Challenging Colonial Legacies: Developing Anti-Oppressive Social Work Practicum in Dominican Republic

Authors

  • Mirna Carranza McMaster University

Abstract

Social work in Latin America and the Caribbean as in other parts of the world has its roots in a welfare philosophy. Since this was born of the "goodness" of privileged classes and in their concern for the "other," those social groups that lived in marginalization or poverty. This paper is based on six years of collaborative work in the DR, to develop the practicum of a Baccalaureate in social work (BSW) with the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD). The focus of this article will be on the collaborative work of a team of professors from Canada and the DR to develop a BSW placement structure. The DR’s engagement with social welfare, had a long standing history with community development (Baker & Maxwell, 2012), a focus that UASD wanted to maintain while professionalizing social work practice. The outcomes relating to this project were then to create a BSW curriculum that could shape a social work practice in the DR that built upon its history of community development to influence government and NGOs to focus on reducing marginalization from a policy or macro perspective. To do so, one of the key objectives was to foster a complementary relationship between casework and Governments, to actualize pre-existing and develop new policy.

Author Biography

Mirna Carranza, McMaster University

Associate Professor School of Social Work

References

Carranza M. E. (2016). International social work: Silent testimonies of the coloniality of power. International Social Work: 0020872816631598.

Baker, P and Maxwell, J .(2012). Social Work in the Caribbean. In Healy, L. M., & Link, R. J. (Eds.). (2012). Handbook of international social work: Human rights, development, and the global profession. Oxford University Press, USA. Pp. 383-389.

Balcácer, J. D. (2007). Trujillo: el tiranicidio de 1961. Taurus, Grupo Santillana.

Betances, E. (2018). State and society in the Dominican Republic.

Routledge.

Gregory, S. (2014). The devil behind the mirror: Globalization and politics in the Dominican Republic. Univ of California Press.

Healy LM. (2001). International social work: Professional action in an interdependent world. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Hiranandani V. (2011) Canadian identity: Implications for international social work by Canadians. Critical Social Work, 12(1), 87-100.

Hope A. S. (2002). The challenges of globalization to religious education: Some experiences and reflections from Asia, Religious Education, 97(3), 226 - 237.

Latorre, E. (1995). De política dominicana e internacional y desarrollo humano. Intec.

Objío, O. (2009). Meollos dominicanos: ensayos sobre sociedad, historia y cultura (Vol. 1634, No. 15). Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo.

Parada H. (2007) Social Work in Latin America: Regional Perspectives from Latin America. Journal of International Social Work 50 (4).

Parada, H., Moffatt, K., & Duval, M. (2007). Emerging practices of social work in the Dominican Republic: the protection of women's and children's safety. International Social Work, 50(6), 755-769.

Pons, F. M. (2008). La otra historia dominicana. Librería La Trinitaria.

Razack N. (2009). Decolonizing the pedagogy and practice of international social work. International Social Work, 52(1), 9-21.

Razack, S. (Ed.). (2002). Race, space, and the law: Unmapping a white settler society. Between the Lines.

Todd, S., Barnoff, L., Moffatt, K., Panitch, M., Parada, H., Mucina, M., & Williams, D. (2013). Performativity culture in universities: Social work fabrications. The British Journal of Social Work, 45(2), 511-526.

Quijano, A. (2007). Coloniality and modernity/rationality. Cultural studies, 21(2-3), 168-178.

Wehbi, S., Parada, H., George, P., & Lessa, I. (2016). Going home: Social work across and about borders. International Social Work, 59(2), 284-292.

Wooding, B., Moseley-Williams, R. D., Arregui, M., & Paiewonsky, D. (2004). Inmigrantes haitianos y dominicanos de ascendencia haitiana en la República Dominicana (Vol. 4). Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (CID).

Wylie, A., Figueroa, R., & Harding, S. (2003). Science and other cultures: Issues in Philosophies of Science and Technology. Why standpoint matters, 26-48.

Downloads

Published

2019-03-12