Park, Yoosun

1
2 CULTURE AS DEFICIT: A CRITICAL

3
4 DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT
5 OF CULTURE IN CONTEMPORARY
6 SOCIAL WORK DISCOURSE
7
8 Yoosun Park
9
10 Columbia University
11 School of Social Work
[First Page]
12
13 [11], (1)
14 This paper is a critical discourse analysis of the usage of the concept of
15 “culture” in social work discourse. The paper argues that “culture” is
Lines: 0 to 25
16 inscribed as a marker for difference which has largely replaced the categories
17 of race and ethnicity as the preferred trope of minority status. “Culture” is ———
18 conceived as an objectifiable body of knowledge constituting the legitimate -5.65pt PgVar
foundation for the building of interventions. But such interventions cannot ———
19 Normal Page
20 be considered other than an instrument which reinforces the subjugating
paradigm from which it is fashioned. The concept of culture, constructed PgEnds: TEX
21
from within an orthodoxic, hegemonic discursive paradigm, is deployed as
22 a marker of deficit.
23 [11], (1)
24 Keywords: culture, culture definition, cultural competence, multicultur-
25 alism, discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, social work discourse
26
27 This paper examines social work’s usage of the concept of
28 culture. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA), a neo-Marxist
29 turn to the study of discourse which examines language and its
30 usages to understand their social and political import, this paper
31 investigates the particular ways in which “culture” is inscribed
32 and deployed in social work discourse. In following the tenets of
33 CDA, language and discourse are approached in this study “as the
34 instrument of power and control. . . . as well as the instruments
35 of social construction of reality” (Van Leeuwen, 1993, p. 193).
36 Discourses are understood to be central modes and components
37 of the production, maintenance, and conversely, resistance to
38
39 Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, September, 2005, Volume XXXII, Number 3
11
BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 11 / Printer proof

JSSW / Vol. 32, No. 3, September 2005
12 Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
1 systems of power and inequality; no usage of language can ever
2 be considered neutral, impartial, or a-political acts. This study,
3 consequently, examines the particular meanings social work as-
4 signs to “culture,” and analyzes the implications for constructing
5 and utilizing such a signifier. It studies, in other words, what the
6 concept of culture does in the disciplinary discourse.
7 This study is grounded in the theoretical position that the
8 usage of the concept of culture in social work and the meanings
9 social work assigns to “culture” are profoundly political, biased,
10 and partial inscriptions. “Cultural constructions are always ‘ide-
11 ological,’ always situated with respect to the forms and modes of
12 power operating in a given time and space” (Ortner, 1998, p. 4).
13 “Culture” is to be understood as a relational demarcator whose [12], (2)
14 usage is an inscription of differential positions and hierarchical
15 identities—a tractable device which can be used to demarcate Lines: 25 to 37
16 whatever a particular set of interests dictates should be set apart
17 from something else; included or excluded from the rest. The bor- ———
18 ders and the contents of “culture,” in other words, are understood
0.0pt PgVar
———
19 to be constructed rather than discovered (Allen, 1996). Long Page
20 For the purposes of this paper, social work discourse on “cul-
PgEnds: TEX
21 ture” is defined narrowly as the body of academic or scholarly
22 discussions and expositions on “culture” found in social work
23 publications. A preliminary review of such materials indicated [12], (2)
24 that “culture” appears most often as the primary subject of in-
25 terest in two related arenas: social work education and social
26 work practice. In both cases, the main problematic is pedagogy—
27 methods for teaching either students or workers to become “cul-
28 turally competent.” Twelve such works, selected from social work
29 journals including Social Work, Journal of Multicultural Social Work,
30 Journal of Social Work Education, and Child Welfare constitute the
31 admittedly limited sources for generalizations about the disci-
32 plinary discourse. The large body of social work literature focus-
33 ing on issues of “culture” and “cultural sensitivity” in research
34 was omitted from the review to limit the scope of the discussion.
35 The plethora of articles concerning multiculturalism, diversity,
36 and culture in associated fields such as psychology and sociology
37 were excluded for the same reason. In keeping with the intent to
38 examine the general trend of the discussion in the field, no con-
39 certed efforts were made to identify works considered seminal,
or authors regarded as notable authorities.

Culture as Deficit 13
1 A Conceptual Muddle
2 The concept of culture has taken on increasing significance in
3 the discourse of social work in recent years. As a central construct
4 in discussions of multiculturalism, diversity, social justice, and
5 the correlate issues of minority populations which it is most
6 often employed to denote, “culture” has become a key signifier
7 of difference in our discourse. Its increasing usage as a central
8 indicator for a large portion of the “client” population with whom
9 social work concerns itself has, in other words, inscribed “culture”
10 as a construct which no social work researcher, practitioner, or
11 educator can credibly ignore.
12
The cultural critic Stuart Hall (1980)asserts that “no single, un- [13], (3)
13
problematic definition of ‘culture’ is to be found here [in various
14
discussions of culture]. The concept remains a complex one—a
15 Lines: 37 to 43
site of convergent interests, rather than logically or conceptually
16
clarified idea” (p. 522). As the anthropologist Susan Wright noted ———
17
18
of the classic review of “culture” in Anthropology, already “By 10.0pt PgVar
mid-century, Kroeber and Kluckhohn had found 164 definitions ———
19 Long Page
20 in their famous review of what anthropologists meant by culture”
21 (1998, p. 7). Some examples of more recent works attesting to PgEnds: TEX
22 enduring dilemma of the culture concept in Anthropology and
23 elsewhere can be found in Keesing (1974) and his updated version
[13], (3)
24 of the same topic in (1994), Matthews (1989), Boggs (2004), and
25 Cochran (1994).
26 The examination the concept of culture as such a “site of
27 convergent interests”—its salience, its substance, and most im-
28 portantly, its function as a powerful category of identity—has been
29 interrogated by scholars outside of social work (Abu-Lughod,
30 1991; Appadurai, 1996; Archer, 1985; Bhabha, 1994; Bourdieu,
31 1991; Brown, 1995; Foucault, 1972; Gramsci, 1985; Stuart Hall & du
32 Gay, 1996; Mitchell, 1995; Rosaldo, 1993; Said, 1994; Young, 1995).
33 The increasing focus on “culture” as a problematic occlusion
34 of the dynamic of power in our society—a displacement from
35 the discourse of other politically significant factors such as race,
36 class, and gender—has also been discussed elsewhere (Gordon &
37 Newfield, 1996; Scott, 1995; Stolcke, 1995).
38 Despite the ubiquity of its usage, however, neither the mean-
39 ing nor the significance of the concept of culture has been suffi-
ciently examined in social work. What the sociologist Margaret

