The re emergence of an affective symbolic ontology in the migration debate and beyond journal for the theory of social behaviour

CHAPTER 10 The Impossible Conditions of the Possibility of an Alter-Global Psychology Thomas Teo and Bilal Af¸sin Yang (1997, 2000, 2012) advanced the idea that psychology can be global, not in the way Western psychologists have projected, but based on the integration of all indigenous psychologies, whereby Western scientific psychology itself is understood as an indigenous endeavor that does not have supremacy over other indigenous psychologies His vision for (what we name) an “alter-global psychology” requires both Western and nonWestern approaches Yang (2000) remains consistent in even calling this global psychology indigenous: “the highest indigenous psychology, a universal, or more properly a global, psychology for all human beings on the earth will be formed by integrating lower-level indigenous psychologies” (p 246) Yang’s “global” vision is unique because he neither assumes the universality of a culture-specific phenomenon, nor does he accumulate unsystematically existing findings from different cultures; rather he imagines different groups of “native” psychologists focusing deeply on a T Teo (B) · B Af¸sin York University, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: tteo@yorku.ca © The Author(s) 2020 L Sundararajan et al (eds.), Global Psychology from Indigenous Perspectives, Palgrave Studies in Indigenous Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35125-0_10 159 160 T TEO AND B AFSIN ¸ similar psychological phenomenon in long-term international collaborations Yang’s vision for a global psychology reminds us of Immanuel Kant’s (1724–1804) projects in that it remains idealistic in a way that orients psychologists who are sympathetic to indigenous psychologies toward an end in the internationalization of psychology It helps us to debate the conditions of the possibilities of a global psychology that is not based on colonial or particular visions However, from a critical perspective that we want to assume in this debate, we begin with divergent questions: “Why did the global psychology the way Yang envisioned not happen? Why is it not happening? Why is it unlikely to happen in the near future? What are the conditions that one needs for achieving a global psychology and are they possible?” This critical intervention is sustained by analyses within Western psychology about the integration of Western theories and the many suggestions for solving this problem (see e.g., Goertzen, 2008; Green, 2015) However, integration within Western academic psychology did not happen, and we are at the moment further away from any form of unification Privileging one research program such as neuroscience, cognitive psychology, or behaviorism in psychology does not solve the problem of Western integration If integration is not possible within Western psychology, then how would it be possible to achieve that on a global level? In order to understand why neither integration in Western psychology nor the integration of all psychologies into a global one has occurred, analyses need to move away from an internal rational reconstruction to an analysis of science (psychology) and academia on the background of history, sociology, culture, politics, economics, psychology (of psychology), and other factors that have influenced and shaped psychology (see Teo, 2018; Walsh-Bowers, 2010) From a critical perspective, the first reflection needs to address the degree to which Western psychology is indigenous of the very culture it is assumed to represent Critical psychologists have argued that Western indigenous psychology, particularly scientific psychology, is not as indigenous as Yang might think We not primarily refer to the idea that the difference within Western culture is larger than the difference between various cultures, but to the project of critical psychology that started with the assumption that psychology as researched and taught in academia and practiced in professional contexts has limited relevance for the conduct of life of ordinary people Psychology 10 THE IMPOSSIBLE CONDITIONS OF THE POSSIBILITY … 161 has enacted and embodied for a long time a class bias, gender bias, minority bias, and biases against LGBTQ persons and persons with disabilities, to mention a few streams of reflection The project of Western psychology is not immediate relevance, but one of making it relevant to people through a process that involves more or less subtle power The second reflection relates to the issue of power not only within but also between cultures, nations, and countries The reality of globalization requires an analysis of wealth, power and the neoliberal marketing and selling of Western goods and services, including research and applied practices that demonstrate historically that the Western model of psychology has had a head start and advantage in regard to the distribution or “competition” of ideas It has been quantified in academia in citation rates and impact factors of individuals, departments, universities, and countries In this competitive and adversarial model that itself represents an indigenous character established in Anglo-American contexts and distributed throughout the world, there is no insider place for alternative, minority psychologies Thus, if mainstream Chinese psychologists want to compete with Western psychologists, which they do, then they need to concentrate on areas with high impact (e.g., neuroscience in psychology) Psychologists focused on historical traditions that had once a significant role in that culture not count There is no incentive for integration, in this export model of science, or for including indigenous psychologies outside the West The Relevance of Psychology Yang (2012) makes the argument that indigenous psychology (concepts, theory, methods, results) reflects local phenomena, and that psychology demonstrates indigenous compatibility1 with the culture from which it emerged Indeed, for Yang, the knowledge from indigenous psychology in Euro-American countries