What do the flyers say? Embedded ‘Orientalist’ constructions in social work study abroad programs in the United States

Abstract

We conducted qualitative content analysis, using the theoretical lens of Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism, of nine study abroad flyers to India and Egypt sponsored by social work schools in the United States. We show that the promotional content of these flyers cater to Orientalist biases; we recommend measures to amend it.

Keywords

Edward Said Egypt flyers globalization India Orientalism social work study abroad

Introduction

The last 10 years has witnessed academic institutions in North America waking up to the need for incorporating international orientation and global missions to social work higher education. In the current era of globalization and international immigration to the US, even the domestic practice of social work necessitates international exposure, multicultural sensitivity, and awareness of traditional prejudices and experiences abroad (Bhagwati, 2004; Healy, 2008; Lough, 2009; Poole, 2006). Social work ‘Study Abroad Programs’ (SAPs) provide the most common pathways to accomplish these skills internationally. Thus, understandably, similar to students in other disciplines, interest in SAPs has been increasing exponentially among social work students (Pettys et al., 2005; Poole, 2006).

This article lays out some prevalence data to demonstrate that SAPs are indeed an increasing phenomenon in the United States. It is typically interested in the recent surge in SAPs directed eastwards to previously colonized yet fast developing countries such as India and Egypt. While analyzing the goals and objectives of SAPs in the above countries, the article analyzes promotional flyers from several such programs from India and Egypt in an attempt to understand how the content of the advertisement subscribes to post-colonial stereotypes that often mar the popular imagination of the Global North (consisting of mostly industrialized countries) towards the Global South (mostly under-developed countries, many of which came out of prolonged periods of colonization from countries now belonging to the Global North) (Dominelli, 2010). The article re-investigates the goals and objectives of international social work education in the light of its analysis of the fliers of the SAPs. Finally, the article discusses the inherent paradoxes between the goals and objectives of SAPs in the United States with the content of its promotional communication. Furthermore, the article shows how latent neoliberal tendencies profoundly influence the definition and design of international social work in the United States that often overlooks the deep-rooted dynamics of imperialism, colonization and Western hegemony on international social work (Haug, 2005; Hugman et al., 2010; Naidoo, 1996).

A recent estimate suggests that the number of students enrolled in study abroad programs in the US doubled over the 10 years from the early 1990s, from 71,154 students in 1992 to 154,168 students in 2002 (Institute of International Education, 2002). Similarly, one in every five accredited schools of social work in the US sends at least one student to a study abroad program. Both the Council of Social Work Education (CSWE, 2006) and the National Association of Social Workers (NASW, 2001) in their curriculum policy and professional standards have emphasized the importance of preparing students and professionals with competencies that will prepare them to be effective in a global society (CSWE, 2002; NASW, 2001). Many social work schools offer professional social workers continuing education credits (CEUs) to motivate them to sign up for SAPs (Healy, 2008; International Social Work Conference, 2008). Moreover, there are some students/participants who go on social work study abroad programs without formally registering for academic or continuing education credit. Though there are no official national-level data on how many such participants sign up without credit, a recent estimation by Mukherjee (2011) suggests that it could be around 10 percent of the total participants.

Thus, the potential pool of students interested in joining SAPs across disciplines is increasing, along with the number of programs being offered (Carrilio and Mathiesen, 2006; Deardorff, 2008; Hokenstad, 2003). The thematic generalizability of the SAPs makes it easier for students from one discipline to sign up for programs sponsored by other disciplines. Hence, it can be observed that social work-sponsored SAPs often receive students whose educational backgrounds are not in social work and vice versa. These cross-disciplinary recruitments also provide SAPs with much-needed financial viability. As a result, social work SAPs often make changes in the recruitment policies to attract prospective new students and engage in fierce advertising campaigns, which may augur well for particular programs, but raise ethical and academic concerns for a socially responsible profession.

This study explores the likelihood of SAPs seeking financial viability and in the process violating the ethical norms laid out by professional social work organizations. In the US, organizations such as the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and Council of Social Work Education (CSWE) not only prohibit social work academia from engaging in demographical stereotypes, but also have a history of actively challenging them. The study is particularly interested to learn if a more competitive environment is influencing the SAPs to cater to any latent or manifest stereotypes involving international locations, peoples and their histories. On one hand, social work is a profession that has historically fought against post-colonial stereotypes framed by the colonizers on the colonized, while it is also true that in a globalized world certain socially constructed residues of stereotypes are often overlooked, albeit innocuously, compromising the mission of social work education. This article is interested in exploring if and how the colonial stereotypes about non-Western countries, with histories of prolonged colonization, influence international social work education in the US.

