Promoting Cross-Cultural Psychology Research in the Caribbean: Best Practices in Intersectionality

Abstract

Given the Caribbean region’s post-colonial history with entrenched and daunting challenges of: structural racism, patriarchy, and colorism as epiphenomenal outcomes, it is imperative that cross-cultural investigators using 21st century research paradigms honed and crafted from strengths-based approaches interrogate issues surrounding national, cultural identity, and cultural hybridity. Additionally, push-pull factors in migration, acculturative influences, psychological resilience, and coping strategies within non-pathologizing frameworks of inclusivity and intersectionality are fodder for empirical research. These holistic perspectives borrow from multiple perspectives in Black Psychology paradigm shifting as they reject and deconstruct Eurocentric models in explaining Black psyche and behaviors. The discursive frame around subaltern voices, is that, it deracinates “grand” theories, splinters and challenges hegemonic assumptions. Moving from the mechanistic, binary constructions placing a premium on only quantitative models with a concomitant devaluation of qualitative approaches, this author argues that the kinds of cross-cultural research that offers the most qualitatively-rich analysis is ethnography, as this approach embraces concepts of lived epistemological realities of participants. As a cross-cultural tool, it triangulates participant observations, interviews, and case studies. The ethnographic report generated from this data-gathering methodology and comprised of multiple sections, illuminates the following: the uniqueness of indigenous psychologies; provides important historical contexts; addresses issues of language, cultural rituals, and norms; and grounds the work within multidisciplinary perspectives offering more integrative, cogent analyses of cultural phenomena. Further, even research ensconced in knowledge-production for academic consumption should hue to the penultimate, translational goals of nation building, community flourishings, and human capital development. Keywords: cross-cultural research, Caribbean psychology, intersectional research