Forget Cultural Competence; Ask for an Autobiography

Recent management practices seek to standardize and routinize practice through formulaic assessment processes and casework to ensure risk minimization and cost effectiveness. Such pressures have become entrenched in social work practice in Australia and other economically developed societies. Under such regimes cultural competence is rendered as expert knowledge about the other to be acquired and applied in ways to ensure maximum efficiency. But working effectively across racial and cultural differences demands critical reflection on one's own position and the complex interactions between different aspects of identity. While some versions of cultural competence incorporate the need to examine our own values and behaviours, the paper argues that rather than focusing on knowledge of differences, social workers should concentrate on critically listening to our clients' autobiographies to reveal over time what aspects of their social and cultural lives matter to them. The paper reviews findings from teaching Australian social work undergraduate and graduate students engaging with these challenges with particular reference to working effectively with Indigenous people.     

Cultural capital in an understated nation: the case of Scotland

The concept of cultural capital is rarely used to explore specifically national cultural formations. This paper explores how Scotland, with its distinctive national identity, yet its constitutionally subordinate position within the UK offers an interesting case to explore the relationship between nationality and cultural capital. It examines how the concept can be used to unpick collective national identities, and how devolution might have changed its relationship to matters of identity and culture. It is especially concerned to show how Scotland's position within the UK leads to a form of cultural formation caught between two contradictory assumptions: that Scotland is 'culture-lite'--insufficiently different from the rest of the UK in terms of cultural markers such as language religion etc to be 'national'; and on the other hand that Scotland is 'culture-heavy' in so far as its cultural iconography is so hegemonic and distorted that it generates deformed narratives and discourses.     

Reflection at the Crossroads of Cultures

This article explores how technologies can transform the obstacles of geographical and cultural dis-tance into new opportunities for learning and personal growth. In particular, it focuses on the potential benefits of reflection in the context of cross-cultural exchange and how technology can bring those benefits to the classroom. Several instances of research explore the uses of technology for promoting cross-cultural contact as a way to expose students and teachers to fresh educational values and prac-tices. A consistent result is that when people experience a new culture or community or even a new classroom, they report an increase in reflection about their identities, attributions, and responsibilities. Reflection appears as a deeply social act. Several examples highlight two social functions of reflection in the context of cross-cultural interaction. One function is to help people decide which aspects of cul-ture to appropriate and how to adapt those aspects to their own interests. Another function is to help people become more receptive to the presence of different values and practices. The article conclude with a set of provisional design principles for encouraging learning through cross-cultural reflection.     

The Problematic of Culture and Identity in Social Functioning

The Paper endeavours to examine the way in which the culture concept has been used in multicultural public policies. In culture theorising it identified two distinct traditions-one reminiscent of the Arts, and the other, more characteristic of the social sciences, in particular, 'cultural anthropology.' Considering the limitations of the culture concept based on a more structural approach. It considers how the culture concept is circumscribed by social factors and institutional constraints, and concludes by examining the utility of the concept of identity in moving from a macro to a micro level of analysis of culture especially in studying cultural practices and social behaviour.     

Technologies for Learning from Intercultural Reflections

This paper explores how technologies can transform the obstacles of geographical and cultural distance into new opportunities for learning and personal growth. In particular, it focuses on the potential benefits of reflection in the context of cross-cultural exchange and how technology can bring those benefits to the classroom. Several instances of research explore the uses of technology for promoting cross-cultural contact as a way to expose students and teachers to fresh models of educational values and practices. A consistent result is that, when people experience a new culture or community or even a new classroom, they report an increase in reflection, both about their identities as new members of the community and about their personal goals and responsibility in relation to the values of the new community. Reflection appears as a deeply social act. Several examples highlight two social functions of reflection in the context of cross-cultural interaction. One important function is to help people decide which aspects of culture to appropriate and how to adapt those aspects to their own interests. Another important function of reflection is to help people become more receptive to the presence of different values and practices. The paper concludes with a set of provisional design principles for encouraging learning through cross-cultural reflection.     

