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If social work education is truly committed to social justice and self-determination, it will have to liberate the knowledge of groups with which it works. To do so, it is necessary to recognize the unique role of practitioners in discovering and interpreting subjugated knowledge, which requires that academicians, practitioners, and consumers of services have opportunities to dialogue. Four strategies for freeing subjugated knowledge are proposed in this article. Dialogue that results from these strategies allows academicians and practitioners to focus on gaps between the practice theories they teach and the work they have to do and can contribute to curricular reformation.
When you are playing tennis and the wind is blowing from your back, you may not be aware of the wind at all and think only that you are playing very well. All your shots go in swift and hard. It isn't until you change courts and the wind is blowing against you that you appreciate the force of the wind.
-P. Rose (1984, p. 268)
In Parallel Lives, P. Rose (1984) attempted to explain how men in a gender-stratified society are often unaware of the incredible advantages of their position and of their limited views of reality. With regard to the quotation just cited, P. Rose would view the persons who conceptualized early social science theory as playing tennis with the wind blowing from their backs. Her allegory is enlightening in its simplicity. It is not surprising, then, that those persons who experience the adverse impact of the wind (such as women) have strongly reacted to the theories and models of practice that have been grounded in the dominant thinking of those who could be seen as playing tennis with the wind blowing from their backs.
For persons who are playing against the wind, the world looks different. Their knowledge is often subjugated, meaning that it is not taken seriously, is discounted, is ignored, and is even seen as irrelevant and unimportant by those who are positioned to influence what is considered "acceptable" knowledge. For example, the examination of historical and contextual evidence traces the origin of most social sciences to conceptualizations of Western, White, middle-class men. To the extent that theoretical explanations have an inductive basis, that is, that they use...