has high compatibility and high applicability with them (see p 15) An important problem is, from the perspective of critical thought, that psychology in the West can be divided into academic research psychology, pop psychology, psychotherapy, and applied psychology (part of the psydisciplines) and it is doubtful that academic psychology is more compatible with the culture than pop psychology Mainstream academic psychology, in its practice divides issues into variables and is the least compatible and applicable program to problems of 162 T TEO AND B AFSIN ¸ the West Admittedly, there is a complex relationship between pop psychology, academic psychology, and its applications that would make the discussion more intricate The project of critical psychology was based on a critique of the relevance of academic psychology German critical psychologists have argued that American or Americanized psychology has limited value for Europe and the Americas Holzkamp’s (1970) inaugural critical article pointed to the limited practical relevance of research psychology In his detailed analysis, he argued that the development of experimental methodology and statistics led to an increased particularization of reality in the laboratory, and that exactly those factors that had been controlled or excluded in the experiment, would play important roles in real-life contexts Given the difference between experimental and social life, psychology would not achieve technical relevance In addition, where psychology became technically relevant (testing, assessment, etc.) it meant working for people in power in a given society He envisioned a psychology that had emancipatory relevance (knowledge about societal constraints) that would aid persons in challenging power in society Although the article is about 50 years old, psychologists still need to ask what kind of relevance and hence compatibility Western psychology has in Western countries Clearly, emancipatory relevance is missing in research psychology, emerging only at the margins, not only because status-quo transcending thinking is oblique to psychology, but also because resistance or social justice are themes that are perceived as political and hence not part of psychology’s mission Technical relevance requires significant translation work from research psychology into practice, arguably a translation that requires additional hermeneutic competencies not contained in research itself In addition, psychology in not challenging existing conditions supports existing ones that are infused with power and interests Psychology is a discipline of the status quo, which means that the technical and emancipatory relevance is limited if one takes the full meaning of these concepts into account Mainstream psychology has been playing the “game” but is not prepared to change the rules of the game If the goal of society is to restrict immigration from certain countries, psychology has been ready to provide technical expertise to select undesirables, as has happened in the context of immigration restriction for Europeans from the South and East to the United States (Gould, 1996) If the military has wanted to know who should become an officer or a pilot, psychology has provided 10 THE IMPOSSIBLE CONDITIONS OF THE POSSIBILITY … 163 expertise If an employer has wanted to find a conscientious employee, psychology has been ready Yet, a psychology from below, with theories and practices from the perspective and experiences of the dispossessed (see also Martín-Baró, 1994), that still represent large numbers in the United States, is missing The compatibility of mainstream psychology for those groups is significantly limited Thus, we not have instruments that allow the dispossessed or person with less power to assess whether, an employer, professor, manager, or bureaucrat is a “jerk,” “bullshiter” (Frankfurt, 2005), or an “a*hole” (Nunberg, 2012) (see also Teo, 2018) Historically and arguably even today psychologists have played a significant role in “adjusting” citizens, immigrants, or the Other to an accelerating society, especially in the US American context At the beginning of the 20th century, when the discipline of psychology was seeking status and recognition, it was able to separate itself from philosophy, drawing the boundary against an old-fashioned discipline Faced with many practical problems of the day, psychologists had to prove themselves and embraced the dominant adjustment ethos of American politics and society (see Pickren & Rutherford, 2010) Many indigenization calls, including Yang’s, ask for producing socially applicable knowledge in psychology But does this knowledge mean technical relevance, an adjustment ethos, or emancipatory relevance? We submit that although the situation has improved in the field of psychology, emancipatory relevance is lacking in the mainstream There are hopeful trends such as the Power Threat Meaning Framework (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018) developed for the clinical section of the British Psychological Society that provides an analysis of mental health issues that includes power Yet, despite improvements and some influence by critically-oriented psychologists the mainstream is slow to develop theories and practices from the standpoint of ordinary people Indeed, the now often used acronym WEIRD (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010) includes educated and rich (and not only Western), meaning that the fact that psychology has also less relevance for people who experience economic power and class is hardly addressed in psychology (Bullock & Limbert, 2009) Income inequality, which produces many negative health and mental health outcomes and leads to highly differentiated life trajectories (Pickett & Wilkinson, 2015), is ignored Societal structures remain conceptually alien to mainstream psychology that builds and promotes an individualism that misleads in understanding how societal realties can produce 164 T TEO AND B AFSIN ¸ mental health problems within a culture The reality of neoliberalism not only as an ideology but also as