Global Englishes, Rip Slyme, and performativity

In this article I suggest that while recent sociolinguistic work focusing on crossing, styling the Other or language boundaries is raising significant questions concerning how we relate language, identity and popular culture, these insights have largely passed by the sociolinguistics of world Englishes. This latter work is still caught between arguments about homogeneity and heterogeneity, between arguments based on liberal accommodationism, linguistic imperialism or linguistic hybridity that do not allow for sufficiently complex understandings of what is currently happening with global Englishes. Focusing particularly on rap music, I suggest that we need, at the very least, a critical understanding of globalization, a focus on popular cultural flows, and a way of taking up performance and performativity in relationship to identity and culture.     

Popular Culture,Social Identities,and Internal/External Cultural Politics: The Case of Rangers Supporters in Scottish Football

The article examines the construction of critical, resistant identities among supporters of the powerful Scottish football club, Rangers. The analysis is underpinned by two general arguments relating to identity construction: (1) the need to examine carefully the cultural politics of relatively advantaged groups within the field of popular culture and (2) the need to explore how forms of cultural resistance and contestation are focused particularly on relations within the popular culture, rather than on forms of determination by the wider societal order. The article draws heavily on substantial fieldwork with Rangers supporters in the UK and overseas. The findings highlight the complex and contingent relationships between popular culture and broader societal forces, as illustrated by the diverging arguments of Rangers fans on the legitimacy of ethno-religious and market-focused identities within football.     

Hybridising the cultural identity of Mulan from a Chinese ballad to American films

Hybridisation refers to the fusion of diverse cultural elements which generates new cultural forms that are distinct yet interconnected with one another. Previous studies affirmed that hybridisation has become part of an ongoing trend in transnational culture, emerging from a Third Space where diverse cultural elements enmesh. This study aims to explore how Mulan's cultural identity is hybridised when the folklore flows from China to America, becoming entangled within a conflict of Chinese-Western transcultural clashes. Using Jameson's cultural identity model, the paper analyses Mulan's cultural identity in three texts which are the original The Ballad of Mulan, Disney's animated movie Mulan (1998) and its subsequent life-action installment Mulan (2020). Components measuring the protagonist's cultural identity comprising vocation, class, geography, philosophy, language, biological traits with cultural aspects are compared. The findings show that the movies have particularly hybridise the protagonist's cultural identity from the aspects of geography, philosophy, and language. This results in a hybrid cultural identity with transnational markers in Mulan. The significance of the research thus lies in its contribution towards highlighting how Chinese figures are increasingly hybridised by Western influences as the Chinese culture continues to transcend transnational borders.     

Picturing social work,puzzles and passion: exploring and developing transnational professional identities

ABSTRACT

Exploring and in turn developing professional identity is a challenge faced by social work programmes, nationally and internationally. This paper developed from the authors’ shared research interest in how social workers and students of social work develop and express their professional identities. We report findings from a workshop designed to explore how a group of social workers from different countries conceptualised social work identity, including the effects of transnational and cultural contexts. Our starting point drew on theoretical concepts developed in Wiles’s research, in which the term professional identity is used to convey multiple meaning, and the method developed in Vicary’s research which uses drawing to elicit data. We found that a collective identity is shared across national boundaries albeit, and ironically, that this shared identity has components that are not cohesive and are continually being redefined. In the participants’ own words, the notion of social work identity is always just out of reach conceptually, or ‘over the horizon’. Tensions in identity were also revealed, alongside a sense of passion or deep commitment. These findings complement and add to the existing literature on exploring and developing professional identity in social work.     

“Oh,No, I'm Not Infertile”: Culture,Support Groups,and the Infertile Identity

Abstract

Using in-depth interviews with forty subfecund women, I explore how subfecundity affects a woman's sense of self. I examine the role that culture plays in the content of our identities, particularly in disrupted lives. I examine the role that culture, in particular the culture within a support group, plays in the content of infertile identities. I examine how some women come to see themselves as infertile while others do not, and how the women come to think about infertility in relation to the self. I employ theories of cultural sociology and identity to provide a framework for explaining the ways in which subfecund women draw on the cultures of support groups in reconstructing their selves in the face of subfecundity.     

