Critical Consciousness in Critical Social Work: Learning from the Theatre of the Oppressed

Images of work, images of defiance: engaging migrant farm worker voice through community-based arts

“…The theatre-creation workshop sessions were developed from well-established community-based approaches to collective theatre creation, primarily the Theatre of the Oppressed, a social justice-oriented theatrical technique developed specifically for use with non-actors by the late Brazilian theatre director and educator Augusto Boal (1985Boal ( , 2002. Among activists and arts educators, Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed is often portrayed as an artistic technique for critically examining hegemonic social relations with and among traditionally marginalized groups (Barak 2016;Hsia 2010). As per the process of Boal's work, our sessions involved the group coming together to examine their everyday lives through physical movement exercises, theatrical improvisations, in-depth discussions, storytelling, collective play creation, and community-based performance.…”

Raising critical consciousness in the struggle against poverty: Breaking a culture of silence

“…While explaining what drives and occupies both oppressors and the oppressed, Freire’s work thus offers an influential source of inspiration for contemporary social workers who want to engage with the struggle for social justice in their work with people in poverty (Askeland and Fook, 2009; Barak, 2016; Narayan, 2000; Tew, 2006).…”

“…Essential to such education is the development of a critical consciousness “of the contradictions and elements in all of our lives as oppressed and oppressors, as well as an understanding of the structures of oppression” (Larson and Allen, 2006: 508). Through this deepening attitude of awareness, the oppressed – and in a later stage also the oppressors – can break through their internalised and taken-for-granted culture of silence (Barak, 2016). In such pedagogical praxis, the educator cannot be considered to be neutral; since “no pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors” (Freire, 1970: 30).…”

“…As such, Freire's work crucially refers to the field of tension between control and emancipation that operates in pedagogical practices: Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate the integration of generations into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes the 'practice of freedom', the means by which men and women deal critically with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world. (Freire in Mayo, 1999: 5) While explaining what drives and occupies both oppressors and the oppressed, Freire's work thus offers an influential source of inspiration for contemporary social workers who want to engage with the struggle for social justice in their work with people in poverty (Askeland and Fook, 2009;Barak, 2016;Narayan, 2000;Tew, 2006).…”

“…They may learn to lower their aspirations in line with their position within the structuring of society. (Tew, 2006: 37) Since "sustained conditions of subjugation can make it difficult for the subaltern or oppressed individual to identify both the reasons for their oppression and what they should do about it" (Cowden and Singh, 2007: 17), an important role of social work might be situated in encouraging people in poverty to reflect on the connection of their situation to the socio-political context and address their internalised oppression (Barak, 2016). This article therefore offers a contribution to the question of how social work practitioners can engage in this complex enterprise.…”