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Indigenous Psychology in Africa: A Survey of Concepts, Theory, Research, and Praxis
Abstract
Understanding human behaviour, thoughts, and emotional expressions can be challenging in the global context. Due to cultural differences, the study of psychology cannot be de-contextualised. This calls for unearthing of the explanatory systems that exist in Africa to understand and account for behaviour, emotions, and cognition of Africans. This call is addressed through the emergence of African Psychology (AP) or Indigenous Psychology in Africa (IPA) as a legitimate science of human experience. This Element discusses the motivations for AP, centrality of culture, demarcations of AP, and the different strands within AP. It highlights issues related to African philosophy, African cultural anthropology, African philosophy of science, and suitable methodological approaches for AP research. It also discusses some selected theoretical contributions and applications of AP. The Element concludes that AP researchers and practitioners need to pursue interdisciplinarity and avoid meaningless rejection of good ideas from other cultural settings.
This chapter examines the art of tribal, oral societies who lack any form of writing, with a particular focus on African tribal art and culture. The chapter considers recent statistics surrounding literacy rates in various regions of Africa, as well as outlining some of the issues in terms of identifying genuinely oral cultures which are untouched by literacy. Following the lead of theorists of orality and literacy, the chapter engages in a close analysis of the art of various African oral cultures, demonstrating a distinct correlation of stylistic tendencies. The chapter also considers art in conjunction with African oral traditions, analysing the specific character of numerous spoken languages of oral African societies and uncovering resonant characteristics in their visual art.
This perspective article re-imagines and proposes key Afrocentric frameworks that can contribute towards animating the recreation and leisure discourse in Africa. The article foregrounds Afrocentricity, Sankofa, African Social Ontogenesis and Ubuntu as pertinent lenses through which recreation and leisure phenomena can be explored to respond to African realities. The article analytically draws on relevant scholarship to describe and interpretively glean implications for recreation and leisure research. The article's contribution to the discourse lies in its call for a re-think on how recreation and leisure research should engage with African realities.
There are concerns that soft skills assessment has been conceptualized within the Western context and may not reflect the indigenous African worldview. Without relevant soft skills assessment contextualized in the African cultural cosmology, there is a limitation in assessing African conceptions of abilities. The purpose of this study was to identify relevant soft skills for secondary/high school students and develop a scale relevant for assessing soft skills in Botswana. An exploratory sequential mixed methods design was used to explore the perceptions of 23 education stakeholders on relevant soft skills for secondary students through in-depth interviews. The qualitative findings were used to develop a 63-item Soft Skills Assessment Scale which was administered to a sample of 306 senior secondary school students selected from three educational regions in Botswana. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to assess the latent factor structure of the scale. Through principal component analysis, four factors were extracted with underlying 38 items. However, a confirmatory factor analysis confirmed a four-factor model (Perseverance, Civic virtue, Teamwork, and Communication) based on a final 14-item scale with Cronbach’s alphas above .60 and Cronbach’s alpha of .82 for the entire scale. Convergent and discriminant validities of the scale were within an acceptable range. The key contribution of this study was the development of a psychometrically valid and reliable Soft Skills Assessment Scale (SSAS) in the context of Botswana.
Historically, psychology evolved out of philosophy and physiology. In other words, psychology can be said to be the study of philosophy by other means. To the extent that, across the globe today, what is taught in psychology is purely Western or hegemonic psychology, it is safe to say that hegemonic psychology evolved out of Western philosophy. Some examples abound to illustrate Western philosophical underpinnings of hegemonic psychology and its relevance to psychological inquiry.
This Element explores multifaceted linkages between feeding
and relationship formation based on ethnographic case studies in
Morocco, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, and Costa Rica. Research
demonstrates that there are many culturally valued ways of feeding
children, contradicting the idea of a single universally optimal feeding standard. It demonstrates further that, in many parts of the world, feeding plays a central role in bonding and relationship formation, something largely overlooked in current developmental theories. Analysis shows that feeding contributes to relationship formation through what we call proximal, transactional, and distal dimensions. This Element argues that feeding practices can lead to qualitatively distinct forms of relationships. It has important theoretical and practical implications, calling for the expansion of attachment theory to include feeding and body-centered caregiving and significant changes to global interventions currently based on “responsive feeding.” This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Early childhood science and intervention (ECSI) or simply early childhood development (ECD) is now a multi-billion-dollar industry that seeks to export one form of family model, parenting practices, and perspective of child development to the rest of the world. This practice occurs through the efforts of agencies such as the World Health Organization, United Nations Children's Fund, the World Bank Group, and the LEGO Foundation. As a result, Gabriel Scheidecker and colleagues (2023) are justified to characterize ECSI as global ECD that seeks to improve the brains of children in the majority world to break the vicious cycle of poverty. I complement Scheidecker et al.'s (2023) arguments by highlighting a key link that sustains global ECD-the academics and practitioners from the majority world who, knowingly or unknowingly, perpetuate this practice. In this commentary , I discuss why and how such academics and practitioners contribute to the practice of global ECD.
