Linda Kreitzer - Böcker

Social Work in Africa offers professors, students, and practitioners insight concerning social work in the African context. Its purpose is to encourage examination of the social work curriculum and to demonstrate practical ways to make it more culturally relevant.Drawing on her experience as a social work instructor in Ghana with field research conducted for her doctoral thesis, author Linda Kreitzer addresses the history of social work in African countries, the hegemony of western knowledge in the field, and the need for culturally and regionally informed teaching resources and programs. Guided by a strong sense of her limitations and responsibilities as a privileged outsider and a belief that ""only Ghanaians can critically look at and decide on a culturally relevant curriculum for themselves"", Kreitzer utilizes Participatory Action Research methodology to successfully move the topic of culturally relevant practices from rhetoric to demonstration.Social Work in Africa is aimed at programs and practise in Ghana; at the same time, it is intended as a framework for the creation of culturally relevant social work curricula in other African countries and other contexts.

First used to describe the weariness the public felt toward media portrayals of societal crises, the term compassion fatigue has been taken up by health professionals to name - along with burnout, vicarious traumatization, compassion stress, and secondary traumatic stress - the condition of caregivers who become ""too tired to care."" Compassion, long seen as the foundation of ethical caring, is increasingly understood as a threat to the well-being of those who offer it.Through the lens of hermeneutic phenomenology, the authors present an insider's perspective on compassion fatigue, its effects on the body, on the experience of time and space, and on personal and professional relationships. Accounts of health professionals, alongside examinations of poetry, images, movies, and literature, are used to explore the notions of compassion, hope, and hopelessness as they inform the meaning of caring work. The authors frame their exposé of compassion fatigue with the very Canadian metaphor of ""lying down in the snow."" If suffering is imagined as ever-falling snow, then the need for training and resources for safe journeying in ""winter country"" becomes apparent. Recognizing the phenomenon of compassion fatigue reveals the role that health services education and the moral habitability of our healthcare environments play in supporting professionals' ability to act compassionately and to endure.

Cultural practices have the potential to cause human suffering. The Tension Between Culture and Human Rights critically interrogates the relationship between culture and human rights across Africa and offers strategies for pedagogy and practice that social workers and educators may use.Drawing on Afrocentricity and emancipatory social work as antidotes to colonial power and dehumanization, this collection challenges cultural practices that violate human rights, and the dichotomous and taken-for-granted assumptions in the cultural representations between the West and the Rest of the world. Engaging critically with cultural traditions while affirming Indigenous knowledge and practices, it is unafraid to deal frankly with uncomfortable truths. Each chapter explores a specific aspect of African cultural norms and practices and their impacts on human rights and human dignity, paying special attention to the intersections of politics, economics, race, class, gender, and cultural expression.Going beyond analysis, this collection offers a range of practical approaches to understanding and intervention rooted in emancipatory social work. It offers a pathway to develop critical reflexivity and to reframe epistemologies for education and practice. This is essential reading not only for students and practitioners of social work, but for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of African cultures and practices.

Cultural practices have the potential to cause human suffering. The Tensions between Culture and Human Rights critically interrogates the relationship between culture and human rights across Africa and offers strategies for pedagogy and practice that social workers and educators may use.Drawing on Afrocentricity and emancipatory social work as antidotes to colonial power and dehumanization, this collection challenges cultural practices that violate human rights, and the dichotomous and taken-for-granted assumptions in the cultural representations between the West and the Rest of the world. Engaging critically with cultural traditions while affirming Indigenous knowledge and practices, it is unafraid to deal frankly with uncomfortable truths. Each chapter explores a specific aspect of African cultural norms and practices and their impacts on human rights and human dignity, paying special attention to the intersections of politics, economics, race, class, gender, and cultural expression.Going beyond analysis, this collection offers a range of practical approaches to understanding and intervention rooted in emancipatory social work. It offers a pathway to develop critical reflexivity and to reframe epistemologies for education and practice. This is essential reading not only for students and practitioners of social work, but for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of African cultures and practices.

This project seeks to enhance both the theoretical and practical understanding of community development by adopting an African perspective. Recognizing that the majority of community development literature utilized in African academic settings predominantly focuses on practices from the Global North, this edited volume addresses a critical gap. It develops, compiles, and promotes scholarship that is transnational yet reflective of the unique realities present within the African context. This edited volume expands the global discourse on community development by delving into the particular forms it takes within African settings. It will explore how local practices influence existing theories and models of community development and examine the integration of these theories into practical applications within African communities.The motivating goal of this edited book is to provide a space to examine the specific contextual factors that impact the history, theory and practice of community development in Africa. Community development should reflect the local context in which it is practiced. The contributions included in this edited book will provide a valuable resource for professors, researchers, and practitioners, presenting a range of historically, culturally, and socially situated critical perspectives. In summary, this collection seeks to highlight African context specific literature in the field of community development.