Orientalism and international social work

The article identifies ‘Orientalism’ as a frame of reference while exploring stereotypes in international social work education in the United States. In his pivotal text Orientalism, Edward Said (1978) talks about assumptions and stereotyping of cultures, especially cultures that are non-Westernized and have a history of colonization. Said’s discourse rests on the evidence that has been gathered through centuries of travelogues, journals and other forms of writings of colonial administrators, Western philosophers, poets and thinkers. The picture of the ‘Orient’ constructed in these writings label the so-called ‘Oriental East’ as a location of unchanging, eternal truths with cultural heritage that boast of vestiges of a glorious past, with very little to contribute in the present apart from their ‘heritage’ and ‘rich historical diversity’ (Ballantyne, 2006). Thus, any unconscious appeal to the Orientalist stereotypes, even as an advertisement tool of a SAP program, violates the ethical base of social work education.

According to Fredric Jameson, the act of stereotyping involves making simplistic assumptions by depending on prior knowledge about people, cultures or histories without evidence (Jameson, 2007). Processes of stereotyping influences cognition, which is crucial to information processing and development of knowledge. Literature from educational psychology suggests that cognition influences affect and behavior of students in a learning environment (Cuddy and Fiske, 2004). Thus, if stereotypes shape students’ cognition at the very outset (recruitment stage) about a country they are scheduled to travel to for international social work education, then it could inculcate pre-determined prejudices (affect) in their attitude about the concerned country, which may result in discriminatory behavior under certain stimulations. Orientalist stereotypes create a context that shapes the eventual learning experiences of the student while in an international country. Accurate or not, stereotypes such as ‘Orientalism’ guide our social behavior and ‘often govern what information we seek, heed, and remember’ about an international country (Cuddy and Fiske, 2004: 4). Stereotypes, thus, easily cater to our impulses that assign objects, events and people to meaningful classes, about which we have established beliefs and expectations. In the domain of international social work education this is self-defeating and could undermine the goals, objectives and ethical foundations of programs.

A recent report by CSWE’s Commission of Global Social Work Education acknowledges that ‘ignorance, prejudice, bigotry and stereotypes are socially constructed problems that continually threaten our human rights and social and economic justice until addressed’ (Estes, 2009: 15). The topic of this article, thus, addresses a significant concern of international social work education. This article further addresses the intersection of ‘Orientalism’ and international social work in the Results and Discussion sections in greater detail. The following section discusses the rationale behind identifying the SAP promotional flyers as the unit of analysis for this study.

It is important to study and define international social work from an orientalist prism. The concept of international social work has been developed using multiple lenses by an array of international researchers (Cox and Pawar, 2005; Dominelli, 2010; Healy, 2008; Hokenstad and Midgley, 2004; Lyons et al., 2006). International social work, being a complex concept, has been fraught with argumentation over its definition. The Council of Social Work Education, in its 1956 Annual Program Meeting, adopted a broad communitarian approach while defining international social work. It considered any social work related activity that had an international scope could be in the purview of international social work (Stein, 1957). This broad communitarian approach to the definition of the term set the tone for the future definitions that were to emanate from the US. Healy (2008), for example, defined international social work using four dimensions: domestic practice and advocacy; professional exchange; international practice; and policy development. Hokenstad et al. (1992) emphasized the need to define international social work from a culturally relativist point of view, and Xu (2006), on the other hand, put the business of definition of international social work on the agencies and organizations that carry out social work practices internationally. However, there are a few others who brought human rights (Reichert, 2011), social justice (IFSW, 2005) and iniquities due to globalization (Dominelli, 2010) to the discussion of international social work, thus acknowledging the more structural and historical differences between the East and West that profoundly influence comparative social work practice. This article chooses to take this later tradition a little further by bringing the mix of orientalism and colonialism into the discussion to augment a perspective on the existing practice and understanding of international social work, especially in the US.

The article concurs that there has been a need to understand the anti-imperial approaches to international social work while acknowledging the post-colonial international relations among nations (May, 1999). Presenting international social work in definition discourse and practice without any critical reflectiveness on the historical impacts of colonialism, imperialism and Western hegemony is at best a one-dimensional approach (Hugman et al., 2011). The article uses the lens of orientalism to explore an important component of international social work, that is, the fliers of SAPs, to explore embedded paradoxes, if any, in such promotional discourses.