There appears to be a gap between the potential and actual impacts of psychology on the African continent in general and particularly in Ghana. Meanwhile, psychology is an essential health service in emergency/pandemic situations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, psychology has become a significant channel for the promotion of wellbeing in many communities worldwide. This paper presents an account of how psychology in Ghana gained prominence by seizing the opportunity provided by the COVID-19 pandemic to provide the required psychosocial support the country needed in the hard times. The essence is to provide exemplars for countries where psychology is dormant and underutilised to make gains for the citizenry and the profession.
Research on childhood in anthropology and neighboring disciplines has continuously broadened the range of the social partners that are
considered relevant for young children’s development—from parents to other caregivers, siblings, and peers. Yet most studies as well as
interventions in early childhood still focus exclusively on parents, who are presumed to be the most significant socializing agents.
Objecting to such a hierarchical understanding of the social world of children, I propose a complementarity view. Rather than being
linearly ranked in a hierarchy of significance, children’s social partners may complement each other by providing different but equally significant experiences. My suggestions are based on an ethnographic study in a rural community in Madagascar. Focusing on children in the first 3 years of life, I explore the full range of their social partners and the respective experiences they provide. Caregivers focus on children’s physical needs and aimto keep themin a calm emotional state, while other young related children are the most crucial partners when it comes to play, face-to-face interaction, and the exchange of intense emotions. These complementary roles, I argue, lead to the parallel formation of two distinct socioemotional modes: a hierarchical one and an egalitarian one.
Target article by Gabriel Scheidecker, commentaries by Adam Boyette, Nandita Chaudhary, Franziska Fay, Heidi Keller, David F. Lancy, Francesca Mezzenzana, John Teria Ng'asike, Seth Oppong, Robert Serpell, Julie Spray, Thomas Weisner.
Key words:
mothering, parenting, caregiving, peers, early childhood development; ECD; emotion socialization; cognitive development; attachment; relationship formation; kinship; relatedness; breast feeding; play; early learning; early intervention; Madagascar; Africa; Global South; Low-Income country; pastoralism; Bara; ethnography; mixed-method; spot observation; interdisciplinary; anthropology; developmental psychology; cultural psychology
Psychological researchers have become increasingly concerned with generalized accounts of human behavior based on narrow participant representation. This concern is particularly germane to infant research as findings from infant studies are often invoked to theorize broadly about the origins of human behavior. In this article, we examined participant diversity and representation in research published on infant development in four journals over the past decade. Sociodemographic data were coded for all articles reporting infant data published in Child Development, Developmental Science, Developmental Psychology, and Infancy between 2011 and 2022. Analyses of 1682 empirical articles, sampling approximately 1 million participants, revealed consistent under-reporting of sociodemographic information. For studies that reported sociodemographic characteristics, there was an unwavering skew toward White infants from North America/Western Europe. To address a lack of diversity in infant studies and its scientific impact, a set of principles and practices are proposed to advance toward a more globally representative science.
The majority of young children with a disability live in low- and middle-income countries, where access to inclusive early learning programs supported by governments or non-government organizations is usually unavailable for the majority of the population, who live in rural areas. This study explored the feasibility of leveraging materials and personnel available within local communities to provide inclusive early learning programs in rural Zimbabwe. Caregivers of young children with some disability were given the opportunity to describe their experienced challenges; ways in which they informally support their children’s early learning; and the types of skills and resources they were able and willing to offer to support the establishment and operation of a more formal group-based inclusive early learning program. Qualitative data were generated from a purposive sample of caregivers of children with diverse impairments (n = 12) in two remote rural districts in Zimbabwe. Themes were identified in the rich qualitative data caregivers provided during individual interviews. The challenges caregivers experienced included the failure of interventions to improve their children’s level of functioning, the lack of access to assistive devices, the perception that the local school would be unable to accommodate their children, and worry about the future. Despite these stressors, caregivers actively supported their children’s self-care, social, moral and cognitive development and sought ways to save the funds that would be needed if their children could attend school. Caregivers were also willing and able to provide diverse forms of support for the establishment and operation of an inclusive early education program: food, funding, teaching and learning materials, and free labor. The insights obtained from these data informed the design of local community-controlled inclusive early education programs and the types of support caregivers and children may need to participate fully in these.
Discussions about decolonising psychology now abound. A key perspective from which these commentaries have been written relates to a confrontation of the gatekeepers in global psychology. While this approach is valuable to end epistemological violence and other forms of injustice, it also ends up alienating influential scholars in hegemonic psychology who can magnify the impact of the decolonisation effort. In this article, I borrow from the anti-racism literature the concept of allyship to put forward a new concept of epistemological allyship (EA). I position EA to invite, but not to demand, support from and to provide guidance to gatekeepers who truly wish to support the decolonisation efforts. However, unlike the past experiences with ending slavery in which Black people were portrayed to or required to beg for freedom, this concept of EA is not to be understood in this light. Rather it should be understood to imply that while academics from the majority of the world (AMWs) are fighting their own epistemological battles, any helpful support is and should be welcome.
