1st Edition
Post-Anthropocentric Social Work Critical Posthuman and New Materialist Perspectives
This book seeks to trouble taken-for-granted assumptions of anthropocentrism and humanism in social work - those which perpetuate human privilege and human exceptionalism. The edited collection provides a different imaginary for social work by introducing ways of thinking otherwise that challenge human exceptionalism.
Social work is at heart a liberal humanist project informed by a strong human rights framework. This edited collection draws on the literature on affect, feminist new materialism and critical posthumanism to critique the liberal framework, which includes human rights. Disrupting the anthropocentrism in social work which positions humans as an elite species at the centre of world history, this book develops an ethical sensibility that values entanglements of humans, non-human life and the natural environment.
The book provides new insights into environmental destruction, human-animal relations, gender inequality and male dominance, as well as indigenous and settler/colonial issues and critical and green social work. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of social work, community development, social policy and development studies more broadly.
List of Tables, Figures and Images
Notes on contributors
Foreword
Mathew Arthur
Preface
Acknowledgements
- Towards Post-Anthropocentric Social Work
Vivienne Bozalek and Bob Pease - What Comes After the Subject? Towards a Critical Posthumanist Social Work
Stephen A. Webb - An Invitation into the Trouble with Humanism for Social Work
Tina E. Wilson - Restorative and Regenerative Relational Praxis Must Include the Non-human
Jacques Boulet - A Philosophy of Social Work Beyond the Anthropocene.
Karen Bell - Feeling the ‘Weight of the Body’: Posthumanism and De-liberalising Social Work
John Fox - Propositions for Slow Social Work
Vivienne Bozalek - Ecofeminism to Feminist Materialism: Implications for Anthropocene Feminist Social Work
Carolyn Noble - Fostering Non-Anthropocentric Vulnerability in Men: Challenging the Autonomous Masculine Subject in Social Work
Bob Pease - Return of the Posthuman: Developing Indigenist Perspectives for Social Work at a Time of Environmental Crisis
Glenn Woods and Dorothee Hölscher - More-Than-Human Community Work: The Affirmative Biopolitics of Life in a Glasgow Neighbourhood
Heather Lynch - Posthumanism, Sexualities Education and the Production of Citizenship
Pam Alldred, Nick Fox and Yohai Hakak - Animals as Domestic Violence Victims: A Challenge to Humanist Social Work
Heather Fraser and Nik Taylor - Towards a Critical Posthumanist Social Work: Trans-Species Ethics of Ecological Justice, Nonviolence and Love
Dyann Ross, Bindi Bennett and Natalie Menyweather - Encountering Interspecies Homelessness: Resisting Anthroparchy in Social Work and the All-Too-Human Services
Melissa Laing - Natureculture Dilemmas in Northern Finland: Guiding Post-Anthropocentric Social Work Through the Mire
Satu Ranta-Tyrkkö - Hauntology, History and Heritage: Intergenerational Trauma in South African Displaced Families
Shanaaz Hoosain and Vivienne Bozalek
Part One: Philosophical Foundations of Post-Anthropocentric Social Work
Part Two: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Doing Post-Anthropocentric Social Work
Part Three: More-than-Human Sites of Practice in Post-Anthropocentric Social Work
Biography
Vivienne Bozalek is Emerita Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of the Western Cape, and Honorary Professor in the Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning at Rhodes University, South Africa.
Bob Pease is Adjunct Professor in the Institute for Social Change at the University of Tasmania and an Honorary Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University.