Work

From Imperialism to Radical Hospitality: Propositions for Reconfiguring Social Work towards a Justice-To-Come

Year: 2022

Type: article

Abstract: The focus of the article is on injustices towards South African families in postcolonial and neocolonial contexts, our understanding of which has been greatly enlarged by Nancy Fraser’s conceptualisations of expropriation and imperialism and Jacques Derrida’s notions of hostility and hospitality. We used Walter Benjamin’s and Karen Barad’s montage methods of fragmentary writing to diffractively read expropriation, imperialism, hostility and hospitality through one another in the context of injustices done to South African families. A diffractive methodology entails a close and attentive reading of concepts or pieces of text through one another, to arrive at new insights with regard to a particular issue. The new insights we arrive at in the article are five propositions for ethically engaging in a justice-to-come for social work – that of attentiveness, rendering each other capable, responsibility, response-ability and radical hospitality.

Source: SOUTHERN AFRICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

DOI: 10.25159/2708-9355/8889

Authors: Vivienne Bozalek, Dorothee Hölscher

Institutions: University of the Western Cape, Griffith University

Language: English

Topic: Decolonial Thought and Epistemologies

Subfield: Anthropology

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Reduced inequalities, Peace, justice, and strong institutions

Open Access status: green

Funder: National Research Foundation