Cross-cultural practice and the indigenisation of African social work

Abstract

his paper examines the issues involved in developing indigenous social work practice . Several African writers are making an interesting contribution to the important debate on indigenisation in the social work literature in Africa (Bar-On, 1998, 1999; Mupediswa, 1992, 1997; Osei-Hwedie,1995). However, their work is at an exploratory stage in that they have introduced and probed questions relating to indigenisation but not developed fully the way in which Western social work differs from relevant indigenous social work practice in Africa. In this paper we view social work as a Western invention and a product of modernity, and indigenisation as a postmodern notion, a form of resistance to the cultural homogenising and universalising effects of globalisation. We ague that the, difference between Western and African understanding of culture is an integral aspect of the indigenisation debate and that to progress the debate further, it is necessary to establish a framework a clear and logical articulation of the values located in each set of cultures. We explore the notion of "indigenisation as cross-cultural practice" for, as the international literature on cultural diversity shows, there needs to be an extensive dialogue between cultural groups on principles, ethical norms and appropriate practice if a truly cross-cultural world is to take shape. A cross-cultural or intercultural dialogue needs to precede any ideas about cross-cultural practice. Thus there is still a long way to go in developing indigenous social work practice in Africa. The paper ends with suggestions as to how indigenous practice models might be developed. Cross-cultural practice, indigenisation, African, Social work