1 Archer (1985) has said of the conceptualization of culture in that
2 discipline, that “it has displayed the weakest analytical devel-
3 opment of any key concept” which “remains inordinately vague
4 despite little dispute that it is indeed a core concept” (p. 333) can
5 also be said for social work. The salience of “culture” and the effi-
6 cacy of multiculturalism, its main paradigmatic support, remain
7 uncontested and under-examined in social work discourse. “Cul-
8 ture,” which the critic Raymond Williams (1976) has famously
9 called “one of the two or three most complicated words in the
10 English language” (p. 87), remains a taken-for-granted term in
11 social work, a “naturalized” concept in Marxist terms.
12 As the historian Hayden White observed, there is exquisite
13 [14], (4)
difficulty involved in speaking about or defining with a degree
14 of clarity and precision, any perpetually convoluting and con-
15 testable concepts such as culture. Lines: 43 to 54
16
17 When we seek to make sense of such problematical topics as human ———
18 nature, culture, society, and history, we never say precisely what 8.0pt PgVar
we wish to say or mean precisely what we say. Our discourse ———
19 Normal Page
20 always tends to slip away from our data towards the structures
of consciousness with which we are trying to grasp them; or what PgEnds: TEX
21
amounts to the same thing, the data always resist the coherency of
22 the image which we are trying to fashion them. More over, in topics
23 such as these there are always legitimate grounds for differences of [14], (4)
24 opinion as to what they are, how they should be spoken about, and
25 the kinds of knowledge we can have of them. (White, 1978, p. 1)
26
27 Anyone who has attempted to sort out that which is due to
28 “culture” and that which is not and anyone who has attempted to
29 delineate one “culture” from another, will recognize the aptness
30 of both Williams’ and White’s descriptions, and it is, perhaps, the
31 sheer slipperiness of the term that deters social work from exam-
32 ining the construct. If, however, the difficulty of conceptualization
33 and communication were the only issue, social work discourse
34 should resound with discussion and debate about “culture”: how
35 it should be conceived and why it should be conceived thus,
36 however clamorous and contentious the resulting discussion may
37 be. But no such debate is evident.
38 The absence of debate and deliberation cannot easily be at-
39 tributed to social work’s lack of recognition that constructs such

1 as “culture” are consequential. A field so sensitive to the power
2 of labels, which insists on “serving clients” rather than “helping
3 patients,” is obviously aware of the perils of language and its
4 uses. The lack arises, perhaps in part, from social work’s con-
5 ceptualization of the issue as one of measurement rather than
6 premise. Our struggles with the definitional niceties of our basic
7 constructs tend to be limited to the problem of methodology:
8 the difficulty in determining the right variables to represent the
9 category/construct at hand. The assumption appears to be that
10 if we had better tools or methods then we could actually get to,
11 and measure, the thing itself. The essential existence of culture
12 is taken for granted, in other words, and it is only the deficits of
13 our existing methodologies in capturing and measuring culture [15], (5)
14 that we find troublesome; the problem is conceived as the need
15 for epistemological refinement rather than ontological scrutiny. Lines: 54 to 61
16 CDA, on the other hand, sees the examination of the taken-for-
17 granted assumption, the investigation of basic constructs, as the ———
18 crucial task at hand. Discursive demarcations—the acts of nam-
0.0pt PgVar
———
19 ing, classifying, and categorizing—necessary to all language us- Normal Page
20 age are in themselves considered acts of power which demarcate
PgEnds: TEX
21 the center from the periphery, the normal from the deviant, the
22 same from the different, self from the Other. Identities and realities
23 constructed through such discursive practices are, consequently, [15], (5)
24 not only constructed in ways that conceal their manufacture, but
25 are always constructed unequally, legitimating one at the cost of
26 the other. From this perspective on language and discourse, de-
27 stablizing basic constructs—interrogating, contesting, and rein-
28 scribing entrenched, sedimented, and naturalized assumptions—
29 becomes a political imperative. On this view, a task which we tend
30 to see as an ancillary aggravation to the real work of building
31 interventions, is deemed necessary as a mode of resistance against
32 the marginalizing, exclusionary forces of hegemonic ideologies.
33 De-naturalizing occluded assumptions, the taken-for-granted
34 context of discourse, is a key task of CDA. That which is uncov-
35 ered through CDA as both an agent and a product of discur-
36 sive occlusion is usually defined as ideology (N. Fairclough &
37 Wodak, 1997). Ideology’s ordinary indiscernibility in discourse
38 is attributed to the functioning of hegemonic power. Cast in the
39 neo-Marxist terminology of Norman Fairclough (1995),

1 the power to control discourse is seen as the power to sustain
2 particular discursive practices with particular ideological invest-
3 ments in dominance over other alternative (including oppositional)
4 practices. . . . such assumptions are quite generally naturalized, and
5 people are generally unaware of them and of how they are subjected
by/to them. (p. 2)
6
7 Although most critical discourse analysts inscribe the mode of
8 hegemonic power as “ideology,” it can also be understood to
9 be any version of structurally or “culturally” imposed domi-
10 nating/subjugating power that functions to construct unequal
11 identities—whether based on gender, race, culture, or other in-
12 scriptions of power. Kress’ (1996) use of Bourdieu’s concept of
13 the “habitus” rather than “ideology” to capture the naturalizing [16], (6)
14 dynamic of power which devises and maintains the unequal
15 binary positionalities of the subject/object is an example. Lines: 61 to 74
16 Another thesis central to CDA is that language and discursive
17 practices are not simply reflections of ideology and the manifes- ———
18 tation of power, but active agents in the hegemonic process of
-2.0pt PgVar
———
19 constructing and maintaining ideology. Rejecting classic struc- Long Page
20 turalisms from orthodox Marxist materialism to Saussurean lin-
PgEnds: TEX
21 guistics and Levi-Straussian anthropology, CDA maintains that
22 discourse is to be understood not as an epiphenomenal product
23 of structural determinants, but as a constitutive mode/function [16], (6)
24 of power relations. “CDA sees discourse—language use in speech
25 and writing—as a form of ‘social practice’ . . . discourse is socially
26 constitutive as well as socially shaped” (N. Fairclough & Wodak,
27 1997, p. 258). Cameron (1997), a feminist scholar of discourse,
28 locates this approach within a postmodernist turn: “whereas so-
29 ciolinguistics traditionally assumes that people talk the way they
30 do because of who they (already) are, the postmodernist approach
31 suggests that people are who they are because of (among other
32 things) the way they talk” (p. 49).
33 CDA is posed in part as a critique of conventional discourse
34 analyses whose lack of concern for the role of power in discourse,
35 and whose naïve/hegemonic faith/insistence upon positivistic
36 inquiry is deemed a serious socio-political failure. Though some
37 scholars are more explicit than others in identifying their posi-
38 tions, CDA does locate itself unambiguously on a political terrain.
39 Fairclough’s (1995) definition of CDA is a fair description of its
topography: “this [CDA] framework is seen here and throughout

