Community psychology in South Africa: origins, developments, and manifestations

Question 1

What is a current trend that still occurs despite the increasing levels of plurality & diversity in the global manifestations of community psychology theory & practice?

Answer 1

African scholarly & academic voices remains marginal within international knowledge creation agencies and in publications that enjoy a global research reputation

Question 2

What would it be naive to assume about the gap between African scholarly & academic voices and others?

Answer 2

That the gap is just a mark of malicious intent/inadvertent omission by the discipline’s leadership, reviewers, and editors to exclude African and other-than-White voices from publications & knowledge production

Question 3

How did the article determine a way to explain the gap more accurately?

Answer 3

You would need to locate and examine the gaps within the controlling structure of colonialism and contemporary dominance of North American & European political, economic, and cultural systems and discourses on knowledge creation

Question 4

How was psychology central to colonising structures & discourses?

Answer 4

It is a progeny/descent of western-ethno science which sought to centre Euro-American self-knowledge and science and marginalise other-than-western knowledge systems

Question 5

Who dominates the structure, form, and organisation of the contemporary global knowledge economy?

Answer 5

The economic, ideological, and cultural resources and influences of North America and Western Europe

Question 6

How does North America & Western Europe’s influence on the contemporary global knowledge economy still affect the world today?

Answer 6

They continue to produce the structural conditions and influences for the ongoing marginalisation of other-than-Western voices in global scholarship, as evident earlier under colonialism and apartheid

Question 7

What has psychology’s role been in the (re)production of racism in society and the discipline itself?

Answer 7

The structure, organisation, and functioning of psychology has often mirrored dominant exclusionary and discriminatory sociopolitical practices

Question 8

What is an example when SA psychology mirrored dominant exclusionary & discriminatory sociopolitical practices in the article?

Answer 8

In South Africa, the patterns of research and authorship on publications were historically racialised and continue to be racialised by the persistent exclusions of apartheid and its legacy

Question 9

What are these racialised patterns reflective of?

Answer 9

South African psychology privileging research and scholarship that supported the interest of the dominant White minority and the exclusionary status quo

Question 10

Why is the racialised history of South African Psychology not an anomaly?

Answer 10

It provides an illustration of how globally psychological discourse and practices were deployed for purposes of oppressive social engineering

Question 11

Why does the article present a specific reading of the origins and development of community psychology & the construction of “community” in community psychology in South Africa

Answer 11

To attempt to redress SA psychology’s racially skewed systems of knowledge production, research, and service provision & register an Africa-centered voice, located in SA, in the international community psychology literature

Question 12

How will they attempt this (relating to the previous flashcard)?

Answer 12

Review the social forces and national developments in psychology that spawned and informed the emergence, and evolution of contemporary community psychology based on the principles of inclusivity, equity, and social justice in South Africa

Question 13

What methods & resources are used? Why?

Answer 13

1. the “small histories” of organised social actors and groups, the undocumented work of colleagues, and published and gray literature and nationally focused publications from projects dealing with the histories of different branches of psychology in SA
2. These projects include recent historiographic accounts of community psychology that have tended to rely mainly on published literature

Question 14

What do the authors do as part of their critical reflections?

Answer 14

1. Describe their own individual & collective professional work as specific manifestations of and contributions to the development of community psychology in SA
2. They have collectively worked as community psychologists for approximately 52 years
3. They place the accent on the contributions of Black psychologists to the development of community psychology in SA