Premium
Prioritizing the Local in an Era of Globalization: A Proposal for Decentering Community Psychology
Author(s) -
Dutta Urmitapa
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
american journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.113
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1573-2770
pISSN - 0091-0562
DOI - 10.1002/ajcp.12047
Subject(s) - health psychology , sociology , community psychology , narrative , globalization , field (mathematics) , discipline , power (physics) , construct (python library) , depiction , knowledge production , subject (documents) , epistemology , social science , social psychology , political science , psychology , public health , law , philosophy , mathematics , linguistics , knowledge management , computer science , quantum mechanics , programming language , medicine , physics , nursing , library science , pure mathematics
In this article, I outline a proposal for decentering the field of United States‐based community psychology. Transnational migrations, border crossings, and proliferating neoliberal trade and global media characterize the contemporary moment we live in. These movements challenge any monolithic disciplinary narrative of community psychology. Drawing from liberation psychology and women of Color feminisms, I argue that decentering the field involves engendering more reciprocal, nonhierarchical relations between the core and peripheries of knowledge production. Specifically, I consider the decentering project in two related realms—content and agents of knowledge production. The first issue concerns the kind of research and theorizing we engage in, the issues or topics we investigate, and the subject populations we work with. The second issue pertains to the agents who engage in the aforementioned processes, exercising epistemic power, that is the authority to construct what is considered legitimate and valid knowledge. I conclude with the implications of the decentering project for a multistranded community psychology that is responsive to the cartographies of contemporary struggles.