Significance of promotional flyers

The title of the article suggests ‘What do the flyers say?’, so, why is it important to explore the promotional flyers to locate ‘Orientalism’ in SAPs and not carry out a study of the student participants or other SAP materials such as handbooks, syllabuses, etc.? The answer to the above question is manifold. As the previous section suggests, promotional flyers can create an important first cognitive impression that can set the tone for the rest of the learning experience. Moreover, the absence of literature on ‘Orientalist’ stereotypes in SAPs makes promotional flyers an important information source, both visually and textually. Furthermore, not all student participants in social work SAPs in the US access other materials such as handbooks, syllabuses and reading lists; a significant number of students do not register for either as credit, audit or CEUs while they join the SAP. They just come on board for the ‘trip’ part of the program and not the ‘study’ part. These students, however, profoundly influence the learning environment of all participants in the SAPs. These so-called unregistered ‘tourist’ participants only access promotional flyers before deciding to come on board in the program and the flyers are the only information source for these ‘tourist’ participants about the program. Thus, any latent Orientalist stereotypes embedded in the promotional flyers (textual or pictorial) determine the type, quality and background of a select group of participants, who in return influence the learning environment of the SAPs and compromise academic rigor.

As discussed earlier, social work SAPs adopt fierce marketing strategies to attract new students to their programs in order to maintain financial viability. Promotional flyers, both online and offline, thus become the vehicle of information to prospective students. This emphasis on recruitment to keep programs afloat often leads to allegations that social work SAPs have exchanged ‘academic rigor’ for ‘academic tourism’. This tension could be located in the existing literature on international social work education where SAPs are often accused of emphasizing more on touring a new country than pursuing the stated learning objectives, even though CSWE standards and the NASW code of ethics prohibit social work programs from engaging in such practices (CSWE, 2006; Healy, 2008; Hoff, 2008; NASW, 2001; Poole, 2006).

Social work SAPs, however, need a minimum number of students on board to be able to sponsor an accompanying faculty member on the international trip – this makes the emphasis on recruitment even more competitive (International Social Work Conference, 2008). Thus, SAPs resort to various online and offline advertisement and promotional practices involving flyers to lure students onto their respective programs. These flyers not only introduce the student to the venue and attractions of the particular study abroad trip, but through images and catchphrases they indirectly create connections between the specific academic venture and individual sensibility. The images of the flyers, however, provide only a hint of the unseen reality while leaving much to the imagination (Boorstin, 1977; Mukherjee, 2011). Thus, the selection and representation of the images and contents in the SAP flyers play a pivotal role in unconsciously communicating a viewpoint, which may or may not contain stereotypes, about countries and cultures that it wants its consumers (students/professional social workers) to visit. However, it has also been observed that quite often existing stereotypes about countries are deliberately used in these flyers to draw attention of prospective consumers and thus increase recruitment (Clark, 2003; Healy, 2008; Hoff, 2008).

The content and construction of SAP flyers provide the much-needed advertisement for the program, but at the same time they also indirectly communicate an embedded first impression about specific international locations that they intend to attract their consumers to visit and learn from. These first impressions about international cultures are important to the learning objectives of SAPs in three ways: a) they define whether a SAP subscribes to certain historical stereotypes about an international culture; b) they define the philosophical paradigms a SAP might indirectly subscribe to while decoding meaning from international social work practices; and finally, c) they help us identify the ‘academic tourism’ component of a SAP. In this article, we will try to decode the images and analyze the embedded narratives of several social work SAP flyers; and, while doing so, we will try to unpack the paradigms and study contiguity to stereotypes, if any. Thus, the purpose of this article also involves a study of such ambivalences between goals of specific social work SAPs and their proposed methodology.

Data collection approaches

Sampling justification

At the time of this research, there were 39 study abroad programs being sponsored by schools of social work in the United States that involved trips to North African and South Asian countries. Among them there are few programs that had been co-sponsored by more than one school. Production of a SAP in North African and South Asian countries is a costly and time-consuming proposition. There are several logistical areas that one needs to pay attention to before such a program could be conceived and implemented. Logistical details include: which agencies to visit, where to stay, how to travel, who to invite for educational lecture sessions, and how to stay safe. Sponsoring schools need to have strong ties with local institutions at the host country to help them with these logistics before they embark on a SAP. Traditionally not many social work schools have had the resources and partnership ties abroad to design SAPs in North Africa and South Asia.

