Abstract: Submission #207

Abstract The contentious and paradoxical relationship between the silenced African worldview and the dominant European worldview has become a major concern and a source of frustration for various sectors within the African social fabric. The visible effects of enculturation and the resultant sense of identity crisis continue to cause a sense of unease among African parents and various social structures and cultural systems. African parents are faced with various challenges including the valorisation of European/western ways of living at the expense of African ways. The study explored, described and interpreted the influence of the African worldview on the socialisation of black youth among African families in order to distil its implication on social work practice with African youth. The study followed a qualitative research approach. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews with the aid of a semi-structured interview guide while collected data was analysed thematically using Tesch’s eight steps. The findings reveal that discipline and respect are at the centre of cultural socialisation of children in urban African families. It found that there is longstanding battle with enculturation that the African youth is confronted with as they interact with the external environment. The study also found that African cultural socialisation presents challenges and opportunities for the urban African youth. Lastly, two suggestions were advanced for the improvement of social work interventions with urban African youth. Firstly, the need to infuse a developmental approach in youth programmes facilitated with urban African youth and secondly, the need to adopt a framework of cultural relativity and/or sensitivity including cultural socialization when working with urban African youth.