Social Workers Practicing in Their Non-Western Home Communities: Overcoming Conflict between Professional and Cultural Values

Abstract

A Bedouin-Arab social worker practicing in his home community had an unwed, expectant Bedouin-Arab client. Cultural values placed her welfare, and by association the worker's, at risk. The case presents several points where the profession's values and those of the Bedouin-Arab community conflicted. The worker intervened by both integrating and mediating between the emic (the outlook of members of a cultural group) and etic (a viewpoint outside of the cultural group). He thereby overcame dilemmas of a dual-role relationship with interventions that benefited and did not harm the client.