an economic system that impacts subjectivities remains a foreign concept for academic psychology The idea that culture requires a different methodology is rejected and repressed when discussing the pioneer of psychology Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) who emphasized that his Völkerpsychologie requires a different framework The problem of “relevance for whom?” can be extended from the economically dispossessed to minorities, LGBTQ groups and individuals, and persons with disabilities, all of whom have advanced a critique of mainstream psychology (see Teo, 2018) But power is not only about groups and agents in society Once we take Foucault’s (1980) analyses into account we realize that power is not only enacted by the actions of the powerful, but that psychology itself has become a form of internalized power A seemingly low relevance of psychology for a population has been accompanied by a process of psychologizing and internalization Scientific psychology is being made relevant throughout the 20th century and throughout the world by a process that we call psycolonization Making something irrelevant relevant is an ongoing process in the psydisciplines and continues into neuroscientific psychology (Rose & Abi-Rached, 2013) Psycolonization: Making Psychology Relevant Around the Globe Western psychology is complex and has applications that are more or less relevant to groups of people in the West There is still a mainstream psychology, a dominant psychology, that is taught and practiced, using variables in research and statistical hypothesis testing One could argue that following the APA publication manual (American Psychological Association, 2010) on how to write a research article cements mainstream practices Psychologists socialize students into these activities as well as into concepts and theories that are partially foreign in everyday life In doing so and in distributing mainstream psychology into the public, using mass media and education, psychology is made relevant within a culture and distributed around the world Whether originally relevant or not the discipline is promoted like a commodity that is produced, advertised, sold, and bought in the market place One could make the argument that there is a need, but we also know that needs can be produced and instigated 10 THE IMPOSSIBLE CONDITIONS OF THE POSSIBILITY … 165 Critics of psychology have used the term psychologization, which means the usage and distribution of psychological terminology in areas where they did not exist before (De Vos, 2012; Rose, 1996) We would go further and say that making something irrelevant into something relevant is a process of colonization whether within or across cultures In that sense the 20th century was a century of psycolonization The power to psycolonize and to aid in the interiorization of psychological issues is the success of psychology Miller (1969) in his famous presidential address understood that using a more benign terminology: it was about “giving psychology away.” Hacking (1986, 1992) used the term of making people up, using the example of multiple personality disorder Yet, doing so means to psycolonize people who did not need it One could even make the argument that once a need for psychology is made, it becomes a form of subjective addiction with demand People have been psycolonized successfully Let us make a comparison: The Winter Olympic Games were originally a Western project that includes now participants from around the world Bobsleigh is a traditional event that competed at the first games in 1924 in Chamonix The sport may be indigenous or reflective of what some Westerners were doing (Alpine skiing would be a more common discipline), a result of some cultural practices, but not representative in terms of what Western people actually themselves (and popular only within very few nations) Cultural winter practices originating in indigenous communities such as snowshoe running did not have the same head start to make it onto the list of games The Arctic Winter Games that focus on indigenous culture and where snowshoe running is a discipline not have the same status (based on historical and commercial reasons) as the Olympic Games that spread around the world To call for the integration of all indigenous sports and activities into true universal games remains idealistic Countries and individuals, who need to be recognized and successful within the status quo, suture themselves into activities that are recognized on a global level and need to compete in already “recognized” sports Psychology has emerged as a Western discipline operating and collaborating with money, power, existing frameworks and bodies of knowledge In order to be successful on an international level, psychologists around the world need to follow the standards set by the international community that indeed reflects Western ideals of research Psycolonization means to accept those practices and standards as necessary For that reason, indigenous and critical psychologists, even qualitative psychologists, remain at 166 T TEO AND B AFSIN ¸ the margins of the discipline This does not mean that change is impossible; the addition of new ideas in psychology is an ongoing process Yet, the very foundation of scientific psychology, set in concrete, is difficult to shatter In most instances, if you want to make it in academic psychology, you need to participate in this historically grown psycolonization It takes more than a call for change to transform the power of the status quo psychology If one follows this stream of argument, it would be better to suggest that mainstream psychology is made, developed, and sold to be compatible (even if it was originally not compatible, or compatible only for a small minority) This applies to Western and non-Western persons, students, and academics In fact, it takes a lot of training and attention to become psycolonized to Western psychology, from being a participant in an experiment, who is given only a small number of possible reactions (walking out of the study would not be considered a legitimate