Speaker
Adrian Brock, independent scholar
Title
Making psychology local: The indigenization movement and its implications
Abstract
The origins of modern psychology are in Europe and North America. It was exported to other parts of the world on a large scale after World War II and it was out of this situation that the indigenization movement arose. Psychologists in Asia, Africa and Latin America began to complain that psychology was not the universal science that it pretended to be but reflected the society and culture in which it was produced. It was therefore unsuitable for their needs and would have to be adapted or modified to suit the local situation. Articles on this topic began to appear in the international literature in the 1970s and several edited books and special issues of journals have been devoted to the topic since then. What is generally lacking is a broad overview of the topic and I hope to provide this in my forthcoming book. I will discuss the phenomenon of indigenization in relation to the history of psychology and argue that it is not as new as it might appear. After outlining a few case studies, I will discuss some theoretical issues that they raise. Rather than approving or disapproving of the indigenization movement, the emphasis will be on what it tells us about the nature of psychology itself.
Bio
Adrian C. Brock is a graduate of the history and theory of psychology programme at York University. His supervisor was Kurt Danziger and he received his PhD in 1995. After teaching at universities in the United States and Ireland for over 20 years, he took early retirement in order to concentrate on writing and editing. His current projects include a book on the indigenization movement in psychology for the Palgrave Studies in the Theory and History of Psychology book series and a target article (with peer commentary) on the universal and the particular in psychology for a special issue of Annals of Theoretical Psychology. He is also the editor-in-chief of the Wiley Encyclopedia of the History of Psychology and the guest editor of a special issue of History of Psychology on the future of the history of psychology.
Directions
York University, Behavioural Science Building, Room 163 (Endler)