1 as a resource for people who are struggling against domination
2 and oppression in its linguistic forms” (p. 1). Discourse being “al-
3 ways/already political” (Pennycook, 1994, p.131), the role of the
4 discourse analyst cannot be other than politicized, and for some
5 scholars, even activist in character since the ultimate purpose
6 of CDA, for them is the engendering of social change. “Critical
7 studies of language, Critical Linguistics and Critical Discourse
8 Analysis have from the beginning had a political project: broadly
9 speaking that of altering inequitable distributions of economic,
10 cultural and political goods in contemporary societies” (Kress,
11 1996, p. 15). Or in the words of Teun van Dijk (1997):
12
13 Analysis, description and theory formation play a role especially in [17], (7)
14 as far as they allow better understanding and critique of social in-
equality, based on gender, ethnicity, class, origin, religion, language,
15 Lines: 74 to 86
sexual orientation and other criteria that define differences among
16 people. Their ultimate goal is not only scientific, but also social and
17 ———
political, namely change. (van Dijk, 1997, p. 22). 6.39601pt PgVar
18
———
19 Long Page
20 Discursive Lacunae
Although the concept of culture is central to the reviewed PgEnds: TEX
21
22 works on cultural competency and much attention is devoted
23 to delineating methods for working “appropriately” or “sensi- [17], (7)
24 tively” with those who have “culture,” most of the reviewed
25 pieces do not anchor their assertions upon explicitly delineated
26 definitions of “culture.” Most of the articles do not provide any
27 definition at all while the three that do, Liberman (1990), McPhat-
28 ter (1997), and Christensen (1992), do so only in vague terms.
29 Whether the authors assume a discipline-wide consensus on the
30 definition of “culture,” consider it a matter of common sense
31 understanding obviating the need to use up any of the already
32 scarce space allotted a journal article, or recognize the task as a
33 troublesome one and opt simply to ignore it, the central construct
34 of “culture” is left invariably ill-defined.
35 In her 1990 article “Culturally sensitive intervention with chil-
36 dren and families,” Lieberman, one of the three who do attempt
37 a definition, describes the theory of cultural adaptation rather
38 than giving a straightforward definition of “culture.” She cites
39 a particular childrearing strategy of an African tribal group to
make the point that cultural practices develop in response to an

1 actual or perceived need for survival in a given environment.
2 Guisi women’s custom of toting their children on their backs is
3 attributed to their need to keep children away from open cooking
4 fires. The author candidly concedes that there are endless variety
5 of adaptive strategies which the Guisi could have chosen for child
6 safety, “but for reasons of their own, restricting mobility is the
7 adaptation the Guisi came up with” (Lieberman, 1990, p. 102).
8 The analysis here seems incomplete in two obvious ways. If,
9 for one, the given survival-driven adaptation theory is taken to
10 its logical end, the explanation for the particular choice must
11 be that a host of survival needs working in complex concert
12 determined that no other method but this would do. If such a
13 theory is to be rejected, then surely it is those ineffable factors [18], (8)
14 which fall under the unexamined rubric of “reasons of their own”
15 that constitute the crux of how “culture” develops. In either Lines: 86 to 92
16 case, however, an explanation of how “culture” develops is an
17 insufficient substitute for a definition of what “culture” is. ———
18 Christensen, in her 1992 article detailing a curriculum for
0.0pt PgVar
———
19 Canadian school of social work, uses a definition attributed to Normal Page
20 Elaine Pinderhughes. “Culture” in this case is described as “con-
PgEnds: TEX
21 sisting of commonalities around which people have developed
22 values, norms, family styles, social roles, and behaviors, in re-
23 sponse to the historical political, economic, and social realities [18], (8)
24 they face” (1992). The latter part of this description traces its roots
25 to the anthropological survival/adaptation theory utilized by
26 Lieberman, and is similarly, a description of the etiology of “cul-
27 ture” rather than a definition of it. The first part of the description,
28 explaining ‘culture” as a set of “commonalities” around which
29 values, norms, styles, roles, and behaviors have been constructed,
30 suggests the existence of culture as a kind of meta-phenomenon
31 from which the given laundry list of social configurations arise.
32 As a distinct departure from the commonly espoused idea that
33 culture is those very values, norms, family structures, social roles,
34 etc. rather than something that produces them, the theory is of
35 interest. However, in failing to define what those commonalities
36 are (race? ethnicity? religion? locality?) the description remains
37 as ambiguous as the previous.
38 In her 1997 article on cultural competence in child welfare,
39 McPhatter cites James Green’s (1999) definition that culture is

1 “those elements of people’s history, tradition, values, and social
2 organizations that become implicitly or explicitly meaningful to
3 the participants . . . in cross-cultural encounters” (p. 265). The
4 most obvious problem with Green’s definition is his employment
5 of the term to define the term—culture as that which becomes
6 meaningful in a cross-cultural encounter. This kind of tautological
7 enterprise is all too common among the authors who tend to
8 write about culture as that which people of diverse ethnic, racial,
9 and cultural background have. More importantly, taken out of
10 whatever context it originally appeared in, Green’s definition
11 of culture is an oblique and incomplete dictum. In describing
12 what culture does, rather than what it is, Green’s explanation
13 serves to raise more questions than it answers. Which elements [19], (9)
14 of history, traditions, values, and social organizations constitute
15 culture? How do these discrete elements become transformed, Lines: 92 to 96
16 aggregated, as culture? Does the definition imply that culture is
17 transactional in nature? If so, does culture come into existence as ———
18 an entity or a recognizable phenomenon only within the context
0.0pt PgVar
———
19 of a transaction? Can, culture, in this sense, be said to exist? Normal Page
20 Sowers-Hoag and Sandau-Beckler, the authors of “Educating
PgEnds: TEX
21 for cultural competence in the generalist curriculum” (1996) do
22 not provide a definition for culture. They do, however, talk about
23 culture as a matter of personal identity and an essential ingre- [19], (9)
24 dient for individual dignity. Cultural competence is, therefore,
25 described as a “commitment to preserving the dignity of the client
26 by preserving their culture” (p. 39). Since, as will be discussed in
27 later sections of this paper, the pervasive underlying assumption
28 of these works is the notion that culture is that which differ-
29 entiates minorities, immigrants, and refugees from the rest of
30 society, culture as a signifier of personal dignity and identity can
31 be understood to be true only of minority/immigrant/refugee
32 populations. If culture, characterized as a kind of a personal and
33 community resource, is of significance and relevance only to mi-
34 nority/underprivileged populations, then it must be understood
35 also as a paradoxical measure of deficiency; that which marks one
36 as being less than those without it, and simultaneously, that which
37 one must strive to retain as a buffer against that very weighted
38 differential.
39 The idea of identity and personal dignity being intrinsically

