SWRK 1000H Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Intercultural Competence, Community Organizing, Tokenism
28 Jun 2018
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Swrk1000h Week 10 Lecture: November 22, 2016
The history of social work…
Interesting to note here that we only fully delve into settlement house workers being “assimilationists”
when we discuss race, immigration, and “culture”.
For settlement house workers in Toronto, and in many other parts of North America, their overall desire
was to “Christianize” newcomers, and to impart moral values.
Yet, in the history of social work, settlement house workers, and the settlement house movement more
broadly, are seen to be the first strains of social justice in social work.
How do we see immigrants and “culture” today?
Citizenship and Immigration Canada, under the direction of former Prime Minster Stephen Harper,
created a study guide entitled “Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship”. This
guide was designed to help new (and potential) immigrants understand what cultural, historical, and
practical norms exist in Canada, as well as how immigrants might integrate into “Canadian” culture.
On page 9 of the guide, there is a bit of a detour, away from a general overview of Canadian history and
citizenship. In a section called “Equality of Men and Women”, there is an explicit mention of the
following….
“In Canada, men and women are equal under the law. Canada’s openness and generosity do not extend
to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, “honour killings,” female genital mutilation,
forced marriage or other gender-based violence. Those guilty of these crimes are severely punished
under Canada’s criminal laws”
Similarly, in this week’s chapter, the authors note that although we now recognize that cultural practices
are important to many immigrants, some still may be harmful, including the practice of female
circumcision.
Why do you think these “harmful cultural practices” are specifically mentioned?
What purpose(s) does this serve, to point out the practices of “Other” cultures (in relation to “our own”?)
(By the way, are men and women truly equal in Canada?)
Key concepts…
Race: is socially constructed. This means that race is and has been constructed in order to maintain the
social, economic and political power of some, over others.
Groups of people are racialized in order to preserve relations of power and maintain hierarchies of
oppression.
**Racialization is the process whereby skin colour is infused with false meaning, and certain attributes and
characteristics become attached to certain bodies, through stereotypes and discourses, in order to recreate
and reinforce race**
Culture: groups identify with certain aspects of heritage, community, beliefs and/or practices that are
constantly changing, and are not uniformly defined nor evenly distributed across all in one group.
However, “culture” is often described and taken up as static, particularly in processes of knowledge
production about the “Other”.
A few questions to consider:
oDoes Canada have a “culture”? Why or why not?
oThink of what you’ve either heard of or learned about with respect to another “culture”,
particularly of a marginalized/oppressed group.
oWhy do “we” know “them” to be a certain way?
oWhat purpose does this serve, to “know” them in a particular way?
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Interesting to note here that we only fully delve into settlement house workers being assimilationists when we discuss race, immigration, and culture . For settlement house workers in toronto, and in many other parts of north america, their overall desire was to christianize newcomers, and to impart moral values. Yet, in the history of social work, settlement house workers, and the settlement house movement more broadly, are seen to be the first strains of social justice in social work. Citizenship and immigration canada, under the direction of former prime minster stephen harper, created a study guide entitled discover canada: the rights and responsibilities of citizenship . This guide was designed to help new (and potential) immigrants understand what cultural, historical, and practical norms exist in canada, as well as how immigrants might integrate into canadian culture. On page 9 of the guide, there is a bit of a detour, away from a general overview of canadian history and citizenship.
