Abstract
Contemporary society has blurred the territorial borders that colonialism used to divide nation-states. Information about different peoples that have survived the impact of brutal violence perpetrated for centuries reaches everywhere in the world through information networks and disputes visibility. The modernization of the sciences happened during the period of consolidation of the so-called modern societies, in a process directly linked to the invasion of the indigenous territories of Abya Yala/Pindorama. Contemporary science is descendant of a large-scale colonialist process. The territory of knowledge has been colonized by economic and political interests that put researchers to work for purposes increasingly far from the desired freedom of thought. This paper argues that a escape from the entrapments of psychological methodolatry depends on the implication of a researcher connecting science to ethics, breaking the vicious cycle of reaffirmation of supposed scientific truths when they prove to be insufficient to approach basic human questions.
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Notes
Abya Yala is a Kuna term, a people native to a territory that currently overlaps with the state of Panama, to designate that means “Mature Land, Living Land or Land in Bloom and is synonymous with America” (Porto-Gonçalves, 2009, p. 26). Pindorama is a term from the Tupi-Guarani linguistic trunk, which designates the land of palm trees, indigenous name of the place that was later named Brazil, with reference to the removal of wood used in dyeing, marketed in Europe.
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The author is funded by the CNPq Productivity scholarship (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development of Brazil, grant number 306227/ 2020-7).
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Silva Guimarães, D. Indigenous Psychology as a General Science for Escaping the Snares of Psychological Methodolatry. Integr. psych. behav. 57, 381–389 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-022-09724-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-022-09724-1