø Disadvantages may be caused by lack of adequate income, limitations in the ability to function due to illness or disability, or by discrimination such as sexism and racism. Disadvantages also result from inadequate or inappropriate education and training, education that fails to produce learning that is readily transferable to new settings. Being disadvantaged does not change the moral worth or dignity of a person, or the respect due to them. Rather, the effects attributed to being disadvantaged are what diminish an individual or minority member’s feelings of self-worth. Social attributions of worthlessness demean the people at whom the attributions are directed by devaluing them as human beings and as individuals who merit respect. Notes Unit 2 p.1

Transformation

Ø A way to relieve people’s emotional pain and immediate difficulties while simultaneously working to change the larger dynamics that generate inequity, unfairness and social injustice. Baines p.3

Anti-oppressive practice

Ø One of the main forms of social justice oriented social work theory and practice today. It keeps in mind the bigger picture of oppressive policies, practice and social relations, while addressing immediate crises. It recognizes the context of multiple oppressions and responds to the growing need for fundamental reorganisation of all levels of society. It attempts to integrate the search and struggle for social change directly into the social work experience with actions such as critical consciousness-raising, advocacy, radical therapy, mobilisation for policy and economic change. It argues that Liberal pluralism approach to service delivery is not enough and that a more fundamental restructuring of social relations and processes is necessary in order to replace the forces that generate oppression with new, more equitable ways of meeting needs.

Baines p.4, 5,6

Ø Anti-oppressive practice is part of an overall struggle to change our social systems fundamentally so that the conditions that generate and benefit from inequities are replaced by systems that foster equity, fairness and the healthy development of all. Baines p.94.

Ø There are ten common themes or core insights that stand the