The rationale behind the decision to focus on countries from North Africa and South Asia is because countries from this region have historically suffered colonization structurally embedded in the Orientalist discourse, which is the key focus of this study. Moreover, countries from these regions have comparable cultural uniformities that are essential to reliably assess the patterns of Orientalism. The cultural uniformity factor is one of the reasons that we did not include countries in Far East Asia that fit our sampling frame requirements stated above.

We conducted a qualitative content and thematic analysis of nine SAP flyers from as many universities in the US. SAP flyers to India (five) and Egypt (four) were selected for this study. We chose to employ a purposive criterion sampling technique to select these nine flyers from the above two countries as they meet the following criteria: a) they share a long history prior to European colonial times, b) they are all ‘non-Western’ popular tourist locations, c) literature suggests they are vulnerable to stereotypical epithets such as ‘exotic’ and ‘oriental’, and d) they have establishments and well-regarded traditions of educating and employing professional social workers.

Analysis plan

As stated earlier, we have employed qualitative analysis on promotional flyers of social work SAPs for this study. There are four reasons to choose qualitative methodology and content analysis for this study. First, we found no studies in the existing literature that explore the Orientalist biases or any stereotypes for that matter in the global social work education structure, which made it impossible for us to choose either a large-scale sample or other quantitative group design studies for this study. Second, we also realized that we wanted to theoretically test the content of the flyers to identify possible Orientalist prejudices embedded in them in latent rather than manifest form. Thus, we thought qualitative approaches and content analysis in particular would be the best possible choice for this exploratory topic. Third, the purpose of this study is not to seek generalizations of any kind because the sampling frame for this study is too strict and would never allow us to obtain a large sample size. Furthermore, the number of social work SAPs to countries that are historically called the ‘Orient’ are too small in number to qualify for a quantitative generalizable study. Moreover, our objective was not to generalize but to explore a phenomenon from a new theoretical lens. Hence, we did not have a numerical requirement for our sample size; rather, we focused on obtaining saturation point of the content.

As noted above, the total number (theoretically, population) of the SAPs sponsored by schools of social work is too small to allow us to conduct a large-scale quantitative group study with a representative sample that could yield generalizable findings. Hence, like any other exploratory research, we decided to design a qualitative study to gather baseline information on this topic and not to seek generalizability. We thought the subject important enough to evince information relevant to approaches to international social work in the US. Once baseline information is available, future studies using quantitative designs seeking generalizability will no longer be a distant possibility. Moreover, we expect the number of SAPs to North Africa and South Asia to increase in the future, which will also allow future researchers to reach a representative sample and conduct a large-scale study. At this point it is not feasible and the scope of this study, therefore, addresses the content of the advertising flyers to comment on its ethical justification rather than seeking any generalization.

Though usage of existing documents in qualitative research has fallen out of favor in recent times due to too much emphasis on interviewing data collection approaches (Padgette, 2008), use of theoretical lenses as qualitative content analysis tools is still a common practice in social research (Padgette, 2008). We use Edward Said’s (1978) theory of Orientalism to lend concepts, ideas and information for data analysis in this current study. According to Said, Orientalism is ‘a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience’ (1978: 1). Said argues that the idea of the ‘Orient’ is considered common knowledge, and very few look into the fact that this knowledge is conditioned by the European polemic of what the Orient is. Thus, what is known about the so-called ‘Orient’ is rife with representational politics that strategically stereotypes the East within the following categories, among many others: the terrorizing Orient, the mystical Orient, the Orient of the ageless beauty of the Taj Mahal or the mystery of the Sphinx; the friendly Orient; the seductive Orient of winding streets and secretive courtesans; the friendly, timid Orient, one that is eager to impress; the irrational, naïve Orient (Gandhi, 1998). According to Homi Bhaba, these are all descriptions of the Orient that stereotype entire populations into ‘false images’ and ‘mask’ identities (Bhabha, 1992).

We use a ‘template approach’ to qualitative data analysis where we predetermine the codes from the above-mentioned conceptualization of Orientalism to identify the possible paradigmatic biases and stereotypes from the contents and images of the flyers. The flyers were coded and relevant themes were identified using Said’s lens of Orientalism. A second level of coding was carried out to identify overlapping codes and collapse them into the third and final categories. These categories are described below.