Global Early Childhood Development (ECD)-an applied field with the aim to improve the "brain structure and function" of future generations in the global South-has moved to the center of international development. Global ECD rests heavily on evidence claims about widespread cognitive, social, and emotional deficits in the global South and the benefits of changing parenting practices in order to optimize early childhood development. We challenge these claims on the grounds that the leading ECD literature excludes research from anthropology, cultural psychology, and related fields that could provide crucial insights about childrearing and children's development in the targeted communities. We encourage anthropologists and other scholars with ethnographic expertise on childhood to critically engage with global ECD. To facilitate such an endeavor, this article sketches the history, scientific claims, and interventions of global ECD, points out the critical potential of ethnographic research, and suggests strategies to make ethnography more relevant.
KEYWORDS early childhood development, parenting interventions, international development, applied research
In this chapter, I address the concept of personhood principally based on Oppong’s bio-cultural theory of becoming a ‘person’. In addition, I discuss the implications of this representation of becoming a person for citizenship behaviours. I discuss citizenship behaviours in two ways, namely: 1) individual responsibility as a citizen of a nation and 2) corporate social responsibility. To do this, I evaluate Oppong’s bio-cultural theory against Nsamenang’s social ontogenesis and further presents Bakhtin’s concept of dialogical self to theoretically ground the representation of personhood. To discuss the individual citizen and corporate social responsibilities, I present the four developmental tasks inherent in Oppong’s bio-cultural theory in relations to what an individual citizen is expected to know and do as well as what would be expected of an organization operating in a particular business environment. Citizenship behaviours extend to prevention of corruption. As a result, I also attempt to reconcile societal moral code with prevalence of corrupt behaviour by discussing corruption as the outcome of imagined competition among ethnic groups and the early exposure of children to trickster folklores in the absence of alternative models and punitive sanctions for the key character in the stories.
It has become increasingly apparent that publishing research on child development from certain countries is especially challenging. These countries have been referred to collectively as the Majority World, the Global South, non-WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic), or low-and middle-income countries. The aim of this paper is to draw attention to these persistent challenges , and provide constructive recommendations to contribute to better representation of children from these countries in child development research. In this paper, we outline the history of publication bias in developmental science , and issues of generalization of research from these countries and hence where it 'fits' in terms of publishing. The importance of explaining context is highlighted, including for research on measurement child development outcomes , and attention is drawn to the vicious publication
There are marked differences between conceptions of personhood from an African perspective and those of the West. Whereas in the West, personhood is conceptualized in Kantian terms, made up of the metaphysical qualities by which personhood is granted, a normative conceptualization of personhood exists in Africa. These differential conceptions have largely come from philosophical reflections and, predominantly, from etic perspectives. This study explored the conceptions of personhood among the Ewes and Akans in Ghana. Using a semi-structured interview guide, seven (7) Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) were conducted in a community in the Eastern Region and another in the Volta Region of Ghana. Thematic analysis revealed three main moral frames from which personhood is conceived: communal, divine and interpersonal, which showed a pervasive consequentialist social ethic. Out of these three broad moral frames emerged four themes, namely: 1) the metaphysical, 2) normative, 3) performative, and 4) spiritual dimensions. Participants alluded to how personhood is attained and how it is lost. Contrary to the Western metaphysical notions of personhood, personhood among Ewes and Akans is agent-centred. The implications of these conceptions for psychological practice in Ghana are discussed.
Objective
This pilot study investigated the different roles Zambian guardians and older siblings play in stimulating children and how time spent engaging in child stimulating activities was associated with child stimulation. In this study, guardians were women who are primary caregivers of the children.
Background
A lot of research has been done on child stimulation but little is known of different roles caregivers, especially older siblings, play in child stimulation.
Method
Questionnaires were administered to caregivers (both older siblings and guardians) of children between 3 and 5 years of age and their older siblings above 7 years old.
Results
Results showed that despite the female guardians spending more time taking care of their children, older siblings were significantly more involved in child stimulating activities than the female guardians. Further data showed that guardians with more education were associated with increased child stimulation. However, socioeconomic status, age of guardians, and family size were not associated with child stimulation.
Conclusion
In poor communities, older siblings engage more in child stimulating activities than their guardians. Child stimulation interventions have often focused on parents (guardians) leaving out older siblings who may play a more critical role, especially in circumstance were parental care and availability are absent. Therefore, for child cognitive and socioemotional stimulation interventions to be more effective in poor communities, they should include siblings. More research is needed to understand the role of male guardians and the degree to which sibling stimulation predicts cognitive and socioemotional development.
This special issue contributes insights into ongoing debates on the politics and ethics of knowledge production in “global” childhood studies by decentering dominant, northern-centric models of childhood and using southern epistemologies. We contest the ways in which most of the world’s children have their experiences and contexts interpreted through the theoretical canons, vernaculars and institutions of northern academia. Drawing on studies that deploy indigenous, decolonial and postcolonial perspectives on the study of childhood and children in different temporal moments and spatial contexts of Africa, Latin America and South Asia, authors of papers aim to push the boundaries for ways of knowing children and doing childhood studies through cross-disciplinary, generative south-north and south-south encounters. The special issue critically engages with questions of epistemic plurality and bottom-up theorization of research with globally southern children, to both rectify the onto-epistemological imbalance in childhood studies and reinscribe indigenous knowledge systems that have received limited attention in this field thus far.
