Abstract:Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang develop the concept of "refusal" as an essential methodology for decolonizing social sciences, that I suggest provides an opening for white scholars to contribute to decolonizing projects. In this article, I reflect on my attempts at engaging with my colonial complicities, as a white European woman doing research on comprehensive sexuality education and young people's agency in Tanzania. I present this discussion as a series of refusals interspersed throughout more conceptual discuss… Show more
“…Especially in the Global South, big data psychologists are not easily able to elide such ethical negotiations. Our model constitutes but one (potentially privileged) mode of engagement, echoing the critical reflections of Coultas (2022) on the importance of "refusal" as an ethical and reflexive practice in decolonial research. Even as cultural insiders, our overlapping positions of privilege and marginalization necessitated deliberative vigilance in the context of a turbulent democracy.…”
Section: Study 2: Collective Emotions Toward Populist Political Changementioning
The accelerated datafication of social life has led to increased interest in advancing the use of big data in psychology. However, prevailing methodological preoccupations in big data psychology elide foundational issues which amplify the problems of modernity/coloniality, including the suppression of marginalized psychologies and the widened gap between researchers and their subjects. We propose decolonial foundations for utilizing big data in psychological scholarship. We move beyond prevailing technical concerns with data processing, to engage situated practices of knowledge production. The ontological object of computing shifts from a universal psychology of numerous individuals, to a localized psychology of collectives. Epistemological priorities shift from contextfree definition and control, to prioritizing temporal responsiveness and linguistic fidelity to emergent psychological phenomena. Ethical guidelines extend beyond issues of personal privacy, and address sociopolitical concerns in fragile democracies. Finally, reflexivities from the margins account for unequal systems that situate psychologists, big data, and the phenomena they study within the plurality of Global Souths. Two Philippine case studies operationalize these principles through localized data collection practices, participatory algorithmic design, interrogation of bias, and wrestling with state encroachments. We conclude with decolonial directions for advancing equitable practices of knowledge production within the computational and psychological sciences.
“…Especially in the Global South, big data psychologists are not easily able to elide such ethical negotiations. Our model constitutes but one (potentially privileged) mode of engagement, echoing the critical reflections of Coultas (2022) on the importance of "refusal" as an ethical and reflexive practice in decolonial research. Even as cultural insiders, our overlapping positions of privilege and marginalization necessitated deliberative vigilance in the context of a turbulent democracy.…”
Section: Study 2: Collective Emotions Toward Populist Political Changementioning
The accelerated datafication of social life has led to increased interest in advancing the use of big data in psychology. However, prevailing methodological preoccupations in big data psychology elide foundational issues which amplify the problems of modernity/coloniality, including the suppression of marginalized psychologies and the widened gap between researchers and their subjects. We propose decolonial foundations for utilizing big data in psychological scholarship. We move beyond prevailing technical concerns with data processing, to engage situated practices of knowledge production. The ontological object of computing shifts from a universal psychology of numerous individuals, to a localized psychology of collectives. Epistemological priorities shift from contextfree definition and control, to prioritizing temporal responsiveness and linguistic fidelity to emergent psychological phenomena. Ethical guidelines extend beyond issues of personal privacy, and address sociopolitical concerns in fragile democracies. Finally, reflexivities from the margins account for unequal systems that situate psychologists, big data, and the phenomena they study within the plurality of Global Souths. Two Philippine case studies operationalize these principles through localized data collection practices, participatory algorithmic design, interrogation of bias, and wrestling with state encroachments. We conclude with decolonial directions for advancing equitable practices of knowledge production within the computational and psychological sciences.
“…In her consideration of these tensions, Coultas (2022) also draws heavily on the concept of refusal (although, given her positionality, in a different way from Atallah and Dutta). Given the possibilities for epistemic violence, “the importance of putting limits on social science research becomes undeniable, but … refusals are not a prohibitive stance” (p. 413).…”
Section: Overview Of Contributions To the Second Installmentmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…A similar issue—how or even whether to engage decolonial perspectives when one occupies positions of privilege—is the focus of a contribution from Coultas (2022), who addresses this question from her position as an employee and then researcher working for over a decade with international non‐governmental organizations in East and Central Africa. Reflecting this position, her concern is how white social psychological scholars, activists, and practitioners [and, one can add, researchers of any background working from positions of power within the modern/colonial whitestream academy] might take‐up our responsibilities of anti‐colonial praxis, in ways that contribute to, but do not co‐opt projects aimed at decolonizing psychology and studies of social issues.…”
Section: Overview Of Contributions To the Second Installmentmentioning
This article provides a conceptual introduction to the second installment of a two‐issue collection of work on decolonial approaches to the psychological study of social issues. Whereas papers in the first installment consider decoloniality as a social issue for psychological study, papers in this second installment consider psychology as a site for decolonial analysis. In this article, we briefly review key concepts from decolonial theory (e.g., the coloniality of modernity, distinct from historical colonialism). We then discuss manifestations of epistemic violence in hegemonic psychology that require intervention. Epistemic violence is (not merely) a matter of epistemic exclusion of racialized others from the knowledge production process, imperialist imposition of white‐washed knowledge products as universal standards without regard to context, or pathologizing forms of explanation that construct racial others as deviants in light of white‐washed standards (i.e., epistemological violence; Teo, 2010). In addition, epistemic violence in psychology includes forms of harm (e.g., zero‐point epistemology and individualist lifeways) associated with its modern/colonial roots. Accordingly, a decolonial approach to the psychological study of social issues may require refusal of the discipline of psychology.
“…It calls into question whose knowledge we draw from and how particular methodological approaches often fail to capture the complexities of our communities. A decolonial praxis challenges conventional knowledge that has been disseminated, and how community voices are centered within the project (Coultas, 2021; Cruz, 2008). As Cruz (2008) attests, academia “continues to be a site where [knowledge] is produced and legitimated, a place where those with access to it can insert themselves in the reproduction of the kind of capital that allows a few to say what counts as valid for the rest of us” (p. 653).…”
Section: Decoloniality As Praxis/pedagogymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Decolonization, and the act of decolonizing, is not a replacement word for social justice, liberation, or performativity. There are connections, yet the process of decoloniality aims to alter ways of doing, seeing and being, as well as our relationship to others within existing structures rooted in colonial structures of power (Atallah & Dutta, 2021; Coultas, 2021; Quijano, 2000). This form of oppressive dehumanizing power produces hegemony in ways that we might not even perceive or questions.…”
Section: Decoloniality As Praxis/pedagogymentioning
Our title plays homage to Latinx Feminist Gloria Anzaldúa's (2002) Now Let Us Shift, where she details the struggle between inner works and public acts. As our journeys toward decolonizing psychology are embedded within our intersecting identities, we are centering our testimonios among this process of becoming.
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