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Cultural Humility and Social Inclusion

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Handbook of Social Inclusion

Abstract

Cultural humility is a commitment to critical self-reflection, redressing power imbalances, and developing mutually respectful partnerships for a more inclusive society. As such, cultural humility is an embodied practice that addresses hierarchy, challenges organizational policies, and builds community capacity. This chapter starts with an open definition and a historical framework that serve as a reference point, or conceptual map, for the practice of cultural humility in promoting social inclusion among socially excluded people. Cultural humility levels of impact are explored with attributes at the personal, interpersonal, and organizational levels. The author shares a personal experience that informs her work teaching and learning cultural humility with multicultural multilingual college-aged students. The intention is to question conventional sites of knowledge production and contribute with conocimiento, a form of autobiography used as a strategy to make transparent the dynamics of power and privilege that often reinforce mainstream, white/European, abled-bodied, cisgendered heteronormative standards. The chapter concludes with recommendations for teaching cultural humility, developing awareness, recognizing bias, and bringing interpersonal and organizational cultural humility for balanced action.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Health and Social Sciences, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Vivian Chávez

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  1. Vivian Chávez
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Correspondence to Vivian Chávez .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Health Sciences, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW, Australia

    Pranee Liamputtong

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Chávez, V. (2021). Cultural Humility and Social Inclusion. In: Liamputtong, P. (eds) Handbook of Social Inclusion. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48277-0_7-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48277-0_7-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-48277-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-48277-0

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