Transformative social work and epistemic justice

Drawing on feminist, Indigenist, post-anthropocentric, and critical posthumanist approaches, our chapter considers epistemic justice as a key outcome of foundational transformation in contemporary social work. We begin by critically examining how dominant forms of conventional Euro-Western social work have emerged from a modernist, androcentric paradigm. The constraints of this paradigm are also explored, including its embedded hierarchies, binaries, and disembodiment, which generate and reproduce a range of intersecting systems of oppression and epistemic injustices. We then demonstrate how this paradigm is inconsistent with social work’s core values. We articulate a transformative social work framework underpinned by relational communitarian practices, equity, fairness, and liberation. Drawing on insights from feminist social work research, we explore the creative possibilities for epistemic justice offered by transformative social work. Our chapter concludes that a richer, holistic, and more diverse epistemology is needed for social work to comprehensively embody epistemic justice.