REFLECTIONS

All psychologies are indigenous psychologies:

Reflections on psychology in a global era
Understanding psychology as indigenous to the contexts in which is developed and in which it operates
may help forge a new conception of the role of culture.

By Anthony J. Marsella, PhD

All Psychologies are Indigenous

While the term “indigenous” is often used to refer to “native” people and
cultures, post-modern ideological and socio-political uses of the term have
resulted in a growing opinion among psychologists that all psychologies are
“indigenous” to the cultures in which they arise and are sustained. This
position challenges the current dominance and privileged stance of Western
(i.e., Eurocentric/North American) psychology as a universal set of
assumptions, methods and applications. This challenge is gathering
increased support within the Western world and across the globe as the
fundamental issue of “accuracy,” rather than “scientism,” becomes the
arbiter of psychology as a discipline for inquiry.

I must note here that those who disagree with the term “indigenous,” as
broadly applied to “national” rather than “native” contextual meanings
unique to place and time may be protecting political interests by choosing to
deny histories of abuses of “native” cultures. This is occurring in Australia,
Canada, Taiwan, U.K. and the USA. Thus, the way we define the term
shapes our opinions.

Sources of Increased Interest in “Indigenous

Psychology”
The knowledge, wisdom and realities supporting the position of “indigenous
psychologies” have three basic sources:
(1) The growth and appreciation of post-modern thought that considers all
knowledge to be socio-political in its nature. This position acknowledges the
reality that knowledge emerges and is sustained by socio-political forces,
including the privileged positions of certain individuals considered leaders,
and the distribution of economic and political power. Within this framework,
psychology is a construction, subject to the forces, events and people in its
context.
(2) The rise of nationalism and national identities resisting an imposition of
Western values, ways-of-life and colonization of mind and behavior. This
has been aptly demonstrated in the work of Ignacio Martin-Baro and his
contributions regarding “liberation” psychology (see Martin-Baro, 1994;
Watkins & Shulman, 2008). The roots of this arise justifiably among non-
Western nations seeking to escape the legacy of European and North
American domination, and also among ethno-cultural minority groups
within Western nations who found their way of life devalued, stigmatized
and oppressed by the dominant powers. This is now apparent from the wide
number of ethnic minority “psychologies” being advanced in Europe and
North America, and the recognition that ancient cultural traditions and
civilizations (e.g., from India, China, Arabic lands) have long had complex
theories of human behavior that include rich traditions of life, healing and
social progress.
(3) The increased understanding and appreciation of the role of “culture” as
a determinant of human behavior. Once “culture” achieved popularity and
legitimacy as a behavioral determinant, it was only a matter of time before
Western psychology, especially as represented by European and North
American psychology associations, was challenged for its primacy. As
“culture” entered the behavior equation, it was clear that any claim of
universality was only an assumption, rooted in ethnocentricity and fueled by
technological, economic and military power.

“Culture” Specialization Disciplines

Within Western psychology itself, a number of specialty areas have emerged
in response to the important role of culture as a determinant of human
behavior, including: (1) cross-cultural psychology, (2) cultural psychology,
(3) multicultural psychology, (4) minority psychology, (5) racial/class
psychologies (e.g., Black Latino, Native American, Asian), (6)
psychological anthropology and, most recently, (7) “indigenous psychology.”
Although each of these specialties has its own supporters, their shared or
common concern has been the importance of understanding the “cultural”
context of human behavior, and relevant theories, methods and applications.
Contestations within and among these specialties has encouraged distinct
knowledge bases, methods and practices resulting in a vast array of
handbooks, encyclopedias, journals and other forms of communication.

