Abstract
There is a need to Africanise family therapy so as to serve the interest of local communities. Western approaches to family therapy have been accused of being irrelevant to African contexts. They are seen as forming part of a dominant scientific knowledge which invalidates local folk and cultural psychologies and thereby continuing a historical tradition of oppressive colonial power relations. This paper aims at archaeologising and evaluating such criticism by situating family therapy within different fields of knowledge that have emerged historically and are currently co-existing in Africa. The advantages and disadvantages of dominant family therapy approaches in African contexts are explored by focussing on power relations between different knowledges in Africa. It is argued that many global narratives of family therapy offer congenial companionship to many local African narratives, but that family therapists should pay more attention to local spiritual and political narratives so as to attain more legitimacy and validation by local communities.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Akin-Ogundeji, O. (1991). Asserting psychology in Africa. The Psychologist: Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 4, 2–4.
Alwani, T. J. (1989). Toward an Islamic alternative in thought and knowledge. American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 6(1), 1–12.
Auerswald, E. H. (1990). Toward epistemological transformation in the education and training of family therapists. In M. P. Mirkin (Ed.), The social and political contexts of family therapy (pp. 19–50). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Auerswald, E. H. (1992). The roots of dissonance in human affairs: Epistemological hostagehood and escape therefrom. In J. Mason, J. Rubenstein, & S. Shuda (Eds.), From diversity to healing (pp. 1–35). Durban: The South African Institute of Marital and Family Therapy.
Bakker, T. M. (1989, September). A church as therapeutic community. Paper delivered at the Seventh National Congress of the Psychological Association of South Africa, Durban.
Bakker, T. M. (1993). Fanon's colonial world view: Do we have tainted spectacles? In A. B. Boshoff (Ed.), Proceedings of the 10th annual congress of the Psychological Association of South Africa, 30 September–2 October 1992, Stellenbosch, South Africa (pp. 59–70). Pretoria: Psychological Association of South Africa.
Bakker, T. M. (1996). An archaeology of psychological knowledge as technology of power in Africa. Unpublished DLittEtPhil. thesis, University of South Africa, Pretoria.
Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and nature: A necessary unity. Glasgow: Fontana.
Behishti, M. H., & Bahonar, J. (1982). Philosophy of Islam. Accra: Islamic Seminary.
Bernauer, J. W. (1981). The thinking of history in the archaeology of Michel Foucault. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. New York: State University of New York.
Bodibe, R. C. (1992). Traditional healing and Western psychotherapeutic approaches—adversaries or reluctant neighbours? In J. Mason, J. Rubenstein, & S. Shuda (Eds.), From diversity to healing (pp. 90–99). Durban: South African Institute of Marital and Family.
Bourdillon, M. (1990). Religion and society: A text for Africa. Gweru: Mambo.
Brenner, L. (1993). Muslim identity and social change in sub-Saharan Africa. London: Hurst.
Bruner, J. (1986). Ethnography as narrative. In V. Turner & E. Bruner (Eds.), The anthropology of experience (pp. 139–155). Urbana: University of Illinois.
Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bulhan, H. A. (1993). Family therapy and oppression: A critique and proposal. In L. J. Nicholas (Ed.), Psychology and oppression: Critiques and proposals (pp. 167–189). Johannesburg: Skotaville.
Césaire, A. (1983). The collected poetry. (C. Eshleman & A. Smith, Eds. & Trans.). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Comaroff, J., & Comaroff, J. (1991). Of revelation and revolution: Christianity, colonialism and consciousness in South Africa (Vol. 1). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Corin, E., & Bibeau, G. (1980). Psychiatric perspectives in Africa. Part II: The traditional viewpoint. Transcultural Psychiatric Research Review, 17, 205–233.
Estés, C. P. (1992). Women who run with the wolves. London: Rider.
Fanon, F. (1967a). Black skin, white masks. New York: Grove Press.
Fanon, F. (1967b). A dying colonialism. New York: Grove Press.
