Professional Social Work as a Western Invention in Ghanaian Contexts. A Minor Field Study Examining Ghanaian Professional Social Workers Experiences of Legitimacy

Sammanfattning: The aim of the study is to examine professional social workers experiences of legitimacy in conducting social work in Ghana’s capital Accra and to discuss possible sources of legitimacy. The idea is to problematize social work as a profession developed and constructed in Western contexts and exported to Ghana during the British colonization. The issue of legitimacy is examined from Ghanaian professional social workers subjective experiences of their meetings with clients and traditional authorities that historically been conducting social work in Ghana. The study is structured around three broad themes intending to explore the Ghanaian social workers experienced legitimacy as professionals in different sequences of the social work; the social workers experiences of legitimacy to (1) classify social problems, (2) to reason about social problems and (3) to take action on social problems. These themes are also basis for the fourth theme that provides a more explanatory discussion of the social workers experiences; (4) possible sources of legitimacy. The analysis conclude that the social workers experiences of legitimacy differ between whether the social work is conducted on an individual level or a community level, towards nuclear families or extended families and whether it is conducted in a social domain or institution that historically and traditionally been in the jurisdiction of traditional authorities or if it is a domain or institution that is recently introduced in the Ghanaian contexts due to modernization.