To know us is to know an ocean: A racialized social worker’s unruly, Mad, decolonial autoethnography

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dc.contributor.authorSharma, Aman K
dc.contributor.supervisorHolmes, Cindy
dc.date.accessioned2023-04-26T18:03:27Z
dc.date.copyright2023en_US
dc.date.issued2023-04-26
dc.degree.departmentSchool of Social Worken_US
dc.degree.levelMaster of Social Work M.S.W.en_US
dc.description.abstractThis research explores the implications of my life as a racialized social worker with lived experience of psychiatrization, practicing in the mental health field in British Columbia. Situated in the context of BC’s involuntary treatment regimes and relevant conversations about the intersections of race, madness, and social work, I centre subjective experience in a way that intentionally disrupts rationalist notions of objectivity. This method represents part of the activist aims of my thesis, which include joining other efforts by people with lived and living experience to assert our voices into conversations affecting our communities, and confronting and contesting the master narratives about our experiences. To achieve this goal, my thesis illuminates my stories through an autoethnographic methodology, a qualitative ethnographic and/or arts-based research approach that relates personal embodied experience to broader cultural, political, and social contexts. My autoethnographic approach specifically grounds itself in Mad, decolonial perspectives. I employ this approach to examine my intersectional experiences as a racialized social worker who has experienced psychiatrization, and investigate how my embodied experiences challenge, disrupt, and problematize the normative assumptions of social work. Poetry, contextualizing documents, emails, journals, writing, and memories all stimulate the collection of the stories I use. In my analysis of these autoethnographic accounts, I distinguish themes that operate as both a means of accessing insights contained within my stories, as well as acting as Mad, decolonial praxis. My work concludes by imagining and discovering possibilities and opportunities for future social work theory, practice, and education using the unruly, Mad, decolonial ethic that my work articulates.en_US
dc.description.embargo2026-04-20
dc.description.scholarlevelGraduateen_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1828/14978
dc.languageEnglisheng
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.rightsAvailable to the World Wide Weben_US
dc.subjectautoethnographyen_US
dc.subjectunrulyen_US
dc.subjectdecolonialen_US
dc.subjectsocial worken_US
dc.subjectMad studiesen_US
dc.subjectpsychiatrizationen_US
dc.subjectmental healthen_US
dc.subjectintersectionalityen_US
dc.subjectcritical race theoryen_US
dc.subjectarts-baseden_US
dc.subjectraceen_US
dc.subjectmadnessen_US
dc.subjectpraxisen_US
dc.subjectsubjectivityen_US
dc.subjectsubjective experienceen_US
dc.subjectneoliberalismen_US
dc.subjectlived experienceen_US
dc.titleTo know us is to know an ocean: A racialized social worker’s unruly, Mad, decolonial autoethnographyen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

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