Exploring commonality and difference in in-depth interviewing: a case-study of researching British Asian women

This paper draws on the experience of researching British South Asian women's lives in London as a female British Asian researcher to explore how cultural commonality and difference is shaped by agency and interaction in the research process. It examines these issues through a discussion of how the shared cultural identity of the researcher and the interviewees emerged as both a point of commonality and difference in the research process; with the researcher being ;positioned' in terms of both as a result of the interviewees' agency in interpreting their cultural commonality. In particular, issues of 'Indianness' and religion emerged as points on which interviewees exercised agency and interpreted the researcher's cultural identity. This was the basis on which they claimed commonality or difference and this assessment consequently impacted on their interaction with the researcher. The article suggests that more attention needs to be given to how assumptions made by interviewees regarding the cultural identity of the researcher through their agency and interaction in the research process shapes interview dynamics.     

Teachers’ Page

Encouraging elementary students to become aware of place and the role it plays in shaping their lives can provide them with a clearer sense of self and a greater appreciation for diversity. To support this premise, this article explores using six National Council for the Social Studies Notable Trade Books to assist primary students in their understanding of place. By using realistic fiction and nonfiction picture books that focus on children's lives in diverse locations, the suggested activities enable teachers to address the five themes of geography and promote cultural awareness to elementary students in meaningful ways. The author provides a summary of each book and describes student-centered activities to develop concepts related to the NCSS thematic strands of culture; people, places, and environments; and individual development and identity.     

Smuggled Sound: Bootleg Recording and the Pursuit of Popular Memory

This paper explores the meanings that bootleg recording holds in peoples’ lives. “Bootlegging” refers to the practice of making unauthorized recordings of live performances. Our paper is an interpretive analysis of interviews with bootleg producers and collectors. In their accounts, they suggest how their activities offer an extraordinary example of what it means to participate in contemporary popular culture. As bootleggers smuggle tape recorders into concerts, or trade tapes in underground networks, they pursue rare artifacts of popular culture. Their stories of bootleg taping, collecting and trading suggest an alternative to depictions of popular culture as merely a process of production and consumption. Instead, these accounts demonstrate how some people document their participation in mass cultural events on their own terms and for their own uses. Here, bootlegging is seen as an attempt by people to capture live performances, to collect them as a source of memory and authenticity, and to mediate the events of their lives through means of technological reproduction.     

Researching the occupational culture of public relations in Mexico

Within the field of international public relations, it is rare to find detailed accounts of the process of undertaking cross-cultural research. Yet researchers who collect data in cultural contexts different from their own face numerous ethical and cultural challenges. By failing to articulate these, researchers deny the accommodations they have to make in their methodological choices, limiting the explanatory power of their findings. This article reflects on how societal culture influenced the evolving research decisions and experiences in a study into the occupation of public relations in Mexico City. In considering how to explore in a culturally sensitive way the social reality of public relations practitioners, it raises ethical concerns regarding selectivity and relationship interactions in cross-cultural research.     

Peer cultural socialisation: a resource for minority students’ cultural identity,life satisfaction,and school values

ABSTRACT

This study investigated how peers can contribute to cultural minority students’ cultural identity, life satisfaction, and school values (school importance, utility, and intrinsic values) by talking about cultural values, beliefs, and behaviours associated with heritage and mainstream culture (peer cultural socialisation). We further distinguished between heritage and mainstream identity as two separate dimensions of cultural identity. Analyses were based on self-reports of 662 students of the first, second, and third migrant generation in Germany (Mean age = 14.75 years, 51% female). Path analyses revealed that talking about heritage culture with friends was positively related to heritage identity. Talking about mainstream culture with friends was negatively associated with heritage identity, but positively with mainstream identity as well as school values. Both dimensions of cultural identity related to higher life satisfaction and more positive school values. As expected, heritage and mainstream identity mediated the link between peer cultural socialisation and adjustment outcomes. Findings highlight the potential of peers as socialisation agents to help promote cultural belonging as well as positive adjustment of cultural minority youth in the school context.     

