Culture as deficit: a critical discourse analysis of the concept of culture in contemporary social work discourse

In her 1997 article on cultural competence in child welfare, McPhatter cites James Green's (1999) definition that culture is "those elements of people's history, tradition, values, and social organizations that become implicitly or explicitly meaningful to the participants ... in cross-cultural encounters" (p. 265). The most obvious problem with Green's definition is his employment of the term to define the term--culture as that which becomes meaningful in a cross-cultural encounter. This kind of tautological enterprise is all too common among the authors who tend to write about culture as that which people of diverse ethnic, racial, and cultural background have. More importantly, taken out of whatever context it originally appeared in, Green's definition of culture is an oblique and incomplete dictum. In describing what culture does, rather than what it is, Green's explanation serves to raise more questions than it answers. Which elements of history, traditions, values, and social organizations constitute culture? How do these discrete elements become transformed, aggregated, as culture? Does the definition imply that culture is transactional in nature? If so, does culture come into existence as an entity or a recognizable phenomenon only within the context of a transaction? Can, culture, in this sense, be said to exist?

Sowers-Hoag and Sandau-Beckler, the authors of "Educating for cultural competence in the generalist curriculum" (1996) do not provide a definition for culture. They do, however, talk about culture as a matter of personal identity and an essential ingredient for individual dignity. Cultural competence is, therefore, described as a "commitment to preserving the dignity of the client by preserving their culture" (p. 39). Since, as will be discussed in later sections of this paper, the pervasive underlying assumption of these works is the notion that culture is that which differentiates minorities, immigrants, and refugees from the rest of society, culture as a signifier of personal dignity and identity can be understood to be true only of minority/immigrant/refugee populations. If culture, characterized as a kind of a personal and community resource, is of significance and relevance only to minority/underprivileged populations, then it must be understood also as a paradoxical measure of deficiency; that which marks one as being less than those without it, and simultaneously, that which one must strive to retain as a buffer against that very weighted differential.

The idea of identity and personal dignity being intrinsically tied to culture is present also in Lieberman's piece. Immigration, in so far as it places a person outside of a familiar language and mores, is said to cause in some cases, "a shattered sense of one's identity" (Lieberman, 1990, p. 104); that countries ravaged by war and political upheaval and the subsequent destruction of cultural institutions that have traditionally "upheld their sense of personal dignity" (p. 105) produce emigrants who experience a cultural crisis as well as a personal one. The given example of the prevailing argument against interracial adoption that "Black babies will ultimately suffer from severe identity problems if they are raised by parents of a different ethnic background," (p. 105) speaks to the paradoxical use of culture as both deficit and necessity. In citing this particular issue, however, the author also exposes a key conceptual problem common among the reviewed articles. In throwing together the "race" of the babies, the ethnicity of adoptive parents, and the cultures of both as a single undemarcated impediment to successful adoption, Lieberman displays a characteristic conceptual snarl which appears to be at the heart of social work's discussion of cultural competence.