Shose Kessi

• PhD
• Head of Faculty at University of Cape Town

The higher education system globally is inherently inequitable. Discriminatory practices and oppressive power dynamics are particularly prevalent in the South African higher education landscape, which is characterized by a legacy of colonialism and apartheid. As a result, although students from a wide range of backgrounds are increasingly participa...

This edited collection was inspired by the presentations given at the sixth International Conference on Community Psychology (ICCP) held in Durban, South Africa in 2016. The conference was co-hosted by two of the editors of this collection, Shahnaaz Suffla and Mohamed Seedat. The 2016 conference was the first ICCP to be hosted on African soil and a...

While spatial apartheid is no longer formally maintained in Cape Town, South Africa, it seems at times to be bolstered by a “colonial spatial imaginary”. This concept, which is introduced in this chapter, encompasses collective perceptions and values that shape place identities, construct belonging in different places, and normalise associated spat...

This chapter explores ‘coloured’ men’s narratives in constructing a classed, gendered and raced Bishop Lavis in Cape Town. For decades, research on men who identify as ‘coloured’ has not adequately problematised ‘coloured’ masculinities. Young men who identify as ‘coloured’ have been found to be the most likely to perpetrate intimate partner violen...

This edited volume in the Community Psychology Book Series emphasizes applications of community psychology for disrupting dominant and hegemonic power relations. The book explores domains of work that are located within critical community psychology, as well as work that is conventionally not self-defined as community psychology but which draws on...

Although in most countries there are laws and policies in place to prohibit discrimination in education, the dominant institutional climates endemic to education settings are frequently at odds with broader commitments to the equitable provision of education, and can often be hostile, unwelcoming and alienating to students who do not fit the status...

Higher education as a system is characterised by persistent inequality, which is particularly inherent in South Africa. As a result of the enduring legacy of colonialism and apartheid, as well as processes of neoliberalism and globalisation, students from certain categories of identity are marginalised, whereas others are privileged. An essential e...

In searching for the potential that lies in African societies, the chapters of this volume consider relationships between knowledge, education and social structure from multiple angles, from a macro-continental scale to national education systems, schools and local communities. The themes that cut across the chapters include education as a mode of...

This introduction to the second installment of a two-part special issue focuses on actors and spaces that facilitate different forms of progress or push-back in decolonizing African Studies. We map how student activists have served as agents of decolonial change on campuses over time, and argue that intersectional and feminist leadership characteri...

Our reflections on what Pan-Africanism can contribute to psychology and what a Pan-African psychology might look like, lead us to a central question: Can a Pan-African psychology address the wounds of slavery, colonisation, and apartheid? In answering this question, we reflect on the contributions of African, liberation, indigenous, and feminist ps...

This introductory chapter traces some key moments in the development of psychology as a discipline that has been both implicated in and resistant to forms of slavery, colonization, and apartheid across the globe. We provide an overview of the field of ‘race’ psychology as well as the androcentric and paternalist origins of mainstream psychology. Th...

This chapter makes a case for a Pan-African feminist psychology by charting the ways in which patriarchal power has been entrenched through the formation of modern nation states by ignoring, silencing and erasing women’s participation in liberation struggles and the ways in which women have been ‘sold out’ through the formation of patriarchal natio...

“This book offers an incisively critical interrogation of the often understated centrality and excesses of psychology as a discipline, practice and technology in the sins of inequality, unequal encounters, conquest, domination, violence and violation; while simultaneously pointing the reader to emergent promising alternative perspectives for the ed...

This chapter traces some of the key moments in the history of Pan-Africanism with a particular emphasis on questions of identity and belonging as conceptual bridges between Pan-African thought and psychology. We present the variety, multivocality, and complexity of Pan-African theories, modalities, and enactments that provide insights into the rich...

This chapter engages with the psychological implications on identity construction and perception from the colonial period, roughly lasting from 1880 until the beginning of its dismantlement in the 1960s, and the pursuant decolonial period and struggles encountered today. We discuss the collective aspirations of self-determination grounded in coloni...

Institutional racism within the university in Africa has been an important question in contemporary South Africa. Building on the decolonial challenges to Eurocentric university education in the aftermath of independence movements across the continent, this chapter focuses on the post-1994 South African case. We highlight the challenges of institut...

This chapter provides a brief account of how academic discourse produced by disciplines like psychology has silenced and pathologised the experiences of African people reflecting the coloniality of the discipline and ongoing epistemic violence. The chapter unpacks the coloniality of the discipline in its knowledge production machinery through illus...

This chapter explores the psychological dimensions of restorative justice, reparations, and reconciliation in the aftermath of slavery, colonisation, and apartheid. We consider the role of apologies and truth-telling as potential steps towards the type of memory work and accountability required for healing historical wounds; and reflect on some of...

