Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Author's note
- 1 (African)
- 2 The necessary adjective
- 3 Disorientation
- 4 Awake to Africa
- 5 A way of seeing
- 6 Off-centre
- 7 Words are not enough
- 8 Teaching Africa
- 9 Psychology is culture
- 10 Africa internationalised
- 11 Aiming for redundancy
- 12 Overlooked perspectives
- 13 Unselfconscious situatedness
- 14 Own goal
- 15 African scholarship
- 16 Education as ethical responsibility
- 17 Black children and white dolls
- 18 Search for Africa in psychology
- 19 Dethingifying
- 20 Three problems
- 21 Fog and friction
- 22 African enough?
- 23 Antipathy, apathy
- 24 Superhuman subhuman
- 25 Sources of negativity
- 26 Not all (blacks) think alike
- 27 Causes of confusion
- 28 Estrangement
- 29 The centre
- 30 Terminology
- 31 Defining by negation
- 32 Self-sabotage
- 33 A welcoming home
- 34 Defining by affirmation
- 35 Scholarly extraverts and introverts
- 36 It's African, except when it's not
- 37 Points on a continuum
- 38 Invisible Africa
- 39 Calls to decolonise
- 40 We need to talk
- 41 A heterogeneous terrain
- 42 It's power, stupid
- 43 Living with constant resistance
- 44 A psychological history of struggle
- 45 Healing potential
- 46 Porous hegemony
- 47 An offshore model
- 48 Only a situated understanding will do
- 49 Satisfied with alienation
- 50 A worldwide need
- 51 Diverse and dynamic orientations
- 52 Returning to definition
- 53 A psychology from nowhere
- 54 A proposal
- 55 (African) American psychology
- 56 Mischievous questions
- 57 Solutions to alienation
- 58 Conscientisation
- 59 A new course
- 60 Complicity
- 61 The lost self
- 62 An unacknowledged past
- 63 In and of the world
- 64 Origins of (African) psychology
- 65 Birth of a discipline
- 66 Paternity claims
- 67 Fatal intimacy
- 68 Lineage and authority
- 69 Being African
- 70 Interconnectivity
- 71 Four axioms
- 72 Above all
- 73 The past in the present
- 74 Making space for all
- 75 Caveat
- 76 A variegated approach
- 77 The ultimate goal
- 78 Real constraints
- 79 Debates and contests
- 80 A contingent term
- 81 Polyvocality
- 82 Four orientations
- 83 Notes on Western-oriented African psychology
- 84 The world as it is
- 85 Notes on psychological African studies
- 86 A note on cultural African psychology
- 87 Traditions and modernities
- 88 Further notes on cultural African psychology
- 89 A note on critical African psychology
- 90 Misperceiving the object
- 91 Permeable boundaries
- 92 European archives, African exchanges
- 93 Continued hopes and frustrations
- 94 (African) developmental psychology
- 95 (African) community psychology
- 96 Awake to yourself
- 97 Tenets of psychology
- 98 Psychological freedom
- 99 Think Africa in the world
- 100 Always the future
- References
- Index
82 - Four orientations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Author's note
- 1 (African)
- 2 The necessary adjective
- 3 Disorientation
- 4 Awake to Africa
- 5 A way of seeing
- 6 Off-centre
- 7 Words are not enough
- 8 Teaching Africa
- 9 Psychology is culture
- 10 Africa internationalised
- 11 Aiming for redundancy
- 12 Overlooked perspectives
- 13 Unselfconscious situatedness
- 14 Own goal
- 15 African scholarship
- 16 Education as ethical responsibility
- 17 Black children and white dolls
- 18 Search for Africa in psychology
- 19 Dethingifying
- 20 Three problems
- 21 Fog and friction
- 22 African enough?
- 23 Antipathy, apathy
- 24 Superhuman subhuman
- 25 Sources of negativity
- 26 Not all (blacks) think alike
- 27 Causes of confusion
- 28 Estrangement
- 29 The centre
- 30 Terminology
- 31 Defining by negation
- 32 Self-sabotage
- 33 A welcoming home
- 34 Defining by affirmation
- 35 Scholarly extraverts and introverts
- 36 It's African, except when it's not
- 37 Points on a continuum
- 38 Invisible Africa
- 39 Calls to decolonise
- 40 We need to talk
- 41 A heterogeneous terrain
- 42 It's power, stupid
- 43 Living with constant resistance
- 44 A psychological history of struggle
- 45 Healing potential
- 46 Porous hegemony
- 47 An offshore model
- 48 Only a situated understanding will do
- 49 Satisfied with alienation
- 50 A worldwide need
- 51 Diverse and dynamic orientations
- 52 Returning to definition
- 53 A psychology from nowhere
- 54 A proposal
- 55 (African) American psychology
- 56 Mischievous questions
- 57 Solutions to alienation
- 58 Conscientisation
- 59 A new course
- 60 Complicity
- 61 The lost self
- 62 An unacknowledged past
- 63 In and of the world
- 64 Origins of (African) psychology
- 65 Birth of a discipline
- 66 Paternity claims
- 67 Fatal intimacy
- 68 Lineage and authority
- 69 Being African
- 70 Interconnectivity
- 71 Four axioms
- 72 Above all
- 73 The past in the present
- 74 Making space for all
- 75 Caveat
- 76 A variegated approach
- 77 The ultimate goal
- 78 Real constraints
- 79 Debates and contests
- 80 A contingent term
- 81 Polyvocality
- 82 Four orientations
- 83 Notes on Western-oriented African psychology
- 84 The world as it is
- 85 Notes on psychological African studies
- 86 A note on cultural African psychology
- 87 Traditions and modernities
- 88 Further notes on cultural African psychology
- 89 A note on critical African psychology
- 90 Misperceiving the object
- 91 Permeable boundaries
- 92 European archives, African exchanges
- 93 Continued hopes and frustrations
- 94 (African) developmental psychology
- 95 (African) community psychology
- 96 Awake to yourself
- 97 Tenets of psychology
- 98 Psychological freedom
- 99 Think Africa in the world
- 100 Always the future
- References
- Index
Summary
Having come this far, I would now like to give an outline of my framework for (thinking about and doing and seeing) African psychology as situated knowledge and practice. Better yet, of understanding African psychology as a set of orientations. Whereas we can be forgiven for thinking of African psychology as all of psychology in Africa, about Africans, by Africans and non-Africans, the distinguishing and anchoring element of the framework is precisely this: African psychology is a set of repertoires tied to how we orient our studies, teaching and therapeutics to individuals in Africa, and, equally important, how we orient ourselves to the world from places in Africa. African psychology is, therefore, situated knowledge and practice.
The main idea underpinning the framework is this: African psychology is composed of multiple orientations towards Africa and psychology. There are four orientations, distinguishable from each other by how you situate yourself with respect to psychology and Africa, to Africa in psychology (Ratele 2017a). The number of orientations is not definitive; the fact that there are several orientations is what matters.
The four orientations that constitute African psychology are:
Euroamerican or Western-oriented African psychology;
psychological African studies;
value-based, spiritual, metaphysical, philosophical, or cultural African psychology (cultural African psychology for short); and
structural, materialist, political, or critical African psychology (critical African psychology for short).
Some of these orientations are readily graspable – such as the more Western-oriented psychology in Africa. As the mainstream, this Western-oriented African psychology is where the majority of psychologists are situated, and the literature produced from this orientation is too vast to reference. The other three orientations are represented by a handful of scholars (Mkhize 2004; Nwoye 2015; Semenya & Mokwena 2012).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The World Looks Like This From HereThoughts on African Psychology, pp. 151 - 152Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2019