1 tied to culture is present also in Lieberman’s piece. Immigration,
2 in so far as it places a person outside of a familiar language and
3 mores, is said to cause in some cases, “a shattered sense of one’s
4 identity” (Lieberman, 1990, p. 104); that countries ravaged by war
5 and political upheaval and the subsequent destruction of cultural
6 institutions that have traditionally “upheld their sense of personal
7 dignity” (p. 105) produce emigrants who experience a cultural
8 crisis as well as a personal one. The given example of the prevail-
9 ing argument against interracial adoption that “Black babies will
10 ultimately suffer from severe identity problems if they are raised
11 by parents of a different ethnic background,” (p. 105) speaks to
12 the paradoxical use of culture as both deficit and necessity. In
13 [20], (10)
citing this particular issue, however, the author also exposes a
14 key conceptual problem common among the reviewed articles.
15 In throwing together the “race” of the babies, the ethnicity of Lines: 96 to 102
16 adoptive parents, and the cultures of both as a single undemar-
17 ———
cated impediment to successful adoption, Lieberman displays a
18
8.0pt PgVar
characteristic conceptual snarl which appears to be at the heart ———
19 of social work’s discussion of cultural competence. Normal Page
20 Though “culture” is much employed—deployed—in these PgEnds: TEX
21 pieces, basic critical analyses interrogating the validity, adequacy,
22 and legitimacy of this plainly meaningful and exceedingly con-
23 sequential signifier are conspicuously missing. The unimpeach- [20], (10)
24 ability of “culture” as a sensible signifier for large segments of
25 our client populations appears to be taken as truth established
26 beyond question. Despite these lacunae, the discussions do on
27 the whole provide an abundance of substance from which implicit
28 definitions for culture and the ramifications of their deployment
29 can be inferred. Because of these lacunae, critical consideration of
30 the inscriptions and deployment becomes essential. The point is
31 that the discourse’s lack of transparency and legibility regarding
32 its choices for inscription and deployment highlights the need for
33 critical examination, and opens up the space in which to do so.
34
35
36 Culture as Deficit
37 In the literature reviewed, “culture” is inscribed unambigu-
38 ously as a signifier of difference: “a state of enlightened con-
39 sciousness enables one to connect with culturally different others

1 at a new level of excitement and joy” (McPhatter, 1997, p. 265);
2 “problems experienced by culturally diverse persons” (Sowers-
3 Hoag & Sandau-Beckler, 1996, p. 38). This difference is written
4 as a particular marker for ethnic minorities and people of color.
5 All of the reviewed articles employ the labels “minority,” “people
6 of color,” and “ethnic” as synonyms for the “culturally different”
7 and the “culturally diverse.” Morelli (1998) states, for example
8 that:
9
10 In the United States, our increasing populations of ethnic and racial
minorities suffering with severe mental illnesses require culturally
11
sensitive and culturally appropriate mental health services. The
12
multiple facets of work involving culturally diverse individuals [21], (11)
13 with severe mental illness challenge social work faculty to prepare
14 students with salient, useful knowledge and skills. (p. 75)
15 Lines: 102 to 117
16 Lieberman (1990), writes:
17 ———
18
on the average, it is more likely that a person from a particular culture 5.91pt PgVar
(let’s say Hispanic) will display more of a particular characteristic— ———
19 let’s say a tendency to defer to the wishes of others—than a person Normal Page
20 from another culture where that value is less prevalent. (p. 109) PgEnds: TEX
21
22 That “culture” is conflated with race and ethnicity is concep-
23 tually and methdologically dubious; that it is invariably equated [21], (11)
24 with minority races and ethnicities is cause for consternation.
25 Deployed as a synonym for race, the traditional demarcator for
26 difference in US society, and ethnicity, the sophisticated multifar-
27 ious variant of “race,” “culture” functions in this discourse as a
28 referential demarcator measuring the distance these Others stand
29 in relation to the Caucasian mainstream, inscribed in its turn as
30 the “culture-free” norm. The inscription of “difference” begs the
31 question “different from what?” Explicitly stated in some cases,
32 (Pinderhughes, 1997; Mason et al, 1996; McPhatter, 1997; Lieber-
33 man, 1990) and implied in other cases (Sowers-Hoag & Sandau-
34 Beckler, 1996; Haynes &Singh, 1992), the “white” mainstream as
35 the point of comparison for difference and divergence is again
36 consistent throughout the reviewed pieces. Lieberman (1990),
37 referring to “Latino values,” states in the most obvious example,
38 that “when it comes to respect for the parents and the manage-
39 ment of anger, the differences from Anglos are clear” (p. 108).

1 Although„ this “cultural-sensitivity” accounting of group differ-
2 ences is a distinct improvement on the pernicious tradition of the
3 mono-cultural grand narrative, this distinctively multiculturalist
4 vision is not without problems.
5 Against the blank, white backdrop of the “culture-free” main-
6 stream, the “cultured” Others are made visible in sharp relief,
7 and this visibility—a sign of separateness and differentiation
8 from the standard—are inscriptions of marginality. Embedded
9 in the conceptualization of culture as difference, in other words,
10 is that of difference conceptualized as deficiency. “Culture” in
11 this arithmetic is a marker for the periphery, a contradictory
12 descriptor for a deficit, since to have “culture,” in this schema, is
13 to be assigned a position subordinate to that of those inscribed as [22], (12)
14 without “culture.” As the anthropologist Renato Rosaldo (1993)
15 puts it, “the more power one has, the less culture one enjoys, Lines: 117 to 138
16 and the more culture one has, the less power one wields” (p. 202).
17 “Difference” or “diversity,” linked to the notion of culture in social ———
18 work discourse does not describe the overall variance among cul-
-3.0pt PgVar
———
19 tures; does not function as a neutral descriptor for heterogeneity, Long Page
20 but is a unidirectional identifier for those who are not normative.
PgEnds: TEX
21 In inscribing and deploying “culture” as a discursive device
22 marking out minority populations, the discourse simultaneously
23 defines its opposite. If “culture” and its contents are understood [22], (12)
24 to be socially constructed demarcators, then not only “cultured”
25 minorities, but the “culture-free” majority must be understood as
26 an inconstant identity which is constructed rather than found.
27
Culture never stands alone but always participates in a conflictual
28 economy acting out the tension between sameness and difference,
29 comparison and differentiation, unity and diversity, cohesion and
30 dispersion, containment and subversion. (Young, 1995, p. 53)
31
32 Despite its insistent rhetoric of cultural relativism or multicul-
33 turalism purporting the sensibility that cultures are different but
34 equal, social work constructs and deploys the central concept of
35 culture as a device marking simultaneously that which is on the
36 inside of the margins, and that which is outside.
37
38 Culture Reified
39 As a measure for gauging difference from the norm, “cul-
ture” and cultural borders are assigned in social work discourse

