Reflection Paper: Weeks 3 & 4

About two weeks ago, Allie and I took a trip to visit the Victoria Memorial. The white granite floors, high ceilings, and Roman-inspired busts were magnificent. Hundreds of people scattered the grounds looking at encased weaponry and historical fixtures. Others perused the gardens while couples found shade to rest beneath. The whole experience was quite impressive. A picturesque example of colonialism at its finest, and in reading chapter five of International Social Work, I could not help but think of this day trip when reading Cox and Pawar's (2013) note on how the institution and maintenance of colonial states depended on the conquest and suppression of native inhabitants of the colonies. Clearly, India was no exception if not one of the western powers’ greatest conquests. Nevertheless, since my time being in India, large edifices and western architecture seems to be like the least detrimental facet of all that was left behind by the British.

What is truly concerning is the economic and political residue from the British-Indian colony. Cox and Pawar (2013) highlight that “colonial administration created administrative structures that were superimposed upon those of the subordinated populations” (p. 152), and even during post-colonial rule their influence is still felt in many parts of the world, especially in feminist and social work spheres. Naturally I ask, "What kind of intervention can be implemented to combat the colonial-imperial impact left on present day India?" When considering the populations within the nation, a local-level development would be the best method for an area like Kolkata, according per Cox and Pawar’s proposed methods; after a long exploitative history, this method finally makes the people the center of its intervention. However, this method is rarely followed because of the challenges it presents.

Cox and Pawar (2013) describe the barriers to local-level development as being: (1) the difficulty of having workers efficiently function in areas with harsh living conditions and limited resources, (2) the lack of an already-made poor of trained workers, (3) the disfavor presented by government officials and elevated classes when elevating disadvantaged populations, and (4) the burden of poor governance and debt preventing resources and energies being provided towards local-level development. These challenges certainly do seem intimidating, but I disagree with Cox and Pawar. As Durbar has proven, local-level development can be very effective, and only becomes truly challenging when working outside of the local community as Cox and Pawar are most likely envisioning. For example, when launching the Sonagachi HIV/AIDS Intervention Program (SHIP), there was no lack of man-power, interest, or socially adept staff because the local sex workers who live, work, and socialize in Sonagachi were recruited. When SHIP evolved into Durbar, government approval or resources were not an ultimatum for the work they carried out; they utilized the energies and resources they had themselves and from their allies to demand national assistance. The point being, Cox and Pawar's argument thinks too greatly outside of the community when it is the locality of a district that will make a local-level development approach successful.

The issue is not if local-level development interventions can work, but in what alternative ways can we as social workers approach these health, social, political, economic issues without solely focusing on fetishized issues such as HIV/AIDS, human-trafficking, and urban child welfare. I find it frustrate to read this is not always the question at hand in social work literature, but rather the focus is on matters I find to be more trivial. In "Issues in International Social Work", Midgly (2001) presents the "critical social debates" as (1) defining the meaning of international social work, (2) the role of a social worker, and (3) the values related to the field. I can't help but wonder why some of these questions matter. Why exhaust our thinking on defining international social work if we already understand the issue to be too complex to ever come to a universal definition? Would it not be more realistic to come up with basic social work principles that each nation would then be able to customize, based on their own values and beliefs, and hold them accountable to? I don't completely disagree that these questions are important, but I do believe a much larger amount of attention is given to them rather than questions like, "What local-level alternative interventions can be implemented to alleviate the stress of poverty on children who live in the slums of India?"

As social welfare professionals, I feel we must be mindful that universalism is a western imperialist concept. Vishanthie Sewpaul (2006) notes that universalism holds potential to “dilute or even annihilate local cultures and traditions and to deny context specific realities” (p. 421). As seen in Sinha’s A Global Perspective on Gender (2012), universalizing the definition and concept of gender is an imperialist tendency which could be detrimental when trying to understand non-gender conforming populations such as the Oyo-Yoruba and the amrads. Social work professionals should not only be seeking to incorporate individualistic culture, values, and beliefs into the definitions of international social work, but also into their proposed interventions as well. Instead of focusing on the prospective challenges noted by Cox and Pawar, international social works should be questioning: (1) how can local community members be implemented in the creation, organization, management, and fruition of the local-development intervention, (2) what local resources and energies are available and who are the community's neighboring allies, and (3) how can the community band together when faced with opposition from national authorities and ruling classes?

References

1. Cox, D. & Pawar, M. (2013). International Social Work: Issues, Strategies, and Programs. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

2. Loomba, A. & Lukose, R. (Eds). Sinha, M. (2012). South Asian Feminisms. Durham: Duke U Press.

3. Midgeley, J. (2001). Issues in International Social Work: Resolving Critical Debates in the Profession. Journal of Social Work, 1, 21-35.

4. Sewpaul, V. (2006). The Global-Local Dialect: Challenges in African Scholarship and Social Work in a Post-Colonial World, British Journal of Social Work, 36, 419-34.