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Factors Influencing the Development of Psychology in Sub‐Saharan Africa
Author(s) -
Nsamenang A. Bame
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
international journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1464-066X
pISSN - 0020-7594
DOI - 10.1080/00207599508246598
Subject(s) - ethnocentrism , conceptualization , international psychology , social science , epistemology , psychology , sociology , social psychology , asian psychology , critical psychology , philosophy , artificial intelligence , computer science
Psychology is an ethnocentric science, cultivated mainly in the developed world and then exported to sub‐Saharan Africa. The major facilitators or deterrents—local, international, and systemic—to its development pertain to the extent to which training, research, and practice are driven by Eurocentric theories, epistemologies, and methods, and how they undermine, ignore, or exclude folk psychology and local issues. Africa has her own frames of reference and social reality; these differ in some remarkable ways from the Euro‐American. Efforts to indigenize psychology or to use it to solve the multiple problems Africa faces have merely begun, and need to be hastened. The eco‐cultural framework, which compels sensitivity to local cultures and conditions, can promote the process of indigenizing psychology. A few contextualist or Afrocentric studies have yielded evidence pointing to the necessity for the reconsideration of Eurocentric conceptualization.