1 in reductionist terms that allow for enumeration and catego-
2 rization. “Culture” and cultural attribute are presented as rei-
3 fied characteristics—fixed difference rather than positional diver-
4 gence—which can be attributed to groups of people, who in turn
5 can be identified by those essential attributes. Such essential-
6 ist definitions of culture are usually modified, appended often
7 with caveats asserting that, in fact, “culture” is not static but
8 ever changing, and additionally, that people, being individual,
9 have differing levels of identification or ties to their cultures.
10 These caveats, do not, however, substantively affect the functional
11 conceptualization and deployment of “culture” in the discourse,
12 since the idea of changeability and fluidity are assigned not to
13 [23], (13)
the category of “culture” itself, but the specifics of character-
14 istic attributes. Remaining embedded within the caveat is the
15 identification of a static core “culture” which can be modified Lines: 138 to 145
16 and differentially adhered to, since variance must center around
17 ———
something, and modification presupposes a core entity which can
18 be modified but remain discernible as itself.
5.0pt PgVar
———
19 Long Page
20 Writers who are attempting to generalize about ethnic cultures
typically qualify their descriptions by pointing out that research is PgEnds: TEX
21
limited, that groups are heterogeneous, and that many conclusions
22
are based on informal observations or clinical experience rather than
23 [23], (13)
on empirical[sic] data (e.g., Uba, 1994). Nevertheless, there appear
24 to be core characteristics that many accounts agree on. (Phinney,
25 1996, p. 920)
26
27 Identification of such core cultural attributes abound in the
28 reviewed literature. Lieberman (1990) writes about the difference
29 between “the quintessentially American value of individualism”
30 (p. 107) and the oft cited Hispanic value of collectivism. Refer-
31 ring to a study conducted to prove this idea, she reports that
32 while “Anglos” were found to value “honesty, sincerity, and
33 moderation” “Hispanics” were found to value “being sensitive
34 to others, loyal, dutiful, and gracious” (p. 170). Woll (1996) ad-
35 vises that “writers such as Sue and Sue, Atkinson, Maryuma,
36 and Matsui, and Bryson and Bardo have clearly articulated that
37 ethnic minorities do not particularly value ‘personal insight’ or
38 the ability to talk about the deepest and most intimate aspects of
39 one’s life” (p. 71). Mason et al. (1996) assert that “people of color
are more likely to be in an extended family configuration,” and

1 that another example of the difference between people of color
2 and the “dominant culture” is the “concept of time, which for
3 many people of color is more past- or present-based as opposed
4 to future-oriented for people of European descent” (p. 168).
5 The multiple slippages evident in Mason’s attribution of so-
6 cial practices to the racial designation of “color,” and the pair-
7 ing of the racialized marker of “color” against the geographic
8 (and arguably “cultural”) descriptor “European” are problematic
9 conflations which merit examination in themselves (Dyer, 1997).
10 But the point to be made here is that the identification and the
11 preservation of such identification—stereotypes in other words—
12 are made possible by the acceptance of the conceptualization
13 [24], (14)
of culture as a category defined by essential, fixable traits. The
14 conceptualization which constructs, inscribes, and naturalizes
15 the dominant as the normative, “culture-free,” and “white,” also Lines: 145 to 153
16 makes possible this reification of “culture” and obstructs the
17 ———
legibility of both positions as constructed distinctions. The seem-
18
8.0pt PgVar
ingly evident connection between the reification of “culture” and ———
19 the generation of such cultural stereotypes is, to reiterate, kept Normal Page
20 assiduously occluded. While stereotypes of racial characteristics PgEnds: TEX
21 are vehemently repudiated in social work discourse, stereotypes
22 fashioned from “culture,” a term used interchangeably with, and
23 as a descriptor for race, escapes equal censure. [24], (14)
24
25
26 Culture Commodified
27 What then is the utility of conceptualizing “culture” as a
28 static phenomena which emphasizes the “homogeneity of culture
29 and the imperative of uniform traditions?” (Jayasuriya, 1992,
30 p. 41) If “culture” can be claimed in objective terms, that is,
31 if “culture” is conceptualized as an inventory of set traits or
32 identifiable markers, it can also become classified as a body of
33 knowledge which can be studied, disseminated, and acquired,
34 however complex and difficult those process might be. Such a
35 discourse, furthermore, enables the production of the “cultured”
36 as a “social reality which is at once an ‘other’ and yet entirely
37 knowable and visible” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 70).
38 One obvious benefit of this commodification of “culture”—
39 constructing “culture” as a knowable, measurable thing—is that

1 it allows social work to both study and teach about “culture”
2 and the “cultured.” Perhaps more importantly, as an acquirable
3 and transferable body of objectifiable knowledge, “culture” can
4 be reduced to the level of problems for which interventions, to
5 be practiced upon the “cultured” and their problematic differ-
6 ences, can be devised. While interventions to be practiced upon
7 the “raced” and “ethnicized” for their problematic differences
8 may be objectionable to social work, interventions conceived to
9 ameliorate differences attributed to “culture” are, through this
10 conceptual mechanism, made not only possible but palatable.
11 The difficulties inherent in such assimilative or even accul-
12 turative enterprises are freely acknowledged in the literature
13 reviewed. The problem, however, is generally attributed not to the [25], (15)
14 mechanisms of a discursive construction which objectifies “cul-
15 ture,” but to constraints in current pedagogical methodologies Lines: 153 to 159
16 which are as yet incapable of fully enumerating and enlightening
17 students and practitioners about the great multiplicity of cultures ———
18 and their various attributes. The problem is conceptualized as
0.0pt PgVar
———
19 our inadequate technology and inadequate commitment to the Normal Page
20 cause. If there were only sufficient time, funding, institutional,
PgEnds: TEX
21 and societal support, social workers could acquire and inculcate
22 in others the requisite body of cultural information. If a truly in-
23 spired methodology or technology for researching, acquiring, and [25], (15)
24 disseminating cultural knowledge could be discovered and be
25 sufficiently disseminated, social workers could become compe-
26 tent to deal with the “cultured” and their accompanying cultural
27 issues.
28 The key problem inherent to the discursive designation of
29 “culture” as an essential, identifiable, knowable entity, is that
30 the central role of power becomes concealed. One of the more
31 interesting consequences of this construction of culture is that it
32 obviates the necessity of structural reform. Although the subject is
33 too complex to discuss here in brief, the individualizing, pathol-
34 ogizing function of this construction is worth further study. If
35 the “cultured” are indeed the exotic, different, deficient human
36 beings, the construction inscribes them as, then the source of the
37 problem lies in their difference and their inability to adapt to the
38 normative society, not vice versa.
39 What becomes occluded in the discourse is that the exoticiz-