Results

The data analysis generated codes that could be segregated into three meaningful categories: a) usage of historical imageries unrelated to SAP themes; b) ambivalence in the definition of social work/social developmental scope and themes; and c) an academic tourism component that portrays the SAPs more as a tourism enterprise than an academic field study. These thematic categories are described below in detail.

Usage of stock historical imageries unrelated to SAP themes

Almost every SAP flyer in our sample had employed historical imageries that conform to Western popular cultural interpretation of the countries under study (India and Egypt). Certain imageries are axiomatically associated with the cultural and historical ethos of the countries in focus, for example, the Taj Mahal of India and the Pyramids of Egypt, and thus using them to draw attention of prospective participants to a study abroad program is understandable. The problem, however, arises when such imageries take over the core of advertisement or promotional representation, leaving behind every other aspect of the program; only then could such a promotional material be suspected of playing to the Orientalist stereotypes about a country. If a social work education program engages in such a practice, it defeats the very objective of international social work orientation.

In the four flyers from Egypt, the introductory paragraphs succinctly described the scope of the programs that dealt with social developmental issues such as globalization, poverty, health and literacy, etc., in Egypt. These themes seemed contemporary, topical, imperative and relevant to social work; however, further data analysis revealed that on average 65 percent of the written references of the flyers together consisted of historical imageries that had nothing to do with the social developmental themes assigned to the SAPs. Historical imageries, such as ancient Egyptian symbols like the Ankh and Anubis cradling the words ‘Egypt Study Abroad’ and additional examples of modern architecture like the picture of the Sphinx and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, adorned the main text of the flyers; however, the flyers were devoid of any imagery that could be associated with social development issues. The flyers did not even attempt to connect a link between these architectural symbolisms with the thematic elements of the program. Thematic keywords such as ‘globalization’, ‘poverty’ and ‘AIDS’ in Egypt appeared less than 10 percent of time in the content of the four flyers reviewed for this article.

We observed similar excessive use of historical imageries in the five study abroad flyers to India as well. The historical imagery that largely defines India in popular imagination is the Taj Mahal, the 15th-century mausoleum located in Agra that was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal. Considered one of the world’s architectural wonders, the Taj has caught the imagination of Western audiences since colonial times. It is often termed an ultimate Western symbolization of the ‘exotic East’. All four flyers in the sample utilized images of the Taj Mahal, one flyer even printing it more than once for optimal reinforcement. Other than the Taj Mahal, images of elephants, ancient castles of the kings of Rajasthan (an Indian province deriving its name as the land of kings), and the British-built Gateway of India in Mumbai (Bombay), surfaced alternatively in the flyers under study. Interestingly, one flyer used the images of the Rajasthan castles and the Taj Mahal without even having the sites of these landmarks on its itinerary, which further reaffirms our hypothesis that the use of these historical imageries in the SAP flyers is done to manufacture a false sense of exoticism about countries to appeal to the popular Western psyche.

The analysis of the codes shows that almost all flyers in the sample contained images unrelated to the actual theme of the SAP. The images thus were inserted in the flyers to generate the attention of the prospective customers of the program, and it was amply clear that the ‘Orientalist’ stereotypes were in use to draw coveted attention. In the Discussion section we further address whether these kinds of postures are ethically viable for international social work education.

Ambivalence in the definition of social work/social developmental scope and themes

A second theme that emerged from the analysis is that the designers and content writers of these social work SAPs seem to make an effort to keep the global social work and social development education aspect of the program understated. Our research shows that only two flyers out of the nine contained names of the field agencies that the participants would visit during the SAP. The social developmental themes that were mentioned were broad in scope, such as ‘social developmental challenges in India’ or ‘health conditions in Egypt’. The standard practice in any academic endeavor is to identify a population group, state the problem under study and introduce the problem with some incidence and prevalence data from the country under study; however, none of these above factors were addressed by any of the flyers. None of the flyers reported any incidence data to define the scope of the problem. The thematic generality has been kept broad, maybe to recruit participants from a wide cross-section of disciplines and interests; however, such overgeneralization of themes could compromise the learning objectives and the focus of the program.

One flyer concentrated on India categorically and stated that the three-week program was:

[ . . .] designed to introduce students in Social Work majors and other related human service field to social, health, and economic practices in context to a developing country. This program will introduce students to the history, culture, and society of India. It will also cover contents related to health and mental health programs in India.