I present here an assessment of African Psychology (AP) to give insights about how it has been conceptualised and practised thus far as well as what its future holds. I begin with a focus on the centrality of culture and how AP treats the concept of culture. I will then attempt to respond to some concerns often raised by Africa-based psychologists who do not operate in and from a multiracial space about the relevance and legitimacy of AP. Theoretically, multiracial space is conceptualised not to mean the mere presence of people from diverse races in a particular space but also to the uneven distribution of power in spaces such as a country, state, university, or any community of people. Further, I attempt to argue for positioning of AP to contribute to global psychology. I will discuss implications for theory development, practice, curriculum design, and pedagogical practices as well.
Introduction: The focus of this Research Topic was defined by the Editors as “cultural models that describe or explain patterns of existing within, making sense of, interacting with, and shaping the world that stem from African experiences,” and they expressed the hope that it would help to “better represent Africa in Psychology to make the discipline less WEIRD.” Several elements of that broad goal were addressed in different ways by the various studies in the collection. How should Africa be represented? Cultural models are a form of collective representation shared among member-owners of a particular culture (Quinn and Holland, 1987). How should they feature in systematic research on psychological topics? As hypothetical influences on individual behavior and experience? As frameworks for data collection? Or as thematic resources for communication between various social groups? And how should they be attributed? To a geopolitical region, such as Africa? Or to an ethnolinguistic group, such as indigenous members of a community. . .
• with attention to sociocultural change over time (e.g., 1970s vs. 2010s)?
• with attention to ascribed authority (e.g., insiders, elders, respected local experts)?
• as contestable interpretations (e.g., which traditional practices deserve enduring loyalty while others are obsolete?)
Answering those conceptual questions has implications for both methodology and theory.
Background: Most innovations that would help to provide inclusive home-based early learning for children in marginalised communities sometimes collapse when the funders pull out. One of the reasons for this has been lack of information on the dynamics in such communities that can help to sustain such innovations.
Aim: This study aimed to provide information on what communities in the study area know, their attitude and practices that can sustain home-based early learning initiatives.
Setting: The study setting was in rural districts with marginalised communities, two in eastern and the other two in central Uganda.
Methods: This study uses an exploratory approach to collect data through interviews and focus group discussions in the selected Ugandan communities. Data were collected from 120 purposively sampled parents, caregivers and teachers using in-depth interviews.
Results: (1) Participants support the establishment of inclusive home learning centres and already have learning expectations of their children by the age of 6 years. (2) While women are more available for early childhood care services, men are supportive of inclusive education. (3) Cases of children with special needs are more prevalent in the study area, suggesting that many more could be found than currently known.
Conclusion: The study concludes that communities have preferences for some activities carried out in the centres if established. This study provides an advance information that is useful for planning by agencies and government departments that may want to support establishment of such centres in marginalised communities.
The principal goal of psychological science is not application but theory. This is because a good theory yields accurate predictions and control, two preconditions for applications. Thus, good psychological science is one that produces good theories. Against the background of reproducibility crisis and the apparent non-existence of an integrated subfield of psychology addressing those issues, I submit psychological theoretics (or psycho-theoretics) as a potential solution. The scope of psychological theo-retics is outlined and distinguished from other closely related subfields. It was argued that psychological theoretics has the potential to make a unique contribution to the advancement of good psychological science. It is also worth noting that even if the global community of psychologists might not be ready for psychological theoretics as a new subfield, the reforms proposed under its rubrics would still remain relevant today and in the future. Indeed, the question of whether it is completely new will surely be the subject of scientific debate.
Human flourishing has recently gained more attention in the world as a prerequisite safety net for better human resilience in uncertain times. While most Western authors believe that human flourishing is an individual issue, gained in later life, African communities that are largely communal may not have the same view. Communalism as opposed to individualism as a key pillar in African Ubuntu thinking makes it a possibility that there is a departure in the contextualisation of human flourishing and its pathways. This explores the African conceptualisation of flourishing in the Ubuntu lens and how communities are coming together to cultivate it by implementing home based early childhood learning centres. Desk review was used to learn the contextual meaning of human flourishing and different pathways to it in African community settings. Home based early learning centres operated by parents was seen as a core activity to nurture Ubuntu, as each family and community member becomes useful in provide a service that helps others to flourish at different stages of life. The paper concludes that the use of the home-based early childhood model as a flourishing intervention helps to engage every member of the community for the good of their children, bringing live the Ubuntu saying “I am a person because of other persons.” This study is significant in that it proposes home-based early learning as a more viable pathway way to human flourishing and redirects the focus of flourishing to a younger age group.
