Abstract
In the summer of 2010 in Indonesia, the very first International Conference on Indigenous and Cultural Psychologies was held. The conference reflected the growth of psychology in many parts of the world, but it also reflected the perceived inadequacies of Western psychology for countries and cultures predicated upon different metaphysical assumptions about personhood and relationships. Thus, in a range of countries from India to Indonesia and beyond, there are systematic efforts to create psychologies anchored in local intellectual, philosophical, and spiritual traditions. This indigenization process is complex and takes many forms, from incorporation of Western practices refigured with local content to outright rejection of Western approaches in favor of methods and subject matter that are native to the culture at hand. The late Indian psychologist, Durganand Sinha, called these dual and often parallel processes, indigenization from without and indigenization from within (Sinha). The study of indigenous psychologies and their processes of indigenization is important for any effort to internationalize the psychology curriculum, although a full treatment is beyond the scope of this book and this chapter (see Pickren and Rutherford). Not only is indigenization of psychology important and interesting, there is also a great deal of liberatory and revolutionary potential in indigenous psychologies (Martin-Baro). Our efforts to expand and enrich the psychology curriculum in the USA depend on an understanding of the circulation of scientific knowledge and professional practice. No longer can it be that the flow of information and best practices only occur in one direction, from the USA outward to the rest of the world. I digress to offer a précis of the center and periphery model before returning to the need to incorporate multiple psychologies.
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Pickren, W.E., Marsella, A.J., Leong, F.T.L., Leach, M.M. (2011). Playing Our Part: Crafting a Vision for a Psychology Curriculum Marked by Multiplicity. In: Leong, F., Pickren, W., Leach, M., Marsella, A. (eds) Internationalizing the Psychology Curriculum in the United States. International and Cultural Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0073-8_15
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