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Human Services and the Afrocentric Paradigm

• By Jerome H. Schiele
• Series Editor: Carlton Munson

• Price: $39.95
• Binding: Paperback (also available in Hardback)
• Pages: 346
• Published by: Routledge
• Publication Date: 31st March 2000
• ISBN: 978-0-7890-0566-3

About the Book

Discover how human services professionals can help to eliminate cultural oppression!

Human Services and the Afrocentric Paradigm presents a new way of understanding human behavior, attacking social problems, and exploring social issues. This excellent guide shows that understanding the simultaneous forces of oppression and spiritual alienation in American society serves as a foundation for understanding the societal problems here. The first book to offer a comprehensive exposition of how the Afrocentric paradigm can be used by human service professionals and community advocates, Human Services and the Afrocentric Paradigm discusses why and how human service work is hampered by Eurocentric cultural values and will help you to offer fair and effective services to your clients.

Human Services and the Afrocentric Paradigm provides you with a concrete discription of how the Afrocentric model can be applied in human services to help people of all races and ethnicities. You will expand and diversify your knowledge base in human services by understanding the cultural values, traditions, and experiences of people of African ancestry.

Some of the issues and concepts in the Afrocentric paradigm that you will explore are:

• defining the Afrocentric worldview, complete with a discussion of its philosophical assumptions and its shortcomings
• understanding traditional helping assumptions and methods of West African societies and how these have influenced the helping strategies of African-Americans
• exploring the strengths and weaknesses of some early African-American human service scholars, with special concern placed on their rejection of traditional African methods in favor of Eurocentric ideas
• resolving youth violence and helping people with substance abuse problems
• examining Afrocentric assumptions about resource distribution, morality, and societal relationships
• identifying organizational and conceptual differences in Eurocentric and Afrocentric paradigms
• creating organizational empowerment and an enhanced work environment via the Afrocentric paradigm
  
  Human Services and the Afrocentric Paradigm will help you understand, solve, and prevent problems that are confronted by several races, especially individuals of African descent. This timely and relevant worldview is thoroughly explained to assist you in better serving people of color. The Afrocentric paradigm will help human services practitioners, administrators, policy advocates, analysts, educators, and black studies professors and students achieve educational and treatment objectives by showing you the importance of various cultural values and how to integrate them to make a difference!

Table of Contents

Contents

• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter One: Introduction
• Worldviews and Cultural Oppression
• Cultural Oppression and Social Science
• Toward an Afrocentric Human Services Paradigm
• Overview of the Book
• Chapter Two: The Afrocentric Worldview
• Historic Overview
• Crirticisms of This Worldview
• Characteristics of This Worldview
• Afrocentricity, Equality, and Human Liberation
• Chapter Three: The Evolution of Black Social Work and Its Pitfalls
• Social Welfare in Traditional Africa
• Black Social Welfare in America
• Chapter Four: Oppression and Spiritual Alienation
• The Relationship Between Oppression and Spiritual Alienation
• Spiritual Alienation As Philosophical Foundation of Oppression
• Spiritual Alienation As Outcome of Oppression
• Chapter Five: Youth Violence and the Afrocentric Paradigm
• Overview of Youth Violence
• Political Economic Oppression and Youth Violence
• Spiritual Alienation and Youth Violence Cultural Misorientation and Youth Violence
• Chapter Six: Substance Abuse and the Afrocentric Paradigm
• Political Economic Oppression and Substance Abuse
• Spiritual Alienation and Substance Abuse
• Cultural Misorientation and Substance Abuse
• Afrocentric Drug Treatment Programs
• Chapter Seven: The Afrocentric Paradigm and Social Welfare Philosophy, Ideology, and Policy
• An Afrocentric Critique of American Social Welfare Policy
• Foundations of an Afrocentric Political Ideology
• Afrocentric Social Welfare Policy Recommendations
• Chapter Eight: The Afrocentric Paradigm of Social Welfare Policy Analysis
• Overview of the Afrocentric Policy Analytic Framework
• Features of the Afrocentric Framework of Policy Analysis
• Chapter Nine: The Afrocentric Paradigm and Human Service Organizations
• Distinctions Between Afrocentric and Eurocentric Organizational Theories
• The Afrocentric Paradigm and Positive Potentiality in Organizations
• Empowerment Through Organizational Autonomy
• Additional Considerations
• Chapter Ten: Social Work Research and the Afrocentric Paradigm
• Rationale for Afrocentric Social Work Research
• Definition of Afrocentric Social Work Research
• Attributes of Afrocentric Social Work Research
• Chapter Eleven: Conclusion: Threats to the Survival and Continuation of the Afrocentric Paradigm
• The Trend Toward Privatization
• The Dominance of Postpositivist Epistemology in Academia
• Continued Uneasiness with Spirituality
• The Ascendancy of Postmodernism
• Continued Cultural Misorientation
• The African Oral Tradition
• The Afrocentric Paradigm's Asociation with Black People
• References
• Index

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