Developing Critical Posthumanist Pedagogical Praxis for Youth and Community Work

Abstract

Youth and community work in the United Kingdom has an important role in responding to social challenges in young people’s lives such as gender-related violence (GRV). Youth and community work’s rich inheritance from critical pedagogy has inspired it to centre the relationship between youth and community worker and young person, and the principles of voluntary association and being youth-led. However, as feminists have reconceptualised models of violence, we may need to rethink how youth and community work praxis is conceived, especially given the sociomaterial turn. Youth and community work practice and the education of its practitioners often remain rooted in humanist, individualised, and competency-based models that fail to prepare practitioners for contemporary challenges. Drawing on a doctoral study of youth and community work responses to GRV, this article argues that both youth and community work praxis and the education of future practitioners require norm-critical, feminist, queer, and posthumanist pedagogies. It maps a proposed pedagogic framework for a broad youth and community work praxis that cultivates critical pedagogies with sociomaterial attunement, an ethics of care, critical reflexivity, and the capacity to work with discomfort and uncertainty. This critical posthumanist praxis offers future youth and community work practitioners the tools to navigate the complexities of social issues such as GRV and to enact transformative youth and community work.