Abstract
This paper draws primarily on my own scholarship, supplemented by the limited academic resources available in the “peripheries” of the world where I live and work (namely, Somali society and Darfur, Sudan), to consider the relationship between colonialism and psychology. I first consider the history of psychology in justifying and bolstering oppression and colonialism. I then consider the ongoing intersection of colonialism and psychology in the form of metacolonialism (or coloniality). I end with thoughts about decolonizing psychological science in teaching, social, and clinical practice. To decolonize psychological science, it is necessary to transform its focus from promotion of individual happiness to cultivation of collective well-being, from a concern with instinct to promotion of human needs, from prescriptions for adjustment to affordances for empowerment, from treatment of passive victims to creation of self-determining actors, and from globalizing, top-down approaches to context-sensitive, bottom-up approaches. Only then will the field realize its potential to advance Frantz Fanon’s call for humane and just social order.
Highlights
This paper draws primarily on my own scholarship, supplemented by the limited academic resources available in the “peripheries” of the world where I live and work, to consider the relationship between colonialism and psychology
When the editors invited me to contribute an article to the special section of JSPP devoted to decolonizing psychological science, I jumped at the opportunity to do so
Psychology, like all other disciplines and human endeavors, has emerged, developed, and today operates in economic, political, social, and cultural contexts. Neglect of these contexts by establishment psychologists—and their role in oppression generally and European colonialism —has been one of the hidden and not often recognized dangers of a discipline that claims to specialize in the science of the mind and behavior.i Decolonizing psychological science cannot proceed unless we first understand the history of colonialism—the precedents instigating it, its underlying motivations, the transformations it has undergone, and the consequences that followed
Summary
This paper draws primarily on my own scholarship, supplemented by the limited academic resources available in the “peripheries” of the world where I live and work (namely, Somali society and Darfur, Sudan), to consider the relationship between colonialism and psychology. The colonization of the Americas subsequently offered Europeans new opportunities for material exploitation, cultural domination, and self-aggrandizement through claims of religious and racial superiority (see Quijano, 2000). Instead of exploiting defenseless individuals in alien lands as in slavery, classical colonialism held populations captive in their own land, forcing them to serve the same economic, racial, and self-aggrandizing motives that gave rise to and sustained the Atlantic Slave Trade.
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