Reactivating Social Work Practice as an Emancipatory Project: The Role of Critical Theory, Pedagogy and Reflection

Abstract

We enter this climate crisis amidst great uncertainty, the contemporary rise of authoritarianism, the resurgence of fascism, and the mobilisation of xenophobic views that scapegoat ethnic and religious difference for the problems caused by global capitalism, and the election of populist right wing governments (Giroux & Filippakou, 2020) These conditions combined create what Hannah Arendt would have called ‘dark times’ (Giroux, 2015, p.3). Clearly many people feel that democracy has failed (Straume, 2014), but like many others, I believe there is a significant role for social work to play in activating alternative responses (See Morley et al., 2019; Morley et al, 2020a; Morley et al., 2020b). So, how might this reconstruction process be helped by critical theory, pedagogy and reflection?

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