Embodying decoloniality: Three community psychologists reflections on our practice and learnings

Abstract

Research and evaluation training and education within Community Psychology varies among the numerous programs with regard to philosophy and approach. We, the authors, were students in their community psychology doctoral program’s first virtual and international cohort due to circumstances related to the global pandemic. While these circumstances provided an opportunity to think outside the box about the educational approach utilized, it was also an extremely stressful and difficult time for everyone, and for some, there may have been comfort in sticking with what was known and familiar.

One of the courses in our program focused on cross-cultural dynamics in a global context, closely examining decoloniality. The teaching approach was emergent, modeling different ways of knowing, being, doing, and learning (e.g., embodiment, self-exploration, and artistic expression) shared by community-centered practitioners from around the world. Given this approach and engagement, the course path was not predictable, and we engaged with our minds, bodies, and spirits. This sometimes unsettling, sometimes refreshing experience, and other aspects of the program, stayed with us and translated into our work as Community Psychologists where we try to decolonize our work and center community members in shaping the work. But our professional lives continue to be embedded within structures and institutions shaped by the Colonial Matrix of Power (Quijano, 2000). We have been exploring and testing how to work differently within (and despite) these restrictions.

Through a reflexive process focusing on our work in Canada, Egypt, México, and the United States, we will unravel the wisdom we gained in our own personal and local contexts. Salma’s approach centers around critically examining the role and influence of capitalism on social change efforts, as well as integrating spirituality and intuition into knowledge creation endeavors. Aaron Stewart’s focus has been on trying to re-exist within traditional research, evaluation, and pedagogical paradigms to understand ways of knowing, being, and doing within local healthy social ecologies. Cari’s evaluation and learning work in Canada explicitly centres love and kindness and the use of stories. We asked ourselves: What kinds of knowledge generation methods we typically use, why, and how we reconcile what we learned in our training about knowledge generation methods with our own embodied knowledge as we do our research and evaluation work, how these methods reflect  colonial approaches and the Colonial Matrix of Power, what challenges we face using these methods, and how we adapt them  to our local contexts? Based on our individual case studies, we conducted a reflection workshop where we discussed our different experiences and engaged in additional reflexive practices, exploring how to navigate working within knowledge systems and/or navigate delinking and re-existing with them (see Mignolo & Walsh, 2018). We also discussed the doubts we face ourselves as we move away from dominant modes of knowing, being, and doing. We hope insights gained from this individual and collective reflexive case study will lend understanding to decolonizing research and evaluation methods within Community Psychology.