The goals of the program ranged from introducing the students to ‘history, culture and society’ in general and ‘health and mental health programs’ in particular. The South Asia program did not define or situate what it signified as the ‘history, culture and society’ of India. India of the 21st century is not a land of unified culture and history and thus the all-encompassing claim to address all these three aspects in a span of three weeks seemed like rhetoric. At the same time, the specific goals of the SAP categorically stated an interest in ‘health and mental health programs in India’. But the flyer did not try to connect the social and historical milieu of India to its specific goal; rather, it concentrated on making claims that were not backed by agency names or any field specifications.

Similarly, a SAP flyer to Egypt claimed to provide ‘an unforgettable journey into the past and the present’, an opportunity to ‘enjoy the sunny skies and the holy mountains’ and a ‘cruise on the Nile and the Red Sea’. The flyer finishes the complimentary flourish about Egypt by incorporating scattered information about HIV/AIDS statistics and the importance of addressing ‘such issues’. It was evident that there was a deliberate gap between what should be the ‘scholarly focus’ of social work students during the Egypt trip and what the SAP actually promises. The critical absence or the significant undervaluation of the agency names and field specifications substantiates the ‘tourism aspect’ of the proposed SAP.

Academic tourism or studying the abroad

The final theme that emerged from the data analysis is the conscious pandering to the tourism component of the SAP over the academic component. A SAP is after all a trip abroad, but the administrators of social work SAPs in particular face a pertinent dilemma while seeking to balance between the tourism component and the academic rigor of their programs. The advertisement flyers are important vehicles of communication as they construct first impressions and draw interest from prospective participants. Data analysis, however, suggested opacity by design approach among SAP administrators, who liked to keep the themes and objectives of their programs as vague and generalized as possible. This is evident from one SAP flyer from India that describes the ‘location’ of their visit as follows:

The program will be held in two locations in Southern states in India: Chennai, Tamil Nadu and Bangalore, Karnataka. Situated along the Bay of Bengal, the city of Chennai (formerly Madras) is India’s fourth most populous city and is considered as the major educational and cultural center in the south. Boasting a beautiful palm tree-lined coastline, stunning Victorian era buildings, and a rich cultural life with distinctive traditions of art and cuisine, Chennai is also the gateway to the Dravidian temple towns of South India. Located on the Deccan Plateau in the south-eastern part of Karnataka, Bangalore is India’s third most populous city. A demographically diverse city, Bangalore is a major economic hub and the fastest growing major metropolis in India. It is considered as the ‘silicon valley’ of India, with many modern amenities and culturally rich heritage in music, arts and science. Newcomers to Chennai and Bangalore are impressed with the friendliness of their south Indian hosts.

The description of ‘location’ of this particular SA program utterly deconstructs its claim to introduce to the students the totality of Indian culture. The program, in reality, promises to introduce the students to southern Indian culture and society; however, the flyer never mentions the cultural distinctiveness that differentiates the southern part of India from the rest of the country. The very act of replacing ‘southern India’ simply with ‘India’ reduces the multicultural and multiethnic reality of a billion people in the same way the Taj Mahal represents only a certain trajectory of Indian history. The cultural essentialism ingrained in such claims mirror the prejudices of the individuals involved in the creation of these SAPs. Looking further into the description of the ‘location’, we can see there is a necessary concentration on portraying the location as a conglomeration of tourist spots rather than sites of learning. Interestingly enough, the description of the location/s does not validate the intentions of the specific SAP to ‘India’; neither was a link created between the necessities of visiting these sites with social work related issues.

As shown in the first theme, the images of the flyer of the SAPs from both India and Egypt categorically concentrate on symbols and architecture that has little or no relevance to the purpose/goal of the program. We observed earlier that Social Work SAP flyers seemed not only to reinstate the historical popular culture stereotype, they intimated towards a history that is mystical and a veiled yearning to be unraveled. A certain Egypt SAP flyer shows the quizzical face of the Sphinx together with the Ankh and Anubis and bombards its audience with thousands of years of history that is mystical and abstruse to popular imagination and knowledge. This instigation could be categorically read as Freudian, for it surreptitiously hints at a penetration necessary to loosen the unknown yet mystical chords of Egyptian history. Additionally, the flyer lacked any description or mention of the agencies that were to be visited while in Egypt. The focus seemed to be concentrated on visiting Egypt rather than studying the issues and getting firsthand experience about working in an international arena.

