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Colonised Minds
Narratives that Shape Psychology
First edition
- Akira O'Connor - University of St Andrews, Scotland
- Erin Robbins - University of St Andrews, Scotland
May 2024 | 232 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
Psychology, as it is taught in the Global North, strives to be an objective science beyond reproach – but what happens when we examine the discipline critically, through an anti-colonial lens?
This text pulls back the curtain on the existing canon to reveal the historical power structures that shaped the discipline, and examines the extent to which psychology today continues to uphold oppression. Colonised Minds situates current teaching and research of major topics in the field of psychology within the context of colonialism to better understand how some ideas were allowed to flourish while others were suppressed, censored, or left behind. This book will also direct you to critical, antiracist, and feminist approaches for the field and the modern university more generally – looking to voices and perspectives that have been marginalised for ways to rethink the way we see, and teach, psychology.
Akira O’Connor is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology and the Institutional Race Equality Charter Chair at the University of St Andrews.
Erin Robbins is a Lecturer in Psychology and the Director of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion for the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of St Andrews.
This text pulls back the curtain on the existing canon to reveal the historical power structures that shaped the discipline, and examines the extent to which psychology today continues to uphold oppression. Colonised Minds situates current teaching and research of major topics in the field of psychology within the context of colonialism to better understand how some ideas were allowed to flourish while others were suppressed, censored, or left behind. This book will also direct you to critical, antiracist, and feminist approaches for the field and the modern university more generally – looking to voices and perspectives that have been marginalised for ways to rethink the way we see, and teach, psychology.
Akira O’Connor is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology and the Institutional Race Equality Charter Chair at the University of St Andrews.
Erin Robbins is a Lecturer in Psychology and the Director of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion for the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of St Andrews.
1. Introduction: The Canon and Systems of Thought
2. The Eugenics Problem: The Rotten Ideals Underpinning Today’s Statistical Tests
3. The Identification of the ‘Feeble-Minded’: How Psychological Testing and Segregation Go Hand-In-Hand
4. Mental Illness and Marginalisation: Psychiatric Diagnosis as an Untrustworthy Lever of Power
5. Phrenology, Neuroimaging, and the Technologies That Shape Our Understanding of the Mind
6. Hysteria, Happy Pills, and Hormones: Psychology’s Woman Problem
7. I Don’t See Colour: Psychology’s Race Problem
8. De-WEIRDING Research: A Stepping Stone to a Better Psychology?
9. #NotAllUniversities: How Higher Education Perpetuates the Inequities it Claims to Eliminate
10. Conclusion