Culturally Adequate Social Work
Nygård, R. H., Saus, M. & Nicolay, S. S. (In press). Conceptualisations of Culture and Ethnicity within Social Work in two Indigenous Communities: Implications for Culturally Adequate Social Work. Journal of Comparative Social Work.
In this article, we investigate how social work professionals, in Indigenous communities in Norway and Native American communities in Montana, conceptualize culture and ethnicity.
We further discuss the implications of these constructions of ethnicity and culture for culturally adequate social work in practice.
The study involved interviewing 39 social workers and stakeholders in focus group and individual interviews. The participants were asked about their experiences and ideas of social work in their local community in the interviews. The research questions revolved around family involvement and cultural adequacy in social work. Family Group Conferences were used as a reference point. We find that social workers and stakeholders within the contexts of Sami and Native American communities construct culture and ethnicity differently.
In the result part of the article, we present three themes central in interview, 1) role of the extended family, 2) local community, 3) historical trauma.
Role of the extended family. Social work professionals in Sápmi negotiate the role of the extended family in the Sami community. In their negotiation they present the extended family as being both present and not. Social work professionals in Native American interviews describe tribal cultures as family and community-oriented. There is no negotiation around the role of family in the Native American culture.
Local community. Social worker professionals in Sápmi make a close connection between cultural knowledge and community knowledge. They tend to place local community
by ethnicity. Native American social work professionals make a close connection between extended family and community. Talking about community, the social work professionals treat ethnicity as the community marker. Community belonging depends on ethnic, indigenous or non-indigenous identity.
Historical trauma. In the interviews with social work professionals in Sápmi, compared to the Native American communities, the history of assimilation and oppression receive little
attention. The assimilation is not explicitly related to individual and family issues today.
Knowledge of the historical process of Norwegianization is not integrated into current social work practice. Social work professionals in Native American interviews on the other hand highlight historical trauma as a central theme. They describe historical trauma as an essential factor that must be addressed in social work practice.
Discussing these themes, we find that social workers in Sami and Native American communities conceptualize culture and ethnicity differently. We discuss how culture and ethnicity can conceptualize as hybrid or fixed. In addition to how culture and ethnicity can conceptualize in relation to power imbalance.
Culture and ethnicity as hybrid or fixed. In Sápmi, ethnicity is to a certain extent constructed as hybrid and fluid. Ethnicity is perceived as something changeable and negotiable where both Norwegian and Sami cultural norms influence families in the community. With this construction, social work professionals in Sápmi reject an idea of a single, fixed way of being or living as Sami. In Native American communities, social work professionals view ethnicity as stable, resulting in an interpretation of culture as concrete, physical and material. This construction subscribes more to a fixed than a hybrid understanding of culture and ethnicity.
This construction of culture and ethnicity provides the Native American communities with a
The second article discusses how the construction of culture and ethnicity as ether hybrid or fixed might have implications for social work practice. In the Norwegian context, we argue that social workers and policy makers have an ambivalent relation to when and if culture is deemed relevant. The construction of culture and ethnicity as changeable and fluid might complicate legitimizing the need for culturally adequate social work. In the Montana context, the construction of culture and ethnicity as fixed and stable legitimizes the need for culturally adequate social work. Rather than debating the need for a transformation, the debate in this context focuses on how to transform social work towards cultural adequacy.
Culture and ethnicity related to power imbalance. The power relations among ethnic groups are not a central theme in the construction of culture and ethnicity in interviews with social work professionals in Sápmi. Research shows the continued effect of assimilation on Sami individual and families even today (see (Dankertsen, 2014; A. Eriksen et al., 2015; Johansen, 2004). Our study suggests that addressing cultural oppression is not part of the social work curriculum and practice. In Native American communities, inequality between groups is an essential part in construction of culture and ethnicity. In the article, the implications in social work practice of constructing power imbalance as significant for culture and ethnicity are discussed. The social work professionals in Native American communities describes a social work practice where addressing the historical trauma forms a natural part. The systems for addressing contemporary effects of earlier oppressive policies on family life today are not yet developed within social work in Sápmi. Legitimizing the need for addressing macro structures of power inequality and oppression is dependent on the construction of culture and ethnicity.
When power inequality is not part of construction of culture and ethnicity in social work, as in the Sami construction, it is difficult to legitimize development of culturally adequate social work addressing macro structures of power inequality and oppression.
In the article we conclude that the constructions of culture and ethnicity differ within the contexts of Sami and Native American communities respectively. These constructions have concrete implications for social work practice and for legitimizing the development of culturally adequate social work.
Figure 3 – Construction of Ethnicity and Culture