Decontextualization
Concern for ethnocentric biases in Western psychology and their pernicious
consequences is not new. Fathali Moghaddam (1987), an Iranian-American
psychologist, Girishmar Misra (1996), an Asian-Indian psychologist, and
others have written of the risks of accepting Western psychology as
universal.
Misra, within the context of India’s vast historical store of diverse
philosophies and religions, recognized that Western psychological
dominance was largely a socio-political phenomenon, rather than a valid
accounting of the varied views of human behavior that existed across the
world. In a now “classic” paper, Misra, with great eloquence, force and
credibility, stated:
The current Western thinking of the science of psychology in it
prototypical form, despite being local and indigenous, assumes a
global relevance and is treated as a universal mode of generating
knowledge. Its dominant voice subscribes to a decontextualized vision
with an extraordinary emphasis on individualism, mechanism, and
objectivity. This peculiarly Western mode of thinking is fabricated,
projected, and institutionalized through representation technologies
and scientific rituals and transported on a large scale to the non-
Western societies under political-economic domination. As a result,
Western psychology tends to maintain an independent stance at cost of
ignoring other substantive possibilities from disparate cultural
traditions. Mapping reality through Western constructs has offered a
pseudo-understanding of the people of alien cultures and has had
debilitating effects in terms of misconstruing the special realities of
other people and exoticizing or disregarding psychologies that are non-
Western. Consequently, when people from other cultures are exposed
to Western psychology, they find their identities placed in question and
their conceptual repertoires rendered obsolete (Misra, 1996, 497-498).
For me, the key phrase in Misra’s comments is the term “decontextualized”
vision. In advancing this term, Misra and others emphasized the importance
of context in the construction of reality, specifically the “cultural”
construction of Western psychology. And here I must add the brilliant
insights of Tod Sloan (1996, p. 39), an American critical psychologist, who
noted that Western psychologies — as is the case for all psychologies —
carry an implicit worldview — an ideology stance — which reflects and
embodies their cultural context and their values and priorities. Culture is
context.

Culture — Concept and Nuances

There are many definitions of culture. Because culture is central to this
commentary, I offer the following definition because it captures the depth
and implications of culture as a force in all of our lives. Culture, for me, can
be defined as:
Shared learned meanings and behaviors transmitted across generations
within social activity contexts for purposes of promoting
 individual/societal adaptation, adjustment, growth and development.
Culture has both external (i.e., artifacts, roles, activity contexts,
institutions) and internal (i.e., values, beliefs, attitudes, activity
contexts, patterns of consciousness, personality styles, epistemology)
representations. The shared meanings and behaviors are subject to
continuous change and modification in response to changing internal
and external circumstances. Cultures can arise and function in brief
and immediate temporal settings (e.g., culture of faculty meetings) and
also long-term settings (e.g., ethno-cultural ways of life).
The essential part of this definition for me is that cultures construct our
realities. Our psychologies are shaped and formed in cultural contexts.
Cultures represent “templates” through which we order the world about us.
This occurs, in my opinion, because there is a human “effort after making
meaning,” that is fundamental to human nature: This point of view can be
stated in the following propositions:
 There is an inherent human impulse to describe, understand and
predict the world through the ordering of stimuli.
 The undamaged human brain not only responds to stimuli, but also
organizes, connects and symbolizes stimuli, and in the process, generates
patterns of explicit and implicit meanings that help promote survival,
adaptation and adjustment.
 The process and product of this activity are, to a large extent,
culturally contextualized, generated and shaped through linguistic,
behavioral and interpersonal practices that are part of the cultural
socialization process.
 The storage of stimuli as accumulated life experience, in both
representational and symbolic forms in the brain, and in external forms (e.g.,
books), generates a shared cognitive and affective process that helps create
cultural continuity across time (i.e., past, present and future) for both the
person and the group. To a large extent, individual and collective identities
are forged through this process.
 Through socialization, individual and group preferences and priorities
are rewarded or punished, thus promoting and/or modifying the cultural
constructions of reality (i.e., ontogenies, epistemologies, praxologies,
cosmologies, ethoses, values and behavior patterns).
Therefore, “reality” is culturally constructed. Different cultural contexts
create different realities.
Thus, culture is an essential determinant of human behavior. A danger or
risk of avoiding this view is “ethnocentricity,” especially when combined
with hegemonic power and privileging. Perhaps it is time to accept the view
that all psychologies are “indigenous” to the cultural contexts in which they
evolve and develop. Eurocentric/North American scientific and professional
 psychology is a function of events, forces and people that shaped it, and
made it what is to today, including its implicit assumption as being a
universal psychology. It is not. It is a cultural construction.