1 ing, stereotyping constructions of those marked by “culture” as
2 the Other becomes possible only through the objectification inher-
3 ent in the assigning to “culture” and those marked by “culture” an
4 inventory of essential characteristics; that within this paradigm,
5 the Other, the object of knowledge and intervention, cannot be
6 construed as other than subordinate to its dominant counterpart
7 who occupies the position of the knowing, intervening Subject.
8 In the language of a feminist critic who likens this dichotomy
9 between the dominant subject and the subjugated object, to that
10 between the European and the Oriental:
11
12 Orientalism is part of the European identity that defines ‘us’ ver-
13 sus the non-Europeans. To go further, the studied object becomes [26], (16)
another being with regard to whom the studying subject becomes
14
transcendent. Why? Because, unlike the Oriental, the European
15 observer is a true human being.(Hartsock, 1987, p. 546) Lines: 159 to 171
16
17 ———
18 Discursive Hegemony 5.39601pt PgVar
———
19 The prototypical argument offered against the viewpoint out-
Normal Page
20 lined in this paper is succinctly expressed by historian Arthur M.
Schlesinger, Jr.: “It is time to adjourn the chat about hegemony. If PgEnds: TEX
21
22 hegemony were as real as the cultural radicals pretend, Afrocen-
23 trism would never have got anywhere” (1991, p. 570). Whether or [26], (16)
24 not Afrocentrism is the actual end product they would promote,
25 both Schlesinger and social work discourse appear to accept
26 as a self-evident truth that the persistence of multiculturalism
27 is evidence of progress. The device of identity politics which
28 built departments of Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies in the
29 academy, and forged the course towards ethnic consciousness,
30 diversity promotion, and cultural relativism in its applied arenas,
31 are accredited by both as measures of an emancipatory teleology,
32 headed steadfastly (or precariously, depending on one’s poli-
33 tics) toward the eventual eradication of racial/ethnic/cultural
34 inequities in our society.
35 The contrasting view raised by this paper, echoing a multidis-
36 ciplinary plethora of critiques and examinations of the focus on
37 “culture” and the multiculturalist paradigm, is that this fragment-
38 ing enterprise may be an essentially convoluting undertaking
39 which not only fails in producing its purported goal of progres-

1 sive liberation, but actually fortifies the inequities it purports to
2 undo. The point is that social, political, and economic hegemony
3 maintained by an orthodox ideology cannot be deposed by con-
4 structions contrived from the confines of that very ideology. In
5 the words of Audre Lorde (1979), “the master’s tools will never
6 dismantle the master’s house” (p. 486).
7 Discursive power constructs “truths,” defines “realities,” and
8 maintains these constructions as devices which simultaneously
9 produce and preserve that power (Foucault, 1977). Social work’s
10 turn to the construct of culture, its posing of multiculturalism as
11 its primary emancipatory modality is, in the language of another
12 critic, a conceptual and methodological dead-end similar to the
13 dilemma of misapplied postmodernism: “If interest in postmod- [27], (17)
14 ernism is limited to a celebration of the fragmentation of the
15 ‘grand narratives’ of post-enlightenment rationalism, then, for Lines: 171 to 179
16 all its intellectual excitement, it remains a profoundly parochial
17 enterprise (Bhabha, 1994, p. 4). ———
18 Despite all its good intentions, as long as social work remains
0.0pt PgVar
———
19 bound within the paradigm which celebrates the inscription of Normal Page
20 “culture” as racialized and ethnicized deficits, its discourse as
PgEnds: TEX
21 well as its applications will remain parochial and subjugatory
22 endeavors that assume the guise of change while reinforcing
23 marginalization. [27], (17)
24 Furthermore, social work’s multiculturalism bolsters this
25 marginalizing paradigm through enlisting its subjugated, less-
26 than-normative, minority clientele as compliant partners in their
27 marginalization. What Gramsci (1992) said about capitalism—
28 that the ruling do so not by manifest coercion but through the pro-
29 duction and maintenance of ideas and ideals which obscure the
30 need for contestation and manufacture the willing acquiescence
31 of the ruled—might also be said of our deployment of “culture.”
32 Those who are demarcated by the deficit marker of “culture,” in
33 other words, accede to the hegemonic claim that the very mea-
34 sures which define them as “cultured” and therefore “deficit” en-
35 tities, are also the devices for their progressive liberation. Culture-
36 enforcing interventions, in this light, should be problematized
37 as power-obscuring, conciliatory measures that serve to both
38 distract from and occlude out the mechanisms behind both the
39 conceptualization of the problem and their proffered solution.

1 According to Bourdieu (1977) a hegemonic discourse “delimits
2 the universe of possible discourse” (p. 165). Social Work’s lack of
3 examination key constructs such as “culture,” must be problem-
4 atized.
5 The mechanics of the orthodoxy is another question entirely
6 too complicated to pursue here. But I will pose two possible
7 threads to follow in answering the question of why social work,
8 despite its avowed mission to oppose and to dismantle such op-
9 pression, remains entrenched within the paradigm which might
10 very well enforces it. Perhaps in part it does so because inherent
11 in its mission to mend the consequences of social problems is the
12 professional necessity for determining and enforcing appropri-
13 ate behavior. That dominant ideology determines that which is [28], (18)
14 “appropriate” should, hopefully, be clear by this juncture in the
15 discussion. This primary imperative cannot but exist in conflict Lines: 179 to 188
16 with the other, later call for multiculturalism which claims in
17 essence that all behaviors should be viewed as appropriate: “all ———
18 values are equally important because whatever occurs within a
0.0pt PgVar
———
19 cultural milieu, can only be appraised and given meaning within Short Page
20 that particular cultural context.” (Jayasuriya, 1992, p. 40). Social
PgEnds: TEX
21 work’s reluctance to examine and expose the tension between
22 these two antithetical disciplinary imperatives, is perhaps un-
23 derstandable. Its existence as a viable profession depends on the [28], (18)
24 maintenance of the paradigm which ensures that such troubling
25 questions become concealed. The reification, or the commodifi-
26 cation of culture and cultural traits is necessary to social work’s
27 professionalization project—the turf-claiming, identity-seeking
28 enterprise which attempts to demarcate its incontestable purview
29 apart from and on equal footing with other disciplines such as
30 psychology, sociology, psychiatry, and economics. Social work
31 has claimed culture, particularly the practice of cultural compe-
32 tency, however precarious such a claim may be, as an arena in
33 which it outstrips the competing disciplines. Perhaps more to the
34 point, the reification of culture is maintained, since if social work
35 cannot claim a body of objective, transmissible, and acquirable
36 knowledge from which measurable outcomes and interventions
37 can be built, it also cannot claim the legitimate disciplinary status
38 in the academy it has for so long pursued.
39