Several micro-level factors such as substance use, about which certain workplace factors have been shown to be the precursors, can interfere with effective individual and organizational performance. Substance use is also known to lead to a vicious circle as it is related to other mental health challenges and many counterproductive work behaviours such as lateness, absenteeism, workplace incivilities as well as psychosomatic ailments and physical diseases. Accordingly, policymakers, human resources practitioners, unions and other stakeholders should take substance use seriously—whether it occurs during working hours or not. This chapter focuses on substance use in organizations and summarizes current knowledge about psychosocial factors associated with the causation and prevention of substance use within the context of organizations.
This article contributes to a current debate on the ethical dimension of interventions into parenting and early childhood development (ECD) in low- and middle-income countries. On occasion of a recent paper by Weber and colleagues1 it contends that excessive scientific claims about the urgency and benefits of parenting interventions represent a major obstacle to fulfill the ethics of beneficence, autonomy, and justice. The standards, constructs, and findings used to guide ECD interventions are overwhelmingly based on research in Western settings. Their application to communities in the Global South results in a tendency to conflate difference in childrearing practices and developmental outcomes with deficiency and to overlook the specific skills, goals and strategies of the targeted communities. An overreliance on existing ECD research and limited recognition of its Western bias leads to a devaluation of poor populations in the Global South and a failure to truly build interventions on their needs, resources, and goals. The article recommends an approach that openly acknowledges the Western bias in order to increase sensitivity to local ways and to draw attention to research, for example from anthropology, cultural, and indigenous psychology, that specifically tackles these weaknesses and could help to improve the evidence base of parenting interventions.
The Nurturing Care Framework for Early Childhood Development urges stakeholders to implement strategies that help children worldwide achieve their developmental potential. Related programmes range from the WHO’s and UNICEF’s Care for Child Development intervention, implemented in 19 countries, to locally developed programmes, such as non-governmental organisation Tostan’s Reinforcement of Parental Practices in Senegal. However, some researchers argue that these programmes are unethical as they impose caregiving practices and values from high-income countries (HICs) on low-income communities, failing to consider local culture, communities’ goals for their children and generalisability of scientific findings from HICs. We explore these criticisms within a public health framework, applying principles of beneficence, autonomy and justice to the arguments. To facilitate the change communities themselves desire for their children, we recommend that practitioners codevelop programmes and cooperate with communities in implementation to harness local beliefs and customs and promote evidence-based and locally adapted practices.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of comprehension of road hazards communication designs and safety climate on risk perception as well as the effect of the latter on road traffic accidents among commercial vehicle drivers in Ghana. Two hundred and twenty-six (226) commercial vehicle drivers participated in this study. Questionnaires were administered to drivers who travel outbound from Accra to nine (9) other regions of Ghana to enhance the external validity of the research findings. Path analysis, using structural equation modelling, was performed on the data obtained. Results of the SEM or path analysis revealed that all the hypothesized relationships were significant except three paths. The non-significant ones included the paths from RHCDs comprehension to risk perception and to driver decision making respectively, as well as the path from driver decision making to risk-taking behaviour. Overall, the model fitting showed that the proposed model for the study derived principally from the risk chain process model has empirical support. The implications are that risk perception influences risk-taking behaviour and decision making, whereas the latter influences risk exposure. In addition, safety climate influences risk perception, risk-taking behaviour, and road traffic accidents. Similarly, risk-taking behaviour influences risk exposure while risk exposure influences road traffic involvement. These implications were discussed in the light of the existing theory and extant empirical literature.
Introduction: There is growing evidence that group-based mental health intervention programmes can encourage the development of peer support, psychosocial skills, and collaborative therapeutic relationships with longer lasting effects. This study explored participants’ experiences of, perceived benefits of, and recommendations to improve a 10-session group-based multicomponent positive psychology intervention (mPPI)—the Inspired Life Programme (ILP)—designed to promote positive mental health and reduce symptoms of depression and negative affect in a sample of rural Ghanaian adults.
Method: Face-to-face semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with 18 randomly selected programme participants three months after their participation in the ILP. Data were analysed thematically with an inductive approach.
Results: Participants described their experience of the ILP as a forum for growth that granted them the opportunity to introspect, practicalise and situate everyday life challenges, connect with others, and to develop a sense of mutual accountability. Results indicate that the ILP led participants to develop a stronger sense of positivity and well-being, fructify their ideas, and to cultivate stronger social networks and relationships that led to increased vocational productiveness. Participants recommended that researchers include facets of physical health promotion in the programme and invite close relations of participants to participate in the programme.
Conclusion: This study provides the first insight into participants’ experiences of a group-based mPPI in Ghana. These findings may provide useful information to inform the design of context-appropriate community-based mental health interventions to fit participants’ specific needs, capacities, and circumstances.
Indigenous communities are those with historical claims to native lands, practices, and customs that have sustained them for millennia. In many parts of the world, they continue to draw on age-old wisdom and practices to sustain their health in the modern, and, now, digital age. Yet, their cultural assets for health and wellbeing are less well recognized by mainstream culture, and often, their approaches to health and wellbeing are regarded as complementary or alternative to mainstream modern medicine. In this chapter, we review regional and international definitions of indigenous communities and trace the history of research and practice in indigenous health in Africa, Australia, and North America. We follow this up by discussing the main themes in sustaining the health of indigenous communities, informed by their assets and potentialities, applying human rights-based approaches. Next, we consider the cultural, professional, and legal issues that influence health and wellbeing among indigenous communities, and related disciplines for understanding and promoting indigenous health systems. Finally, we review the critical research and practice issues for sustainable community health among indigenous communities in a globalized, digital age world.