Student mobility and identity-related language learning

This paper reviews some recent studies problematizing various aspects of identity in relation to mobile students’ encounters with the social interactive and pragmatic dimensions of language. The paper will examine several salient demographic categories represented in the literature: nationality, ‘foreigner’ status, gender, age, and sexuality. These studies clearly demonstrate that student sojourners abroad may encounter challenges not only to their language skills, but also to their identities. Furthermore, these challenges can influence both the overall quality of study or residence abroad as an environment for language learning and the particular aspects of language that students choose to appropriate or reject. In light of these findings, it would appear that simply enjoining language learners to become more engaged or less judgmental may not be sufficient. Rather, what is in order is a renewed emphasis on awareness of language and culture as well as approaches helping students to understand how linguistic choices both reflect and create interpersonal, social, and cultural contexts.     

Hearing the stories of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social workers: challenging and educating the system

Hearing the stories of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social workers highlights the powerful influence that cultural identity has on their practice. Their identity is continuously negotiated alongside a professional social work identity that is dominated by Western discourse. The tensions that these social workers experience in their practice is revealed in the findings of a qualitative research project conducted by an Indigenous and a non-Indigenous practitioner and researcher. The researchers spoke to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social workers engaged in diverse areas of practice across Australia. Their stories reveal a complex range of cultural and professional challenges. These include the difficulties encountered when working with their own kinship networks and the need to constantly negotiate personal and professional boundaries. The paper concludes with some thoughts about how the practice of Indigenous social workers can provide valuable lessons for Australian social work.     

Social Exclusion,Social Identity and Social Work: Analysing Social Exclusion from a Material Discursive Perspective

Within this article I explore the concept of social exclusion, considering how it has been defined and the implications of this for social exclusion policy. It is suggested that the current use of the concept focuses on material definitions of exclusion, obscures the discursive origins of exclusion and tends to individualise the problem. I argue that we need to adopt a broader approach to defining and analysing social exclusion which understands social exclusion as a process which is influenced by both material and discursive factors. The connections between discourse, identity and marginalisation are discussed and these arguments are illustrated using examples related to different aspects of social identity. Finally the article presents a framework for analysing social exclusion from a material discursive perspective and suggests that adopting this perspective clarifies the role of social work in working with people who experience exclusionary processes.     

'They are not like us and neither should they be': issues of teacher identity for teachers of pupils with profound and multiple learning difficulties

This article analyses notions of teacher identity for a group of teachers of pupils with profound and multiple learning difficulties. Teacher identity is analysed from the perspective of the role it plays in supporting the teachers' ideas of being separate and different from their teaching colleagues in mainstream education. For some of the teachers this is manifested in an identity to a cause, which is deep rooted and complex. It is argued that teacher educators need to be aware of the potential influence of teacher identity when planning and delivering initial teacher training and continued professional development. This is particularly pertinent in a context of supporting greater shared professional identity between teachers who work in segregated and mainstream contexts. It is also argued that the development of the discourses of inclusion needs to take account of the complexities of these issues. Whilst engaged in a doctoral research project exploring teachers' views of how pupils with profound and multiple learning disabilities learn, issues of teacher identity emerged as an important element in the teachers' discussions about their work. This article focuses upon these issues, particularly in relation to professional development and a changing school culture that explicitly expects greater inclusive practice. It appears that the discourse relating to identity is about continua, tensions and boundaries that continually interplay. In my own developing understanding of issues of identity, I found the sociological paradigm helpful in offering an appreciation of identity that acknowledges the interplay between the individual and society. Notions of social identity, embracement and distancing offer a conceptual framework for appreciating the teachers' views in this study. Bakehurst and Sypnowich (1995) discuss the synergy of individual and societal influences on the development of identity: 'We are participants in our own construction and exercise some autonomy in the face of the forces of socialization. But conversely, the human mind is not just shaped by society, it is made by society' (Bakehurst and Sypnowich, 1995, p. 5, italics my addition). Jenkins (1996) suggests that changing understandings of identities coupled with changes and developments in society have created a tension and mismatch of identities in a social context:

The popular concern about identity is, in the large part perhaps, a reflection of the uncertainty produced by rapid change and cultural contact: our social maps no longer fit our social landscapes. (Jenkins, 1996, p. 9)