1 Conclusion
2 This paper has outlined the position that in social work dis-
3 course, “culture” is inscribed as a marker for difference, and that
4 difference, constructed from within an orthodoxic, hegemonic
5 discursive paradigm, is deployed as a marker of deficit. “Culture”
6 has also largely replaced the categories of race and ethnicity as the
7 preferred trope of difference: it is a markedly less controversial
8 indicator than race, a category despite whose continued ubiquity
9 is increasingly denied both conceptual legitimacy and political
10 bona fides. It is also a more profitable device than ethnicity, a
11
descriptor which seems to be used currently as a kind of partic-
12
ularized progeny of “race,” and appears to be particularly useful [29], (19)
13
only when coupled with “culture,” its functional enunciation.
14
The concept of culture has come to characterize the minority, the
15 Lines: 188 to 190
“person of color.” Additionally, “culture,” as the operationalized
16
measure of racial and ethnic status, is conceived as an objec- ———
17
18
tifiable body of knowledge which can constitute the legitimate 10.0pt PgVar
foundation for the building of interventions. Such interventions, ———
19 Short Page
20 produced entirely within the conceptual paradigm which con-
structs “culture” as a deficit marker for subjected populations, PgEnds: TEX
21
22 cannot be considered other than an instrument which reinforces
23 the subjugating paradigm from which it is fashioned. [29], (19)
24 Given this proposition that social work, either as a conflicted
25 entity which finds itself in an irresolvable bind between two
26 antithetical imperatives, or as a subjugating body which claims to
27 dismantle hegemony while actively promoting it, fails in achiev-
28 ing its professed goals, what then can be done? What alternative
29 conceptualizations and modes of practice can be adopted? The
30 single suggestion offered by this paper is for social work to take
31 pause from its preoccupation with the production of interventions
32 and critically examine, de-naturalize, its foundational concepts—
33 to excavate and uncover the mechanisms which assemble and
34 perpetuate the predicament that renders its interventions moot.
35 As Henry Louis Gates (1986) put it: “To use contemporary theories
36 of criticism to explicate these modes of inscription is to demystify
37 large and obscure ideological relations and, indeed, theory itself”
38 (p. 592). Or in the words of Cornel West (1990), “demystification
39

1 is the most illuminating mode of theoretical inquiry for those
2 who promote the new cultural politics of difference” (West, 1990,
3 p. 589).
4 Whether such a demystifying process can produce a different
5 kind of discourse, a qualitatively different means of language
6 usage which can be employed by social work to address the needs
7 of the population it serves, without automatically attributing
8 deficiencies to them or the issues that they confront, is difficult
9 to foresee. Such a language, or a method of discourse would
10 have to allow for the de-inscription from “culture” its current
11 encumbrance of subjugation, allowing it to be understood not as
12 a marker for the Other, but as a descriptor for inevitable human
13 variation. [30], (20)
14 Bhabha contends that:
15 Lines: 190 to 207
16 the transformational value of change lies in the rearticulation, or
translation, of elements that are neither the One (unitary working ———
17
18
class) nor the Other (the politics of gender) but something else besides, 2.0pt PgVar
which contests the terms and territories of both. (Bhabha, 1994, p. 28) ———
19 Normal Page
20 The one, in the case of social work can be translated as the
PgEnds: TEX
21 pre-multiculturalist—Eurocentric and monocultural—discourse
22 and application, and the other as the current multiculturalist
23 discourse and application. The argument made throughout this [30], (20)
24 paper has been that while the former is a pernicious form of
25 bigotry which social work has long struggled to stamp out from
26 its discourse, the latter ideal, conceived usually as the ideal re-
27 placement of the first, is also problematic.
28 Whether a transformation or a change can be instituted to
29 rework, rearticulate, those two subjugating discourses to create a
30 more radical emancipatory discourse and application is difficult
31 to conceive, however necessary it may be. It is clear, however,
32 that the transformative role of contemporary social work must be
33 devised as something fundamentally unlike the role it assumed
34 in adopting its fragmentary multiculturalist ideals. Although the
35 mechanisms for achieving this are far from easy to envision, it is
36 apparent that the initial step must be the task of examination,
37 the demystification and contestation of the current discourse
38 necessary to createthe conceptual space in which alternatives can
39 be posed, tested, and contested.

1 The manifest censorship imposed by orthodox discourse, the official
2 way of speaking and thinking the world, conceals another, more
3 radical censorship: the overt opposition between “right” opinion
4 and ‘left” or “wrong” opinion, which delimits the universe of possible
5 discourse, be it legitimate or illegitimate, euphemistic or blasphe-
mous, masks in its turn the fundamental opposition between the
6
universe of things that can be stated, and hence thought, and the
7
universe of that which is taken for granted. (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 165)
8
9
References
10
11 Abu-Lughod, L. (1991). Writing against culture. In R. G. Fox (Ed.), Recaptur-
12 ing anthropology: working in the present (pp. 137–162). Santa Fe: School of
13 American Research Press. [31], (21)
Allen, D. G. (1996). Knowledge, politics, culture and gender: a discourse per-
14
spective. Canadian Journal of Nursing Research, 28(1), 95–102.
15 Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization. Lines: 207 to 247
16 Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
17 Archer, M. S. (1985). The myth of cultural integration. The British Journal of
———
18 Sociology, 36(3), 333–353. -1.536pt PgVar
Bhabha, H. K. (1994). Location of Culture. London: Routledge. ———
19 Normal Page
Boggs, J. P. (2004). The culture concept as theory, in context. Current Anthropology,
20 45(2), 187–209. PgEnds: TEX
21 Bourdieu, P. (1977). Structures, habitus, power: basis for a theory of symbolic
22 power. In F. E. N.B. Dirk, & S.B. Ortner (Ed.), A Reader in contemporary social
23 theory (pp. 520–538). Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. [31], (21)
24 Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Brown, W. (1995). States of injury: power and freedom in late modernity. Princeton:
25
Princeton University Press.
26 Cameron, C. (1997). Performing gender identity: young men’s talk and the
27 construction of heterosexual identity. In S. Johnson & U. Meinhof (Eds.),
28 Language and masculinity (pp. 47–64). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
29 Christensen, C. (1992). Training for cross-cultural social work with immigrants,
30 refugees, and minorities: a course model. Journal of Multicultural Social Work,
8(2), 79–97.
31 Cochran, T. (1994). Culture in its sociohistorical dimension. Boundary, 21(2), 139–
32 178.
33 Curran, L. (2003). The culture of race, class, and poverty: the emergence of
34 a cultural discourse in early cold war social work, 1946–1963. Journal of
35 Sociology and Social Welfare, September.
Dyer, R. (1997). White. London and New York: Routledge.
36
Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language.
37 London and New York: Longman.
38 Fairclough, N., & Wodak, R. (1997). Critical discourse analysis. In T. A. Van Dijk
39 (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction (pp. 258–284). London: Sage Publications.