Studies that investigate cognitive ability in African children and estimate the general cognitive abilities of African adults tend to work with existing models of intelligence. However, African philosophy and empirical studies in cross-cultural psychology have demonstrated that conceptualizations of human cognitive ability vary with location. This paper begins with the assumption that the existing Anglo-American models of cognitive abilities are valuable but limited in their capacity to account for the various conceptualizations of valued cognitive abilities in different human societies. On the basis of this assumption, I employ extant empirical evidence generated through ethnographic studies across Africa to formulate what an African model of valued human cognitive ability ought to be. The output of this formulation has been so christened a model of valued cognitive ability in order to draw attention to the fact that models of cognitive abilities have currency and values in each human society. This value allocation is expected to influence which elements of cognitive ability each human society will promote and develop. In addition, implications for theory, research and praxes are discussed.
This article draws on the literature in development economics, psychology and sociology to explicate how decolonised early childhood education and care services can reverse the metacolonial cognition lingering in the postcolonial era. In particular, the author shows that colonial institutions persist even after formal colonisation has ended through the application of de facto power. Self-knowledge developed during early childhood impacts adult socioeconomic life outcomes. Thus, decolonising early childhood development and care by ensuring positive representations of self will improve self-perceptions and self-awareness. The implications for practice and policy are discussed within the context of deploying decolonised early childhood development and care services to raise a new generation of confident Africans to accelerate the development of the continent and regions with similar histories of colonisation.
Systematic reviews by virtue of being a pre-determined, transparent, and comprehensive plan and search strategy are fast gaining popularity in psychology in South Africa. A systematic review allows one to obtain a thorough overview regarding the recent developments and debates on a given topic with the addition of metacommentary. In South Africa, we have noted stark differences in the reporting of systematic reviews. Often studies are identified as systematic reviews but methodologically have failed to meet the rigorous criteria that characterise this method. This article aims to provide a guide for the novice researcher on conducting systematic reviews. We draw on a practical case study by Hassem and Laher where the systematic review method was used to establish the efficacy of online depression screening tools in the South African context as a practical illustration of the systematic review method. In so doing, the affordances and limitations of the systematic review method are discussed.
Research and publication are some of the practices that define university work and therefore are part and parcel of the key considerations for promoting university-based academics. Whereas this promotion standard is widely appreciated in view of the importance of knowledge production, it raises several questions about the subtexts of its practice and their implications for publication in Africa. Through an empirical qualitative study of two Ugandan universities, this paper examines how promotion policies shape publication outlet choices and Africa-based publication initiatives. I show that promotion processes in Ugandan universities are driven by complex quality checks that are sometimes characterized by rationalized malice against individual academics in settling personal scores and biases against publications from African outlets. With the partial aid of theories of (post)coloniality and Southern theory, I explain the root of Afro-pessimistic biases in promotion criteria and argue that both the genuine quality checks and other neo-colonial biases incentivise publishing in the West and lead scholars to avoid African options. This exacerbates the already challenging circumstances of African publishers, limits local access to marketplaces of knowledge, and shrinks space for epistemic pluralism.
Afrocentric paradigms reflect assumptions of the overarching importance of interconnectedness and social bonds in meaningful experiences. It is, however, not known if types of relatedness vary in importance as meaning sources in the subjective experiences of laypeople, or what the reasons are that they ascribe to the importance of relationships. The empirical and theoretical substantiation of philosophical assumptions is needed to provide a scientific basis for appropriate well-being interventions in African contexts. Therefore, this study aimed to empirically explore the relative importance of various types of relationships as sources of meaning and in particular why relationships are important to laypeople in relatively collectivist African contexts. Using a bottom-up qualitative approach with quantification of responses, this study explored how prominently relationships featured as meaning sources compared to other domains of life and then, in particular, the motivations for the importance of various types of relationships as found in four African samples: a Ghanaian urban group (n = 389), a South African multicultural, English-speaking urban group (n = 585), and two South African Setswana-speaking groups (n = 512 rural, n = 380 urban). Findings showed that the relational domains of life, namely, family, interpersonal relations, spirituality/religion, and community/society, made up a large proportion of responses on what provides meaning in life−in particular family and spirituality/religion with community/society occurring the least. The reasons for meaning experienced in various relationship types included domain-typical relational descriptors, such as contributions made or rewards received. However, many intrapersonal motives also emerged: inner well-being, happiness, joy, a sense of competence, and own growth. Material needs and harmony also surfaced as motivations for relational importance. Findings are aligned with African philosophical perspectives as far as the importance of relationships and the value attached to spirituality/religion are concerned, but contributed additionally by showing that different types of relationships vary in importance: close relationships are more important than community/societal relationships. Unearthing the reasons for the importance of relationships points toward a dialectic pattern of African individualism–collectivism in which independent and interdependent orientations flow together. Such knowledge is vital for the promotion of mental health and well-being in these contexts.