Fernandez, J. W. (1978). African religious movements. Annual Review of Anthropology, 7, 195–234.
Fish, V. (1990). Introducing causality and power into family therapy theory: A correction of the systemic paradigm. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 16, 21–37.
Fluehr-Lobban, C. (1994). Islamic society in practice. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Foucault, M. (1970). The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences. London: Tavistock.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. London: Penguin.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977. Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press.
Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. In H. L. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow, Michel Foucault, beyond structuralism and hermeneutics (pp. 208–226). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Geertz, C. (1983). Local knowledge: Further essays in interpretive anthropology. London: Fontana.
Gergen, K. J. (1985). The social constructionist movement in modern psychology. American Psychologist, 40, 266–275.
Heelas, P., & Lock, A. (Eds.) (1981). Indigenous psychologies: The anthropology of the self. London: Academic Press.
Hountondji, P. J. (1983). African philosophy: Myth and reality. London: Hutchinson.
Irele, A. (1965). Négritude: Literature and ideology. Journal of Modern African Studies, 3, 499–526.
Kvale, S. (1992). Postmodern psychology: A contradiction in terms? In S. Kvale (Ed.), Psychology and postmodernism (pp. 31–57). London: Sage.
Lambek, M. (1990). Certain knowledge, contestable authority: Power and practice on the Islamic periphery. American Ethnologist, 17, 23–40.
Lyotard, J. (1984). The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge (G. Bennington & B. Massumi, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
MacGaffey, W. (1981). African ideology and belief: A survey. African Studies Review, 24, 227–274.
Maturana, H. R. (1975). The organization of the living: A theory of the living organization. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 7, 313–332.
Mason, J., Rubenstein, J., & Shuda, S. (Eds.) (1992). From diversity to healing. Durban: South African Institute of Marital and Family Therapy.
Mazrui, A. A. (1986). Cultural forces in African politics: In search of a synthesis. In I. J. Mowoe & R. Bjornson (Eds.), Africa and the West: The legacies of empire (pp. 33–54). New York: Greenwood.
Mbiti, J. S. (1971). African religions and philosophy (Reprint). London: Heinemann.
Memmi, A. (1965). The colonizer and the colonized. Boston: Beacon Press.
Mphahlele, E. (1964). The fabric of African cultures. Foreign Affairs, 42, 614–627.
Mudimbe, V. Y. (1988). The invention of Africa: Gnosis, philosophy and the order of knowledge. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Outlaw, L. (1990). African philosophy: Deconstructive and reconstructive challenges. In H. O. Oruka (Ed.), Sage philosophy (pp. 223–248). Leiden: Brill.
Peek, P. M. (Ed.) (1991). African divination systems: Ways of knowing. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Said, E. (1989). Representing the colonized: Anthropology's interlocutors. Critical Inquiry, 15, 205–225.
Seedat, M., & Nell, V. (1990). Third world or one world: Mysticism, pragmatism, and pain in family therapy in South Africa. South African Journal of Psychology, 20(3), 141–149.
Senghor, L. S. (1965). Prose and poetry (J. Reed & C. Wake, Eds. & Trans.). London: Oxford University Press.
Simone, T. M. (1990). Metropolitan Africans: Reading incapacity, the incapacity of reading. Cultural Anthropology, 5(2), 160–172.
Simone, T. M. (1993). Western war machines: Contextualising psychology in Africa. In L. J. Nicholas (Ed.), Psychology and oppression: Critiques and proposals (pp. 81–127). Johannesburg: Skotaville.
Simone, T. M. (1994). In whose image: Political Islam and urban practices in Sudan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sogolo, G. (1993). African philosophy: A definitive analysis of conceptual issues in African thought. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press.
White, M. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. New York: Norton.
White, M. (1995). Re-authoring lives: Interviews and essays. Adelaide: Dulwich Centre.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bakker, T.M., Snyders, F.J.A. The (HI)Stories We Live by: Power/Knowledge and Family Therapy in Africa. Contemporary Family Therapy 21, 133–154 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021639324279
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021639324279