Register for this free webinar  |  Friday, February 22, 2019, 8:30am – 9:30am EST

Toward a Decolonial Psychology: Three Scholars in North American Settings
A symposium in the Conference
Toward a Decolonial Psychology: Theories from the Global South
Cape Town, South Africa; 21-22 February, 2019

Decolonising Psychological Imperialism: Social Inequality and the Search for Dignity in the Global South

Sunil Bhatia, Connecticut College, USA

In this talk, I will clarify the concept of decolonization and explain why we need to “decolonize” the discipline of psychology. I will offer a vision of an alternative psychology that give us a possible counter-narrative to the imperialism of Euro-American psychological science. My call for a renewed “decolonized” psychology invites us to be accountable and answerable to those people whose lives it has minimized, exploited and overlooked. It is a call for creating a critical transnational psychology that focuses on cultural humility and a self-reflexive awareness about its own moral vision, power and privilege.
Decolonizing Participatory Action Research (PAR) in Community Psychology: Tales of Tension toward Transformation for Liberation
Jesica S. Fernandez, Santa Clara University, USA
Community psychology is deeply committed to the liberation and thriving of disenfranchised communities. How community psychology engages in decoloniality and anti-coloniality in theory, research, and practice is imperative. In keeping with a decolonial process, one paradigm that allows for the disruption of hegemony and epistemic violence is Participatory Action Research (PAR). PAR facilitates opportunities for critical consciousness, collective determination, and transformational social change as determined by communities (Ayala, et al., 2018; Torre, 2009).
The (Post)Colonial Predicament for American Indian Mental Health Services: Reflections on Some Early Career Lessons
Joseph P. Gone, Harvard University, USA
In an early part of my career, I explored depression and problem drinking among my own people on the Fort Belknap Indian reservation in Montana, USA. There I met a middle-aged cultural traditionalist named Traveling Thunder who explained to me why many community members struggled with substance abuse and associated distress. In his view, the primary problem was that, “We never was happy living like a Whiteman.” This discussion will will discuss how this problem frame overtly recasts “mental disorders” as (post)colonial pathologies, which has substantively shaped my scholarly interests and inquiry ever since.
Register here:  https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/859877863368622348
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