ABSTRACT

This article concerns itself with the events surrounding the ‘Americanisation’ of social work education in India and aims to evaluate if this was an outcome of entanglements with imperialism—cultural, professional or moral. It looks at actors, within and beyond academic spaces, including missionaries and cold war politics as key contours in organizing the ‘American’ turn in social work education in India. Subsequent to the import of the ‘modern social work’ discipline to India, the episteme of social work was inferred to be more clinicalized and neo-liberal in its approach to social development. The article is a humble effort to understand if this ‘technology transfer’ of social work education, its models and methods, was a plain and simple emancipatory event or was also organized by the imperial interests?

摘要

本文关注的是围绕印度社会工作教育“美国化”的事件，旨在评估这是否是与帝国主义（文化、专业或道德）纠缠的结果。它着眼于学术空间内外的参与者，包括传教士和冷战政治，作为组织印度社会工作教育“美国”转向的关键轮廓。在“现代社会工作”学科传入印度之后，社会工作的认识被认为在社会发展方法上更加临床化和新自由主义。这篇文章试图理解这种社会工作教育的“技术转让”及其模式和方法，是一次简单明了的解放活动还是也是由帝国利益组织的？