Abstract
This paper engages the theme of “decolonizing psychological science” in the context of a perspective on psychological theory and research—namely, feminist psychology—that shares an emphasis on broad liberation. Although conceived as a universal theory and practice of liberation, scholars across diverse sites have suggested that feminism—perhaps especially as it manifests in psychological science—is not always compatible with and at times is even contradictory to global struggles for decolonization. The liberatory impulse of feminist psychology falls short of its potential not only because of its grounding in neocolonial legacies of hegemonic feminisms, but also because of its complicity with neocolonial tendencies of hegemonic psychological science. In response to these concerns, we draw upon on perspectives of transnational feminisms and cultural psychology as tools to decolonize (feminist) psychology. We then propose the possibility of a (transnational) feminist psychology that takes the epistemological position of people in various marginalized majority-world settings as a resource to rethink conventional scientific wisdom and liberate “liberation”. Rather than freeing some women to better participate in global domination, a transnational feminist psychology illuminates sustainable ways of being that are consistent with broader liberation of humanity in general.
Highlights
This paper engages the theme of “decolonizing psychological science” in the context of a perspective on psychological theory and research—namely, feminist psychology—that shares an emphasis on broad liberation
As the opening quote suggests, mainstream feminist work takes insights about gender oppression in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic spaces and imposes them across settings as a prescriptive standard for understanding “universal” gendered oppression. This approach is problematic because its universalistic notions might be ill-fitting across local contexts, and because it tends to treat women in diverse majority world settings—that is, among people associated with the “developing world” who represent the majority of humankind (Kağıtçıbaşı, 1995)i—as powerless or ignorant victims who look to their liberated sisters in WEIRD worlds for rescue
Rather than a deficit in relationality or a sign of universal gender oppression, a cultural psychology perspective identifies practices of silence as a feature of maintenance-oriented forms of relationship associated with cultural worlds of embedded interdependence: conceptual and material realities that promote a sense of rootedness in context (Markus, Mullally, & Kitayama, 1997; see Adams et al, 2004)
Summary
This paper engages the theme of “decolonizing psychological science” in the context of a perspective on psychological theory and research—namely, feminist psychology—that shares an emphasis on broad liberation. Drawing on transnational feminist critiques of mainstream feminism, we consider how conventional forms of feminist psychology can often reflect and reproduce forms of racial and cultural hegemony that silence or pathologize experiences of people across various majority-world settings.
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