Ten Assumptions of Western (Eurocentric/North

American) Psychology
In a previous paper (Marsella, 2009) I identified 10 basic assumptions of
Western psychology, questioning its universal applicability in a world of
cultural diversity. They are:
 Individuality — The individual is the focus of behavior.
Determinants of behavior reside in the individual’s brain/mind, and
interventions must be at this level rather than the broader societal context.
 Reductionism — Small, tangible units of study that yield well to
controlled experimentation are favored.
 Experiment-based empiricism — An emphasis on experiments with
controls and experiment group comparisons and uses of ANOVA analyses
that often account for 5 to 10 percent of variance. Lab studies are often
favored over field studies.
 Scientism — The belief that methods of the physical sciences can be
applied similarly to social and behavioral phenomena, which results in
spurious methods and conclusions that are inappropriate to the subject under
study or that avoid studying certain subjects.
 Quantification/measurement — “Whatever exists at all ... can be
measured,” said Edward Thorndike (Thorndike, 1918). Unless something
under study can be quantified, it is not acceptable for study. This, of course,
leads to operationalism as the standard for assessing concepts.
 Materialism — Favors variables for study that have a tangible
existence rather than higher order constructs — I can see it and touch it
under a microscope.
 Male dominance — Years of male dominance favors particular
topics, methods and populations for study — remember “involutional
melancholia,” the psychiatric disease assigned to middle-aged women.
 “Objectivity” — Assumption that we can identify and understand
immutable aspects of reality in a detached way, unbiased by human senses
and knowledge.
 Nomothetic laws — Search for generalized principles and “laws”
that apply to widespread and diverse situations and populations because of
an identification and admiration for the physical sciences.
 Rationality — Presumes a linear, cause-effect, logical, material
understanding of phenomena and prizes this approach in offering and
accepting arguments and data generation.
Each of these characteristics are associated with two very obvious forces: (1)
The broad historical contexts of Western culture (e.g., Period of
Enlightenment), replete with their unique historical figures, events and
forces; and (2) the culture context of Western psychology that emerged from
within its unique historical events, forces and figures (e.g., logical
positivism, behaviorism, generalization from animal experimentation and
limited samples of white college students).

Closing Thoughts
The term “indigenous” has many meanings, and this is acceptable. But we
should specify what meaning or definition we are using. Thus, using the
term “indigenous” can be controversial in locations such as Australia or
Taiwan because they may be associated with native populations that were
suppressed. The “Indigenous Psychology Listserv,” created and
administered by Louise Sundararajan is a nurturing information site for
those seeking to explore and develop the historical and contextual
foundations of different psychologies. Asymmetrical balances of economic,
political, military, technical and organizational powers must not determine
the accuracy of our conclusions. Good science is about accuracy, not about
opinion rooted within hegemony privileges.
Recently representatives of psychology from different nations met in
Stockholm, Sweden, to discuss the “science” and “profession” of
psychology and to develop first steps toward consensus of what professional
psychology is. They met under the best of intentions — shared concerns and
issues. But I am concerned that the representatives present were
psychologists who are highly-socialized to Western and North American
psychology because of training within the West and privileged positions of
influence in their own nations — I hope that any attempt to reach consensus
will take care to assure diversity in perspectives.
It is possible to speak of unity within diversity in psychology, and not
sacrifice the legitimacy of a psychology’s roots. I spoke of this a decade ago
under the title of global-community psychology or psychology for a global
community (Marsella, 1998).
It all comes down to the value of diversity. Life is diversity. Life is context.
Psychology is a contextual creation. We must be careful the pursuit of
“order” does not destroy the wonderful chaos of life. We do not need
uniformity or homogenization in psychology. As Octavio Paz, the Mexican
Noble Laureate, stated simply and profoundly: “Life is diversity, death is
uniformity.”
Viva la differencia siempre!