Socially-Engineered Trauma and a New Social Work Pedagogy: Socioeducation as a Critical Foundation of Social Work Practice

Abstract

Recent social science data identifies white supremacist racism, neoliberal economic policies and cisgender-heteropatriarchy as three primary systemic engines of traumatic outcomes at the individual level. Social work pedagogy, however, fails to identify such experiences as socially-engineered trauma (SET). Lacking an explicitly anti-oppressive pedagogy, social workers attend to micro-level traumas while ignoring the macro forces leading to trauma exposure among certain populations. The term socioeducation is introduced as a method for discussing macro social systems with clients to support trauma recovery, with the goal of catalyzing client and worker participation in social justice movements seeking to disrupt oppressive systems.

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