One can argue that the Ankh and the Anubis, and the reference to the Nile and Red Sea are critical to creating the identity of Egypt in the mind of a non-Egyptian. Significantly, these are the same images that perpetuated and collaborated in constructing omniscient stereotypes of ‘mystical’ Egyptian wealth and religion from time immemorial. What remains understated and often neglected in most of these 21st-century versions of photographic Egypt, especially in the SAP flyers, is the history of colonial Egypt and the poverty and health conditions that prevail in 21st-century Cairo. Here again, it should be underscored that the flyer is the primary signifier of the cause of the SAP to Egypt, and an overabundance of the ‘mystical tourism’ aspect often sidelines the scholarly intent of the stated SAP.

Discussion

Before going into the implications of our findings, it is imperative yet again to emphasize the necessity of using Said’s (1978) argument as the primary lens of analysis. As discussed above, social work SAPs use images to construct representational realities of countries in focus. The respective images used connect the present reality of the American students/participants interested in the SAPs with the history and milieu of the foreign nation (Midgley, 1981). Hence, the use of the image is political, for the symbolic message of the image is potent enough to set the tone of the program. The usage of symbols such as the Taj Mahal and the Pyramids do not convey present realties of India or Egypt; rather, they reify the contemporary zeitgeist of these nations as ahistorical, apolitical and therefore anachronistic (Robbins et al., 2012). These specific images recreate and regenerate the mystic ‘Orient’: an area of great architecture and mysterious knowledge. Unfortunately, the beauty of the Taj Mahal is a specific historical reality of India and it would be naïve and simplistic to represent a polyphony of multicultural, multiethnic people through that one symbol. According to Said, this selective representation of history resists critical judgment and in turn denies individual, human or historical rights to people (Baars et al., 2006; Ballantyne, 2006; Said, 1978).

Said’s discourse on Orientalism made readers/authors aware of the essentialist assumptions about the Orient that systematically reproduce stereotypes ad infinitum. The authors who created the SAP flyers for India, quite akin to the authors of the SAPs to Egypt, painted a picture of the history and milieu of the ‘Far East’ that is yet to be uncovered by the exploring Western audience. A similar referral to the ‘exploring’ West and the ‘timid’ East can be seen in the notes of the colonial officers as well as writers of the imperial era such as Rudyard Kipling and Anthony Trollope (Ballantyne, 2006). ‘Newcomers to Chennai and Bangalore are impressed with the friendliness of their south Indian host’ claims the flyer to the SAP India. This all-encompassing, overbearing assumption of knowledge of an entire population who are eager to ‘impress with friendliness’ underscores the degree to which this study abroad program essentialized and generalized the nature and attitude of a vast group of people (Appadurai, 1996; Bhabha, 1996). The representational politics of the above paragraph is rife with historical stereotypes that has vastly dominated the imaginative polemic of the West vis-a-vis the East as exemplified through the tracts of writers such as Kipling and Trollope.

As Hugman et al. (2011) point out, social work practice in a country is influenced by its nation-state, and thus the international power structure determines how approaches to international social work education that requires partnerships between social work professions across two nation-states should be constructed. If this is the case, then the ideological differences between one nation-state and another is surely going to mar the international social work education curriculum. In case of a conflict, the sponsoring institutions would have an upper hand in defining the curriculum over the host institutions, especially if the latter belonged to a poorer and industrially less developed country while the former belonged to an industrialized region of the world. Therefore, as Hugman et al. rightly argue, if we want to understand the delivery of international social work we need to begin with the nation-states. And thus, the location of the sponsoring institution of study abroad program (United States in this case) and the host institutions (India and Egypt in this case) have profound influence on the goals and objectives of the SAPs in the United States. The tendency among the industrialized Global North, where social work education is mostly conceived and sponsored, to dichotomize the national from the international, leads to further provincialization of international social work education. Short-term SAPs are an apt example of such provincialization where the students from one domain (national) travel to the other domain (international) to take a peek at what is displayed on the ‘other’ side. Such binaries between the national and the international could prohibit transcendence knowledge from being exchanged and could promote orientalism. Thus the idea of ‘glocalization’, where the global and the local have been fused in order to understand the national and the international in the right perspective, seems to have been a transcendental element essential for crafting international social work educational curricula (Alvares, 2011; Dominelli, 2004, 2009, 2010; Payne and Askeland, 2008; Robertson, 1995). The tendency to define international social work by wedging dialectical binaries between national and international social work is paradoxical and, from a political and economic standpoint, an oxymoronic concept.

