Decolonial Enactments in Community Psychology

Part I: Conceptions of Engagement for Community Psychology

Chapter 1: Community psychology in historical context: Power, identity and knowledge

Shose Kessi, Shahnaaz Suffla, Mohamed Seedat

Chapter 2: The coordinates of decolonising practice and praxis in community psychology

Linda Tuhiwai Smith

Chapter 3: Community and the making of community: Critiques and critical conceptions

Shose Kessi

Chapter 4: Interrogating dominant and liberatory narratives on engagement in community psychology

Shahnaaz Suffla & Mohamed Seedat

Chapter 5: Psycho-social change and Africa-centred Community Psychology

Kopano Ratele & Sipho Dlamini

Chapter 6: Decolonising participatory action research in community psychology

Jesica Fernández

Part II: Modes of Enactments and Praxes for Community Psychology

Chapter 7: Māori - and Aboriginal-centred community psychologies for well-being and self-determination
Linda Waimarie Nikora & Patricia Dudgeon

Chapter 8: Everyday violence and everyday peace: Interventions towards social justice
Urmitapa Dutta

Chapter 9: Post-conflict reconciliation and community-based restorative justice
Augustine Nwoye

Chapter 10: The workings of imagination and memory in resistance to violence
Rosa Castillo

Chapter 11: Immigration and sense of Community
Mariolga Reyes Cruz

Chapter 12: Poverty and sustainable living
Siew Fang Law & Darrin Hodgetts

Chapter 13: A decolonising approach to health promotion

Catherine Campbell & Jacqueline Akhurst

Chapter 14: Youth activism and community Change
Roderick Watts

Chapter 15: Social justice and food security: Intervening in Global South contexts
Razack Karriem

Chapter 16: The politics and praxis of social transformation: A civil society perspective
Zackie Achmat

Conclusion: Re-imagining praxis, community, and engagement

Shose Kessi, Shahnaaz Suffla, Mohamed Seedat

Shose Kessi is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. Professor Kessi is the founder and the first chairperson of the UCT Black Academic Caucus (BAC), an organisation that has been a leader in the transformation debate at UCT. Her innovations in teaching and research, in addition to her contributions to institutional leadership, are an integral part of the project of transformation and decolonisation in higher education, and her focus on participatory action research also mitigates the epistemic violence of traditional research practices by bridging the gap between academic knowledges and the knowledges of marginalized communities. She received the Harvard-Mandela fellowship in 2014, the Erik Erickson Award for political psychology in 2018, has published extensively in journals, and was a visiting scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Shahnaaz Suffla is Associate Professor at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences at the University of South Africa. Her research interests draw from the intersections of critical African, community and peace psychologies, and public health, and are located within liberatory philosophies and epistemologies. Her thinking and scholarship is influenced by the vision of research as a transforming, humanising and decolonising enterprise. Specifically, her research interests include a focus on psychosocial and psychopolitical interventions in contexts of structural and epistemic violence; participatory engagement as a site of activism, resistance and social change; and Africa-centred approaches to research and scholarship. Professor Suffla is actively engaged in organised psychology in South Africa, and is currently the President-Elect of the Psychological Society of South Africa.

Mohamed Seedat is Professor and Head of the Institute for Social and Health Sciences at the University of South Africa. With a background in transdisciplinary thought, he writes about community engagement, social connectivity and solidarity, violence, critical humanism, intellectual traditions in science, and the psychologies underlying South Africa’s ongoing and renewed struggles for a decolonised caring society. His body of work, inclusive of regional and international collaborations, contributes to compassionate emancipatory scholarship for the 21st century, the capacitation of next generation socially-engaged researchers and academic leaders, and the transformation of writing cultures in the academy. He is currently leading studies on the social anatomy of protests, psychopolitics underlying struggles for justice, and safety promotion demonstration sites. Professor Seedat is a vision-making and strategic development facilitator and life-oriented academic coach, mentor and post-graduate student supervisor. He has published widely in his areas of interest.