Conceptualising personhood, agency, and morality for African psychology
Conceptualising personhood, agency, and morality for African psychology
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Date
2019
Authors
Adjei, S Baffour
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Publisher
SAGE
Abstract
One of the functions of psychological science is to develop concepts for thinking about people
and their well-being. Since its establishment as a scientific discipline in the late 19th century,
psychology has developed concepts that are essentially rooted in the specific spatio-temporal
context of Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) countries. There is a
growing ontological and epistemological awareness that psychological science and practices from
WEIRD cultural spaces cannot be exclusively representative of the African experience. I draw
from interpersonal violence research to discuss the concepts of personhood, agency, and morality
from an African perspective and highlight their theoretical and practical utility for psychological
science. Based on African communalism, I argue that an understanding of personhood, agency,
and morality as culturally contextualised and socially intentioned phenomena is foundational to
the advancement of heterogeneous practices of knowledge production in diverse contexts.
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Citation
Adjei, S. B. (2019). Conceptualising personhood, agency, and morality for African psychology. Theory & Psychology, 29(4), 484-505.