1 Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge. London: Tavistock.
2 Gates, J., H.L. (1986). “Race” as the trope of the world. In C. Lemert (Ed.), Social
3 theory: the multicultural and classic readings (pp. 590–596). Boulder, Colorado:
Westview Press.
4
Gordon, A. F., & Newfield, C. (Eds.). (1996). Mapping multiculturalism. Minneapo-
5 lis: University of Minnesota Press.
6 Gramsci, A. (1985). Selections from cultural writings. New York: New York Uni-
7 versity Press.
8 Gramsci, A. (1992). Prison notebooks. New York: Columbia University Press.
9 Green, J. W. (1999). Cultural awareness in the human services: A multi-ethnic ap-
proach. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
10
Hall, S. (1980). Cultural studies: two paradigms. In F. E. N.B. Dirk, & S.B. Ortner
11 (Ed.), A Reader in contemporary social theory (pp. 520–538). Princeton, NJ:
12 Princeton University Press.
13 [32], (22)
Hall, S., & du Gay, P. (Eds.). (1996). Questions of cultural identity. London: Sage
14 Publications.
15 Hartsock, N. (1987). Foucault for power: a theory for women? In C. Lemert (Ed.),
Social theory: the multicultural and classic readings (pp. 545–553). Boulder, Lines: 247 to 282
16
Colorado: Westview Press. ———
17
18
Jayasuriya, L. (1992). The problematic of culture and identity in social function- 10.0pt PgVar
ing. Journal of Multicultural Social Work, 2(4), 37–59. ———
19 Keesing, R. M. (1974). Theories of culture. Annual Review of Anthropology, 3, 73– Normal Page
20 97.
Keesing, R. M. (1994). Theories of culture revisited. In R. Borofsky (Ed.), Assessing PgEnds: TEX
21
22 cultural anthropology (pp. 301–312). New York: McGraw Hill.
Kress, G. (1996). Representational resources and the production of subjectivity:
23 [32], (22)
questions for the theoretical development of critical discourse analysis in
24 a multicultural society. In C. R. Caldas-Coulthard & M. Coulthard (Eds.),
25 Text and practices: readings in critical discourse analysis (pp. 15–31). London:
26 Routledge.
27 Lieberman, A. (1990). Culturally sensitive intervention with children and fami-
28 lies. Child and Adolescent Social Work, 7(2), 101–120.
Lorde, A. (1979). The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.
29
In C. Lemert (Ed.), Social theory: the multicultural and classic readings (pp.
30 485–487). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
31 Mason, J., Benjamin, M., & Lewis, S. (1996). The cultural competence model. In
32 C. A. Heflinger & C. Nixon (Eds.), Families in the mental health system for
33 children and adolescents: Policy, service, and research (pp. 165–190). Thousand
34 Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
35 Mathews, F. (1989). Social scientists and the culture concept, 1930–1950: The
conflict between processual and structural approaches. Sociological Theory,
36 7(1), 87–101.
37 McPhatter, A. (1997). Cultural competence in child welfare: What is it? How do
38 we achieve it? What happens without it? Child Welfare, 76(1), 255–278.
39 Mitchell, D. (1995). There’s no such thing as culture: towards a reconceptualiza-

1 tion of the idea of culture in geography. Transactions of the Institute of British
2 Geographers, New Series, 20(1), 102–116.
3 Morelli, P. T. (1998). Cross-cultural considerations for social work practice.
Journal of Baccalaureate Social Work, 4(1), 76–85.
4 Ortner, S. B. (1998). Identities: hidden life of class. Journal of Anthropological
5 Research, 54(1), 1–17.
6 Pennycook, A. (1994). Incommensurable discourses. Applied Linguistics, 15(2),
7 115–138.
8 Phinney, J. (1996). When we talk about American ethnic groups, what do we
mean? American psychologist, 51(9), 918–927.
9
Rosaldo, R. (1993). Culture and truth: the remaking of social analysis. Boston: Beacon
10 Press.
11 Said, E. W. (1994). Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books.
12 Schlesinger, J., A.M. (1991). E Pluribus Unum? In C. Lemert (Ed.), Social theory:
13 the multicultural and classic readings (pp. 567–576). Boulder, CO: Westview [33], (23)
14 Press.
Scott, J. W. (1995). Multiculturalism and the politics of identity. In J. Rajchman
15 (Ed.), The identity in question (pp. 3–14). London: Routledge. Lines: 282 to 322
16 Sowers-Hoag, K., & Sandau-Beckler, P. (1996). Educating for cultural compe-
17 ———
tence in the generalist curriculum. Journal of Multicultural Social Work, 4(3),
18 37–54.
* 62.453pt PgVar
Stolcke, V. (1995). Talking culture: New boundaries, new rhetorics of exclusion ———
19 Normal Page
in Europe. Current Anthropology, 36(1), 1–24.
20
van Dijk, T. (1997). The study of discourse. In T. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as * PgEnds: PageBreak
21 structure and process (pp. 1–34). London: Sage Publications.
22 Van Leeuwen, T. (1993). Genre and Field in Critical Discourse Analysis: A
23 Synopsis. Discourse and Society, 4(2), 193–223. [33], (23)
24 West, C. (1990). The new cultural politics of difference. In C. Lemert (Ed.),
25 Social theory: the multicultural and classic readings (pp. 577–589). Boulder, CO:
Westview Press.
26 White, H. (1978). Tropics of discourse: Essays in cultural criticism. Baltimore, MD:
27 Johns Hopkins University Press.
28 Williams, R. (1976). Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society (Revised Edi-
29 tion1983 ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
30 Woll, C. H. (1996). What difference does culture make? Providing treatment to
women different from you. Journal of Chemical Dependency and Treatment,
31
6(1/2), 67–85.
32 Wright, S. (1998). The politicization of ‘culture’. Anthropology Today, 14(1), 7–15.
33 Young, R. J. C. (1995). Colonial desire: Hybridity in theory, culture, and race. London
34 and New York: Routledge.
35
36
37
38
39


Park, Yoosun

Transféré par

Informations du document

Description originale:

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Park, Yoosun

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

1

2 CULTURE AS DEFICIT: A CRITICAL

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 11 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 12 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 13 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 14 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 15 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 16 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 17 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 18 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 19 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 20 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 21 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 22 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 23 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 24 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 25 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 26 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 27 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 28 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 29 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 30 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 31 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 32 / Printer proof

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — WMU/School of Social Work / Page 33 / Printer proof

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi