Challenging East–West value dichotomies and essentialising discourse on culture and social work

Abstract

All discourse, whether universalistic and/or particularistic, must be subject to contestation, so that we are held accountable for the thinking that we articulate in our writings, and so that we do not reinforce much of the taken for granted assumptions about the world. Critiques such as those of Hutchings and Taylor in this issue of IJSW remind us of social work's commitment to reflexivity and the need to contest discourse that might not be in the interests of particular groups of people. It is not the debate itself contained in the article that is an issue, but the framing of the debate and the assumptions upon which they are predicated. The discourse on human rights within the liberal democratic framework, in a rapidly globalising world characterised by neoliberal capitalism, needs to be critiqued on a global level. Hutchings and Taylor's article assumes the applicability and suitability of liberal democracy for the West and not for the East, with an assumption that the West is characterised by liberalism and the East by tradition and a bureaucratic authoritarianism. It is these assumptions, and the tendency to essentialise Chinese and Western culture and to reinforce the dichotomy between the West and the East, that I contest in this article.