This contribution to the collection of articles on “African Cultural Models” considers the topic of well-being. Reflecting modern individualist selfways of North American and European worlds, normative conceptions of well-being in hegemonic psychological science tend to valorize self-acceptance, personal growth, and autonomy. In contrast, given the embedded interdependence of everyday life in many West African worlds, one can hypothesize that cultural models of well-being in many Ghanaian settings will place greater emphasis on sustainability-oriented themes of material sufficiency and successful navigation of normative obligations. To explore this hypothesis, we interviewed local cultural experts who function as custodians of religion and an important source of support for well-being in many Ghanaian settings. We asked participants to identify and explain models of well-being implicit in four Ghanaian languages (Akan, Dagbani, Ewe, and Ga). Participants were 19 men and 15 women (age range 32–92 years; Mean = 59.83; SD: 14.01). Results reveal some features of local models, including good health and positive affective states, that appear to resonate with standard understandings of well-being in hegemonic psychological science. However, results also provide evidence for other features of local models – specifically, good living (including moral living, material success, and proper relationality) and peace of mind – associated with a sustainability or maintenance orientation to well-being.
Epistemological violence is alive and problematic. There is no gainsaying that it dehumanizes members of non-Western societies or persons who differ from the Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) Whites. Psychology has a white, affluent, Western skew as the values of the middle-class, Western, Christian, male, Whites (MWCMW) are held as the frame of reference. In this commentary, I first show how Held’s (2020) “true-for and true-about prepositional” frame is useful for understanding the findings that Africans tend to attribute mental disorders to spiritual causes. However, I respond to her major thesis by clarifying the concept of epistemological violence and addressing the concept of “othering” as a form of linguistic violence. I further argue that interpretations of group differences that do not harm the members of the comparison group are not violent; if something promotes social justice, it is no longer violent but an instance of epistemological “positive peace.”
Urban and rural grandmothers (n = 20) in Botswana participated in focus groups to learn their expectations for the acquisition of skills by preschool children. Their expectations for self‐care, traditional politeness, and participation in household chores were dramatically earlier than developmental timetables reported for Western middle‐class populations. There are some differences, however, in the urban and rural grandmothers’ expectations. Rural grandmothers had earlier expectations for self‐care skills and participation in household chores, and they had more specific expectations for mastering Setswana cultural customs. In addition, some urban grandmothers, who were generally more educated, described using more reciprocal communication, and they believed in playing with their grandchildren, whereas the rural grandmothers’ communication was more instructional, and they insisted that children should play away from adults. Strikingly, there was no mention of school readiness goals or activities by either group, suggesting a “cultural misfit” between the standard early childhood curriculum, largely imported from the United States and other Western countries, and the cultural backgrounds of Batswana families. To create a more workable partnership between preschool teachers and grandparents—important caretakers of young children, both traditionally and currently—will require efforts to acknowledge and promote the values and expectations of both groups.
The field of psychology prides itself on being a data-driven science. In 2008, however, Arnett brought to light a major weakness in the evidence on which models, measures, and theories in psychology rest. He demonstrated that the most prominent journals in six subdisciplines of psychology focused almost exclusively (over 70% of samples and authors) on a cultural context, the United States, shared by only 5% of the world's population. How can psychologists trust that these models and results generalize to all humans, if the evidence comes from a small and unrepresentative portion of the global population? Arnett's analysis, cited over 1,300 times since its publication, appears to have galvanized researchers to think more globally. Social scientists from the United States have increasingly sought ways to collaborate with colleagues abroad. Ten years later, an analysis of the same 6 journals for the period of 2014 to 2018 indicates that the authors and samples are now on average a little over 60% American based. The change is mainly due to an increase in authorship and samples from other English-speaking and Western European countries. Thus, it might be said that 11% of the world's population is now represented in these top psychology journals, but that 89% of the world's population continues to be neglected. Majority world authors and samples (4-5%) are still sorely lacking from the evidence base. Psychology still has a long way to go to become a science truly representative of human beings. Several specific recommendations are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
The science and practice of Early Childhood Development (ECD) rely heavily on research from the Euro-American middle class—a minority of the world’s population—and research in or from the majority world is severely under-represented. This problem has been acknowledged in ECD, an applied field aiming to assess and improve child development globally, and in the related fields of global health and developmental sciences. Thus, now is the time to search for effective pathways towards global representation. To date, most calls for change within ECD and related fields have focused on various aspects of knowledge production and publication. Although more majority world research is certainly needed, we should work equally on the reception of existing research. A large body of research on childhood in the majority world already exists (eg, in anthropology, cultural psychology, and indigenous psychology), but majority world research is almost entirely absent in ECD. The under-representation of majority world research in ECD cannot simply be blamed on the scarcity of research, however. This under-representation is also perpetuated by the exclusion of existing, accessible, and highly relevant majority world research from the dominant academic discourses—in other words, by epistemic exclusion. If epistemic exclusion in the field of ECD continues, the existence of more majority world research will not reduce the current minority world biases in ECD research. Ending epistemic exclusion is therefore an essential step towards a truly global ECD practice.