In this introduction to the special issue on decolonizing African Studies, we discuss some of the epicolonial dynamics that characterize much of higher education and knowledge production in, of, with, and for Africa. Decolonizing, we argue, is best understood as a verb that entails a political and normative ethic and practice of resistance and inte...

This paper attempts to provide a nuanced analysis of the experiences of women in early marriages in rural Zimbabwe. It was guided by a decolonial social constructionist framework and inspired by a feminist lens that endeavoured to gain insight into the first-hand experiences of early marriage. In-depth narrative interviews were carried out with ele...

Within the polyphony of Critical Psychologies, Kritische Psychologie represents a substantial and distinct voice. It has its origins in Germany, especially at the Free University Berlin, and developed over the years to a tradition of thought flourishing at various places around the world. This special issue of the Annual Review of Critical Psycholo...

Introduction to Special Issue "Kritische Psychologie", Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 16, 2019

This paper explores Black men’s narratives of sex work in Cape Town. Sex work in South Africa takes place in a complex context of poverty and unemployment, which plays a part in men’s entry into the profession. Much research on sex work has focused on female sex workers to the detriment of men who sell sex whose experiences are silenced. Narrative...

Photovoice is a visual participatory action research methodology that exemplifies many of the aims of decolonial feminism and community psychology with its attendance to the development of critical consciousness, the situating of participants as experts in their own lives and the aim for the psychological empowerment of participants. However, in mo...

In this chapter we explore the use of Photovoice methodologies for working in marginalised contexts in South Africa. Photovoice is a participatory action research (PAR) method through which members of a community come together in a facilitated process to produce stories of change in and about their communities. The stories are based on photographs...

In the call for this special issue we, incoming editors of PINS, expressed the desire to build on the fast-growing legacy and genesis of decoloniality through encouraging and amplifying the most marginalised perspectives and approaches within contemporary decolonial trends. There are a range of reasons why this current moment of decoloniality has e...

Decolonization is a key term in the current higher education crisis across South African universities as student movements are advocating for free decolonized education. In this paper, I explore how Photovoice research, as a narrative approach combined with participatory action methods, can engage a group of black, working-class, and LGBT students...

Psychology as a discipline has historically served the interests of dominant groups in society. By contrast, contemporary trends in psychological work have emerged as a direct result of the impact of violent histories of slavery, genocide and colonisation. Hence, we propose that psychology, particularly in its social forms, as a discipline centred...

Recent years have seen black university students in South Africa rallying against institutional racism and mobilising for systemic change in higher education, in response to the slow progress of transformation. Against this backdrop, little is known about white students’ perceptions. In this paper, we examine white students’ understandings of non-r...

The decolonisation of higher education in South Africa is closely linked to questions of knowledge production. The epistemic violence of the colonial encounter has put into question the possibilities and modes of doing research in marginalised communities. In this article, I argue that praxis in community social psychology can lead to more relevant...

South African higher education has faced much structural transformation since the dismantling of apartheid, and yet remains a racialized space. Despite a stated commitment to transformation in university policy nationally, lay discourses of transformation are highly contested. In these debates, black students are often represented in stigmatizing w...

With the dismantling of apartheid in 1994, significant changes were made to higher education in South Africa. Access to higher education has expanded and student bodies are now more representative in terms of gender and race. However, demographic change alone is insufficient for higher education transformation. As in other parts of the world, withi...

Since the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa, increasing numbers of black studentshave been enrolling at historically whites-only universities. This situation has beenparalleled by a resurgence of racialising discourses that represent black students as lackingin competencies, lowering academic standards and undeserving of their places at univ...

Recent work has called for the integration of different perspectives into the field of political psychology (Haste, 2012). This chapter suggests that one possible direction that such efforts can take is studying the role that social representations theory (SRT) can play in understanding political participation and social change. Social representati...

Africa's institutions of higher education are interrogating the practices that promote effective transformation in order to redress the inequalities of the past. In historically white universities, these debates include important issues such as admissions policies and academic support programmes, which represent significant responses to the dispara...

How far can community development lead to transformative social change within the context of global north-south development agendas? Drawing on the works of Frantz Fanon and Steve Biko, this article explores the possibilities of postcolonial psychology for community-based change. Findings from a youth intervention based on Photovoice methods and in...

Dixon et al. have highlighted the importance of a political conceptualisation of intergroup relations that challenges individualising models of social change. As important as this paper is for the development of critical debates in psychology, we can detect at least three issues that warrant further discussion: (a) the cultural and historical condi...

This article observes the role of social solidarity in resisting stigmatizing representations of development and as the basis upon which to mobilize social changes in the community. Through the use of Photovoice methods, in a community-based initiative, young people from Tanzania and South Africa participated in activities to build social solidarit...

This thesis is a social psychological approach to youth empowerment and social change in urban African contexts. Over a period of 22 months, 39 young people from Dar es Salaam and Soweto participated in a community‐based initiative called Shooting Horizons. The aim of the project was to engage young people in a process of critical consciousness and...