Thus, the definition of international social work that does not acknowledge these structural differences discussed above, which are mostly economical and historical, is bound to be cosmetic and ineffectual in its outcome. There is profound exoticism and lack of historical understanding among many of today’s scholars of international social work, especially in the United States, that compromise the scope and the true estimation of international social work. These voices dwarf the possibilities that a truly historically informed practice of international social work could have in an inter-connected globalized world.

In Keywords, Raymond Williams (1985) collates the Latin root of image imago to the verb imitari which means ‘to copy, portray, imitate’. An image is thus a ‘likeness’, an ‘appearance’ albeit artificial; it imitates, portrays and reflects. According to cultural historian Daniel Boorstin (1977), present-day images can be defined as ‘simplified’ reflections that are ‘believable, vivid’, yet ‘synthetic, ambiguous and passive’ (p. 185). The images used in the flyers intimate a world ‘abroad’, especially of North African and South East Asian countries. The use of this imagery reveals cartographies that vividly portray ‘Asia’ or ‘Africa’ as the exotic ‘other’. For example, nine out of ten times SAPs to India use the ‘Taj Mahal’ as a cultural marker even though the program is concerned with rural development and gender issues. So, what do the Taj Mahals and Pyramids in the flyers symbolize? It is understandable that both these structures represent the architectural excellence of pre-colonial cultures, but what do they have common with rural development, gender questions and issues like ‘rapid deforestation’ that are current and probably will be discussed in the study abroad trip? Following Boorstin’s argument, one could possibly opine that the ‘image’ of the Taj Mahal in a SAP focusing on ‘rural development’ in India is believable and vivid yet synthetic, ambiguous and passive, devoid of any active connotation (Boorstin, 1977). The predominance of such historical markers can especially be seen in all social study abroad flyers in the sample. This brings us to an important question: Do social work programs consciously appeal to ‘Orientalist’ stereotypes in order to garner importance and popularity for their SAPs?

The purpose of this article was to draw the attention of international social work administrators and sponsors to the fact that their promotional flyers of short-term study abroad programs could influence the long-term educational outcome of these programs and may compromise the ethical responsibility of social work educators that requires them to desist from catering to popular Orientalist prejudices when evaluating complex cultures like India and Egypt. We need to keep in mind that when transnational partnerships are forged between academic institutions from economically rich countries and economically poor countries, the latter begin the partnership from a structurally weaker position due to sheer economic disadvantage. International social work education is uniquely positioned to look beyond the academic tourism aspect and explore social issues and problems in poorer international countries that often stay hidden from the purview of other disciplines undertaking similar study abroad expeditions from the West to the East. In order to impart international social work education with the social justice perspective, social work SAPs need to recruit participants and students who are, or aspire to be, informed and sensitive about international social developmental issues rather than merely interested in touring a new country. Any educator is aware of the fact that knowledge development is a dialectical exchange between the educator and the student participants, and thus the profile of the students could influence the content of the education imparted (Robinson and Jackson, 2002; UNESCO, 1998).

Financing of study abroad programs necessitates higher recruitment, which at times forces standalone social work schools to resort to extreme measures to attract participants. In such pursuit, the pool of the participants that such SAPs attract consists of a mixed bag of internationally oriented participants along with avowed tourists who skew the educational goals of the problem and influence the social work and social justice component of the program negatively. One of the solutions to the financial and management problems in administering SAPs is to form a coalition of like-minded social work schools that could share common resources and draw participants from a larger recruitment pool. International organizations like the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) and International Associations of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) could also partner with academic institutions across the world to help foment national and transnational academic partnerships among social work schools (UNESCO, 1998).

We can conclude from this study that there is a yawning gap between the overarching themes of the sampled social work SAPs and their projection on the flyers; the themes are more akin to social work and social development issues, while the promotional tone often projects the program as yet another touring expedition. Our data analysis suggests that such promotional practices expose themselves to Orientalist prejudices – especially while focusing on the countries of the East – which further compromise the historical and ethical foundation of social work education. We assume that such promotional practices are not intentional and they result from the financial need to recruit more participants. Thus, the content of promotional materials such as the SAP flyers is predicated on the financial viabilities of SAPs. We propose that such financial shortcomings could be better addressed through creating an inter-university coalition and thus avoiding such promotional practices. We hope that future research and practice modules in these areas will explore different avenues to reduce financial stress on SAPs and help devise strategies to form coalitions.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Author biographies

Dhrubodhi Mukherjee works in the School of Social Work, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, USA.

Dalia Chowdhury works in the Rehabilitation Institute, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, USA.

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