Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Social Work Education, 2026 (ESCI, Scopus)
The discipline of social work operates within a persistent ontological tension between defending universal human rights and respecting local cultures. Traditionally managed through cultural competence, this approach risks reducing deeply structural problems—such as poverty and institutional racism—into static cultural codes, inadvertently reproducing an Orientalist binary that obscures structural violence in Western democracies. To revitalize social work’s foundational commitment to social justice and genuine solidarity, this conceptual article proposes a paradigm shift toward a dual framework: cultural humility as an ethical stance and structural competency as an analytical mandate. Drawing on ethnographic sensibility, the paper explores how practitioners can interpret client resistance not as cultural deficits, but as rational survival strategies forged under institutional duress. Furthermore, the neoliberal bureaucratization of the Turkish welfare system is examined as an analytical illustration of global audit cultures to highlight the limitations of purely theoretical education. Bridging theoretical critique and concrete pedagogical action, the article presents actionable mechanisms for curricular restructuring, including structural vulnerability assessments, mobile supervision (walking classrooms), university-community legal coalitions, and explicit ECTS integration. Ultimately, these pedagogical interventions equip future practitioners to actively dismantle systemic barriers rather than merely manage cultural symptoms.