Cultural practices have the potential to cause human suffering. The Tensions between Culture and Human Rights critically interrogates the relationship between culture and human rights across Africa and offers strategies for pedagogy and practice that social workers and educators may use.

Drawing on Afrocentricity and emancipatory social work as antidotes to colonial power and dehumanization, this collection challenges cultural practices that violate human rights, and the dichotomous and taken-for-granted assumptions in the cultural representations between the West and the Rest of the world. Engaging critically with cultural traditions while affirming Indigenous knowledge and practices, it is unafraid to deal frankly with uncomfortable truths. Each chapter explores a specific aspect of African cultural norms and practices and their impacts on human rights and human dignity, paying special attention to the intersections of politics, economics, race, class, gender, and cultural expression.

Going beyond analysis, this collection offers a range of practical approaches to understanding and intervention rooted in emancipatory social work. It offers a pathway to develop critical reflexivity and to reframe epistemologies for education and practice. This is essential reading not only for students and practitioners of social work, but for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of African cultures and practices.

Vishanthie Sewpaul is emeritus professor at the University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, and professor at the University of Stavanger, Norway. She has occupied leadership positions at national, regional and global levels, and received numerous awards, including a Distinguished Women in Social Sciences and Humanities award in South Africa.

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Linda Kreitzer is an associate professor in the Faculty of Social Work, Central and Northern Alberta Region, for the University of Calgary. She has an extensive background in researching and teaching social work in Britain, Ghana, Armenia, and Canada, and in a Liberian refugee camp. Her experience with Ghana began while teaching social work at the University of Ghana through the British NGO Voluntary Services Overseas in 1994. Her resulting questions about the relevancy of utilizing a western-style social work curriculum in an African country led to research for her doctoral thesis and subsequently to this book.

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Tanusha Raniga is professor at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa where she teaches social work and community development. She is a recipient of the National Association of South African Education Institutions Young Up and Coming Award and the University of KwaZulu-Natal Award for Outstanding Contribution to the School of Applied Human Sciences in the College of Humanities.

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