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(De)colonizing Culture in Community Psychology: Reflections from Critical Social Science
Author(s) -
Reyes Cruz Mariolga,
Sonn Christopher C.
Publication year - 2011
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 - 10.1007/s10464-010-9378-x
Subject(s) - sociology , community psychology , reflexivity , epistemology , cultural psychology , politics , critical theory , field (mathematics) , health psychology , diversity (politics) , cross cultural psychology , social science , power (physics) , social psychology , environmental ethics , psychology , anthropology , political science , public health , medicine , philosophy , physics , mathematics , nursing , quantum mechanics , pure mathematics , law
Since its inception, community psychology has been interested in cultural matters relating to issues of diversity and marginalization. However, the field has tended to understand culture as static social markers or as the background for understanding group differences. In this article the authors contend that culture is inseparable from who we are and what we do as social beings. Moreover, culture is continually shaped by socio‐historical and political processes intertwined within the globalized history of power. The authors propose a decolonizing standpoint grounded in critical social science to disrupt understandings of cultural matters that marginalize others. This standpoint would move the field toward deeper critical thinking, reflexivity and emancipatory action. The authors present their work to illustrate how they integrate a decolonizing standpoint to community psychology research and teaching. They conclude that community psychology must aim towards intercultural work engaging its political nature from a place of ontological/epistemological/methodological parity.