Decolonial Perspectives on the Psychological Study of Social Issues Webinar Series

Organized by the Readsura Decolonial Editorial Collective and hosted by SPSSI
 

This webinar series ("Decolonial Approaches to the Psychological Study of Social Issues") featured 15 presentations (organized into 5 installments) based on contributions to two special issues of the Journal of Social Issues (JSI) devoted to decolonial perspectives in/on psychology. The first two installments featured 6 presentations that considered the psychology of colonial violence. Decolonial approaches propose that colonial violence is not confined to the distant past (i.e., colonialism) but instead persists as coloniality: racialized ways of thinking and being that have their roots in colonial violence, are inherent in the Eurocentric modern order, and are inseparable from modern individualist development. An important implication is that colonial violence extends beyond physical space to psychological space, such that complete liberation requires forms of psychological decolonization. The last three installments featured 9 presentations that considered the coloniality of knowledge in hegemonic psychology. Researchers are not innocent bystanders observing effects of colonial violence from some neutral position. Instead, epistemic violence in psychology occurs via epistemic exclusion of racialized others from the knowledge production process, imperialist imposition of white-washed knowledge products as universal standards, pathologizing forms of explanation that construct racial others as deviants in light of white-washed standards (i.e., epistemological violence; Teo, 2010), and forms of harm (e.g., zero-point epistemology and individualist lifeways) associated with hegemonic psychology’s modern/colonial roots. An important implication is that a decolonial approach may require epistemic disobedience and refusal of the discipline of psychology.

The special issues of JSI on decolonial psychology are open access through the end of 2022. Read the first special issue here. Read the second special issue here. 

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COLONIAL VIOLENCE, I: Bodies and Space (Link to recording)
Wednesday, September 14, 2022 16:00 UTC (12:00 PM EDT, 9:00 AM PDT)
Convener/Discussant: Kopano Ratele
Presenters:

• Melissa Tehee, Erika Ficklin, Devon Isaacs, Racheal Killgore, & Sallie Mack  |  Fighting for our sisters: Community advocacy and action for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls
• Johanna Lukate  |  Space, race and identity: An ethnographic study of the Black hair care and beauty landscape and Black women's racial identity constructions in England
• Anjali Dutt  |  Refugee experiences in Cincinnati, Ohio: A local case study in the context of global crisis
   

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COLONIAL VIOLENCE, II: The Coloniality of Modern Progress (Link to recording)
Tuesday, October 4, 2022 16:00 UTC (12:00 PM EDT, 9:00 AM PDT)
Convener/Discussant: Kopano Ratele
Presenters:

• Eduardo Javier Rivera-Pichardo  |  Internalization of inferiority and colonial system justification: The case of Puerto Rico
• Susanne Normann  |  “Time is our worst enemy:” Lived experiences and intercultural relations in the making of green aluminum
• Annabella Osei-Tutu  |  The modernity/coloniality of love: Individualist lifeways and charismatic christianity in Ghanaian worlds

Coloniality of Knowledge in Hegemonic Psychology, I: Rigor or Rigor Mortis? (Link to recording)
Thursday, October 27, 2022 16:00 UTC (12:00 PM EDT, 9:00 AM PDT)
Convener/Discussant: Glenn Adams
Presenters:

• Mona M. Abo-Zena  |  Dismantling the master’s house: Decolonizing “rigor” in psychological scholarship
• Joshua Uyheng  |  Foundations for a decolonial big data psychology 
• Fouad Bou Zeineddine  |  “Some uninteresting data from a faraway country”: Inequity and coloniality in international social psychological publication
   

Coloniality of Knowledge in Hegemonic Psychology, II: Confronting Professional Discipline (Link to recording)
Wednesday, November 16, 2022 16:00 UTC (11:00 AM EST, 8:00 AM PST)
Convener/Discussant: Shahnaaz Suffla
Presenters:

• Stephanie Grant, Stephanie D'Costa, & Kandyce Anderson Amie  |  Decolonizing school psychology research: A systematic literature review  
• Hugo Canham  |  Conundrums in teaching decolonial critical community psychology within the context of neo-liberal market pressures
• Jesica Siham Fernández  |  “And now we resist”: Three testimonios on the importance of decoloniality within psychology 
   

Coloniality of Knowledge in Hegemonic Psychology, III: Refusal and Epistemic Disobedience (Link to recording)
Wednesday, December 07, 2022 16:00 UTC (11:00 AM EST, 8:00 AM PST)
Convener/Discussant: Geetha Reddy
Presenters:

• Rachel Burrage  |  Beyond trauma: Decolonizing understandings of loss and healing in the Indian Residential School system of Canada
• Clare Coultas  |  Accounting for colonial complicities through refusals in researching agency across borders
• Devin G. Atallah & Urmitapa Dutta  |  “Creatively in Coalition” from Palestine to India: Weaving stories of refusal and community as decolonial praxis