This book aims to serve as a basic literature in the new field of African psychology as presently constituted in continental Africa. The book is designed to fill a huge void that exists with the persistent absence of a foundational text that evolves from the situated knowledges and experience of continental African realities and postcolonial concerns and is devoted to defining and charting the content and scope of this new field for scholars within and outside Africa. The book consists of a coherent and organically cohesive selection of the author’s key essays, the majority of them published between 2000 and the present in premier international psychological journals on various aspects of continental African psychology, understood as a postcolonial academic discipline. Some of the book’s chapters are new as well. These have been written to anchor and provide a conceptual unity to the book. In terms of content, the book consists of four parts. Part I presents the background to the book. It proposes the Madiban tradition as a framework of inclusion for the study of psychology in African universities. Part II focuses on the epistemological, methodological, and theoretical perspectives in African psychology. Part III introduces the reader to the field of African therapeutics, while Part IV aims to highlight the healing rituals and practices provided to the traumatized in contemporary Africa. The ultimate objective of the book is to give postcolonial Africans a fresh vision of themselves and their psychology and culture.
This paper argues that many pedagogical reform efforts falter because they fail to
consider the cultural context of teacher and student behavior. Little guidance exists
on how to adapt teaching practices to be compatible with culturally influenced
behaviors and beliefs. We present evidence from three studies conducted as
part of a large basic education program in Tanzania showing that some teaching
activities are less effective or not well implemented because of culturally influenced
behaviors in the classroom, namely children’s lack of confidence to speak up in
class; a commitment to togetherness, fairness, and cooperation; avoidance of
embarrassment; and age-graded authority. We propose ways teaching activities can
be adapted to take these behaviors into account while still adhering to fundamental
principles of effective learning, including student participation in their own
learning, teaching at the right level, and monitoring students as a basis for adjusting
instruction. Such adaptations may be made most effective by engaging teachers in
co-creation of teaching activities.
An overview is given of cross-cultural psychology and cultural psychology, focusing on theory and methodology. In Section 1 historical developments in research are traced; it is found that initially extensive psychological differences tend to shrink when more carefully designed studies are conducted. Section 2 addresses the conceptualization of “culture” and of “a culture”. For psychological research the notion “culture” is considered too vague; more focal explanatory concepts are required. Section 3 describes methodological issues, taking the notion of the empirical cycle as a lead for both qualitative and quantitative research. Pitfalls in research design and data analysis of behavior-comparative studies, and the need for replication are discussed. Section 4 suggests to move beyond research on causal relationships and to incorporate additional questions, addressing the function and the development of behavior patterns in ontogenetic, phylogenetic and historical time. Section 5 emphasizes the need for applied research serving the global village.
Purpose of the study: The purpose of the study was to analyze the caregivers’ quality indicators from a community perspective for sustainable ECE programmes.Methodology: The study employed a qualitative approach that used phenomenology research design. Twenty-five interviews and ten focus group discussions were used on the respondents for collecting data. The data collected from the caregivers/teachers, elders, parents and Early Childhood Education focal point officers revealed that the Ministry of Education and Sports caregiver quality indicators are not much emphasised in Karamoja. Findings: While the ECE learning framework wants caregivers to promote holistic development of children, the karimojong community wants caregivers to focus more on their culture. A good ECE caregiver for Karamoja should be able to honour the histories, culture, language, traditions, child rearing practices and lifestyle choices of the communities.Unique contribution to theory practice and policy: The findings indicate that there is need for stakeholders to work together to identify the caregivers ECE quality indicators then support in the designing, implementation and supervision of the ECE programmes for sustainability. If researchers use the strengths of communities, enshrined in their funds of knowledge, we are more likely to tap into their reserve support for ECE interventions. The social capital theory therefore when correctly implemented helps the caregivers and the education sector in working collaboratively with the parents in the setting up systems that aim at sustainable ECE programmes in the communities.
This essay explores the way the domain of what English‐speakers call the mind – believing, thinking, feeling, and other mental acts – is represented and mapped by Ghana's Akan ethno‐linguistic group. It uses several sources of evidence: mind and mind‐related words in Fante (an Akan language); the largest Akan (Twi) proverb compendium; longsemi‐structured interviews with forty adult Christians and African traditional religion practitioners; and short‐term ethnographic fieldwork by a Ghanaian scholar. The work finds four dimensions of what we might call an Akan theory of mind that seem to be shaped by local language and culture. First, the central function of the mind is planning – not identity. Second, one of the most salient qualities of the mind is its moral valence. The ‘bad minds’ of others are an ever‐present potential threat to social harmony and personal well‐being. Third, the mind is understood to be porous in nature. The minds of all people are vulnerable to supernatural influences, and some spiritually powerful people can exert supernatural power through mental action. Fourth and finally, some elements which English‐speakers would imagine as part of the mind (like feeling) are instead identified with the body.
