Seeking utopia: Psychologies' waves toward decoloniality

Abstract

This paper provides a review of empirical studies published with a decolonial epistemic approach in psychology. Our goal was to better understand how decolonial approaches are being practiced empirically in psychology, with an emphasis on community‐social psychology. We first discuss the context of colonization and coloniality in the research process as orienting information. We identified 17 peer‐reviewed empirical articles with a decolonial approach to psychology scholarship and discerned four waves that characterize the articles: relationally‐based research to transgress fixed hierarchies and unsettle power, research from the heart, sociohistorical intersectional consciousness, and desire‐based future‐oriented research to rehumanize and seek utopia. Community‐social psychology research with a decolonial approach has the potential to remember grassroots efforts, decolonizing our world.

Actualizing transformative promises of qualitative inquiry: Early career retrospective.

“…Qualitative inquiry can serve to recenter marginalized epistemology. For instance, Rodriguez Ramirez and Langhout (2023) reviewed 17 empirical studies with ontological and epistemological studies that aimed to unsettle coloniality. From this qualitative review, they highlighted participatory ontoepistemologies as supporting a decolonial turn.…”

“…Several paradigmatic shifts may be harnessed toward transformation. In their recent review, Rodriguez Ramirez and Langhout (2023) also identified that researchers are “embracing a decolonial turn” in the psychological sciences (p. 6). As we write, Thema Bryant, the current president of the APA has convened a committee to make progress on one of her five presidential initiatives “decolonizing and liberation psychology dissemination.” Relatedly, there are two active calls for article submissions to the American Psychologist related to practicing decolonial and liberation psychologies and on recentering global marginalized knowledges toward decolonial psychology, respectively.…”