Social Wolues and Global Values Shift: Making Positive Change
The World Values Surveys have been conducted since 1970 by the Social Research Institutute at the University of Michigan (cf. R. Inglehart, etal.) Their content identifies and examines detailed differences in values perspectives between Developing and Advanced Industrial Societies, as well as between the United States and its peer institutions overseas (Western and Northern Europe). The results of these surveys, however, are little known and not at all discussed or replicated in the social work literature, yet their implications are especially significant for the development of inter-country relationships. For example, the surveys provide a solid basis for showing that the dominance of U.S. fundamentalist religious views is influencing U.S. political, social, and military strategy overseas. The current conflict between the U.S. and Iraq is a case in point; as is the failure of the United States to maintain positive regard in much of the world community.
This paper will attempt to summarize relevant World Values Survey Findings and contrast them to traditional social work values in order to suggest how the social work values foundation, particularly as it is embraced by the American and British social work professions,may help us 1) to understand how and why the U.S. and Britain can engage in a unilateral war on Iraq, 2) understand how Americans confuse ethnocentrism with the principles of freedom and democracy, 3) what, perhaps, can be done to influence a more democratic--egalitarian, just, and fair-- approach to the more general question of establishing participative, democractic, relationships overseas. Namely, the paper will explore the possibilities of adapting cultural competence values in social work practice to the work of designing cross-cultural interventions that have a better chance of working.