How coloniality shapes the making of Latin American psychologists: ethnographic evidence from Ecuador

Abstract

This paper provides ethnographic evidence on how coloniality shapes the making of Latin American psychologists. A critical ethnography was conducted at a psychology training institution in Ecuador, consisting of twelve months of participant observation; forty-one semi-structured interviews; and analysis of academic discourse, photos, videos and relevant social media content. The research was guided by the tradition of Critical Psychology -specifically Liberation Psychology-and Critical Discourse Analysis. Findings suggest the pervasiveness of coloniality in the making of Ecuadorian psychologists and, hypothetically, of others in Latin America and the wider Global South. Interpretations also highlight the non-essentialist, non-dichotomist, 'messy' nature of such processes, a consideration which may advance current ethical and analytical debates on decolonisation. Echoing ongoing critical arguments, authors suggest that a 'help-as-war' metaphor is a category with potential value to contribute to such advancement, an approach that has important theoretical and pragmatic implications for researchers and practitioners.

Missing in action: a scoping review of gender as the overlooked component in decolonial discourses

“…Papers that discussed (de)coloniality and engaged with gender covered a range of global health issues, from specific topic areas to broader concerns about governance and knowledge. Six papers focused on sexual and reproductive health and rights19–24 with a further two papers specifically on maternal health,25 26 while five papers focused on mental health,27–31 three papers discussed health in humanitarian settings,30 32 33 two papers focused on planetary health34 35 and one paper focused on non-communicable diseases 36. Five papers had a focus on pandemics, ranging from prevention37 to transmission38 to response,39–41 and one highlighted the challenges surrounding the production and distribution of vaccines 42.…”

Combining Critical Ethnography and Critical Discourse Analysis in Mental Health Nursing Research

“…Combining critical ethnography and CDA provided a methodologically rigorous way to maintain a critical stance throughout the research process. Although there has been previous discussion of these methodological approaches being combined outside of healthcare (e.g., De Melo Resende, 2013; Krzyźanowski, 2011) and a few examples within healthcare (Capella Palacios & Jadhav, 2020; Cook, 2005), we are aware of only one application of such a combination within the field of mental healthcare (Galasiński, 2011). Furthermore, we have found no published studies that combine critical ethnography and CDA within nursing.…”

Seeking utopia: Psychologies' waves toward decoloniality

“…According to an ethnography of an Ecuadorian university, a faculty shared “books written by Latin American authors are too superficial and sometimes badly written,” suggesting good science is written in English “due to scientific reasons” (Capella & Jadhav, 2020, p.9). Most psychological science appearing in indexed journals is written in English and based on white undergraduate samples (Arnett, 2008; Bhatia, 2020b), so it is not surprising Global South psychologists would conflate English language scholarship with valid knowledge based on “scientific” facts.…”

“…Heart research is a wave we discerned within decolonial psychology empirical research (Atallah, 2017; Atallah, Contreras Painemal, et al, 2018; Atallah, Shapiro, et al, 2018; Bell et al, 2020; Capella Palacios & Jadhav, 2020; Dutta, 2021; Le Grice & Braun, 2018; Segalo et al, 2015; Silva et al, 2018, 2022). Scholarship embracing heart work emotionally engages audiences with psychological knowledge from those surviving oppression.…”

“…Nurturing SHIC appears in some of the empirical work reviewed for this paper (Atallah, Contreras Painemal, et al, 2018; Atallah, Shapiro, et al, 2018; Bell et al, 2020; Bhatia, 2020b; Capella Palacios & Jadhav, 2020; Dutta, 2021; Dutta, Azad, et al, 2021; Quayle & Sonn, 2019; Segalo et al, 2015; Silva et al, 2018; Singh et al, 2018). We next discuss how sociohistorical intersectional consciousness was nurtured for university‐based researchers in projects that used critical narrative inquiry and experimental methods (Quayle & Sonn, 2019; Singh et al, 2018).…”