Approaching the Colonial

Abstract

Abstract Notwithstanding the frequency with which the word ‘colonial’ and its variants occur in social work writing, it is treated with a curious lack of inspection and reflection. I will critically assess how social work writing has dealt with the colonial in the light of recent work in the field, before drawing several inferences. I will put forward a series of arguments as to useful ways of considering the nature and significance of late colonialism for social welfare, primarily but not only in countries formerly part of the British Empire in Singapore and Southeast Asia. I will suggest the need for a scholarship for imperial social work. In an endeavour to suggest an agenda for work in this area, and for its consequences for further arguments regarding ‘late colonialism’, I will signal the relevance of mutual influences between colonies and the metropole; the inter-relation of war and welfare; the role of central and colonial government officials; the significance of work by imperial anthropologists; women in late colonial social welfare; and the meaning of nation-building as part of late and post-colonial welfare programmes.