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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Speaking from the margins
— a critical reflection on the 'spiritual-but-not-religious' discourse in social work | | Author(s) | Yuk-Lin Renita Wong, Jana Vinsky |
| Journal title | British Journal of Social Work, vol 39, no 7, October 2009 |
| Pages | pp 1343-1359 |
| Source | http://bjsw.oxfordjournals.org |
| Keywords | Spiritual characteristics [elderly] ; Religion ; Ethnic groups ; Attitude ; Social workers ; Theory. |
| Annotation | This paper attempts to make visible the invisible Euro-Christian ethnocentrism and individualism in the 'spiritual-but-not-religious' discourse in social work. A critical analysis of the current literature on spirituality and social work, intertwined with the authors' personal narratives of spirituality and religion, calls into question the subject positions of social work authors who argue for differentiating spirituality from religion. The authors ask: From whose vantage point is the 'spiritual-but-not-religious' discourse produced? What gets legitimised and who gets excluded from this particular construction of spirituality? This paper deconstructs the power relations of race, ethnicity, and sexuality in the discourse of spirituality in social work. It destabilises the assumption of spirituality as non-sectarian and inclusive. Contrary to many social work authors and educators' best intention of inclusiveness, the authors contend that the 'spiritual-but-not-religious' discourse in social work may have inadvertently reproduced the process of colonial othering and further marginalisation of racialised ethnic groups who are more often represented as religious. (KJ/RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-100210203 A |
| Classmark | EX: TR: TK: DP: QR: 4D |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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