reasonable reaction), to being a researcher who conducts research with variables and analyzes data with statistical tools, writes papers according to explicit and implicit standards, and presents and submits papers to journals, which contain an understanding of the logic of acceptance or rejection and linguistic practices by editors It is a cultural practice that most individuals in this culture are not able to accomplish To suggest that bobsleigh is indigenous is, in a dialectical way, right and wrong at the same time Similarly, psychology has been made indigenous, in a process, to increasing numbers of Western and Eastern peoples For the process of psycolonization, in order to make something irrelevant relevant, and for the purpose of translation and meaning-making, mainstream academic psychology, which is highly technical and artificial in its frameworks, needs pop psychology One could argue that scientific psychology has only contempt for pop psychology because of this dependency that undermines the “being scientific” self-understanding of academic psychology It is ironic that “giving psychology away” depends on the maligned publicizers of scientific psychology Indeed, the public is less interested in scientific psychology than in a psychology that provides clear, concrete, and simple answers, rather than abstract theories Pop psychology books represent the first level of public translation, followed by textbooks for students and an interested community The latter assume an intermediary role in that they are written by researchers or academics close to the research process, who strive to translate the many technical studies into meaningful entities that can be understood by the interested reader 10 THE IMPOSSIBLE CONDITIONS OF THE POSSIBILITY … 167 The translation practice often involves a process of hermeneutic surplus where more is told about facts than is contained in the data themselves (see Teo, 2008) This applies to “normal” research as well as to work that has achieved the status of celebrity studies in psychology For example, Perry (2013) revisited Milgram’s “obedience experiment” by interviewing participants and investigating primary sources such as tape recordings, transcriptions, drafts of reports, and vivid first-person accounts Perry argues that Milgram had preconceived ideas of the participants and was trying to verify Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil,” which suggested that ordinary people who are under authority can commit evil deeds She argues that Milgram set a theatrical stage with a well-written and detailed script that would minimize the possibility of disobedience Perry’s examination of the Stanley Milgram Papers at Yale University Library shows that in over half of all variations Milgram found the opposite result: More than 60% of the subjects disobeyed the experimenter’s orders However, Milgram did not publish all information and structured his interpretations in order to fit into preconceptions The ongoing usage of psychoanalysis in the public, despite its academic critique, has to with the fact that psychoanalysis has had a head start in participating in the psycolonization of the public, its representation in the media, including movies and art, and that psychoanalysis has always provided concrete and translatable concepts that can easily be applied and directed to our own subjectivity (for the same reason Lacan’s cryptic language did not have the same effect on the public) Even if one does not to “buy into” the terminology of psychoanalysis one has participated in the process of psycolonization (the assumption that we have to look inside ourselves with psychological tools to understand ourselves) “Giving scientific psychology away” is a continuous process, where one can add something new or replace something old with something new Neuroscience partially succeeded with the concept of neuroplasticity, which provides the idea that personal change is possible, based on a scientific foundation, once “I” am flexible and working on “my” neuroplasticity Critics have pointed out that the rhetoric of plasticity fits the neoliberal transformation of the flexible, responsible, self-caring self (Pitts-Taylor, 2010) Thus, to suggest that neuroplasticity is indigenous would miss the facticity of psycolonization that now takes place around the globe In our view, Yang has a static concept of indigenous psychology in mind, one 168 T TEO AND B AFSIN ¸ that does not account for the dynamic, looping processes of Western psychology Power, Justice, and Academic Virtues Scientific psychology has been relevant to some people more than others and is made “relevant” in a process of psycolonization, within a culture, and to all people of all cultures This success required a head start, money, power, and status The distinction between etic and emic in crosscultural psychology can be interpreted as pointing to power differentials between societies Compared to the culture-specific, internal/relative emic approach, an etic approach appears to provide a more comprehensive and “absolute” view However, to be able to assume the universality of one’s culture-specific phenomenon, one has to have the power to cross one’s borders, to integrate one’s with others’ knowledge, and to test its ecological validity We could paraphrase that an etic approach is an emic approach with an army, navy, and air force The unequal dispersion of power has also produced resistance that has challenged this process and the unearned influence of Western psychology Indigenous psychology itself can be seen as such a form of resistance or a project of justice while others have worked on the decolonization of psychology (Adams & Estrada-Villalta, 2017) or the critique of mainstream psychology (Parker, 2015) Because of the power of the status quo, which means the power of mainstream academic psychology, Yang’s vision for an alter-global psychology remains unrealized given the current global economic and academic outlook This marginal movement for a global psychology as well as the movement to perform psychology differently, where people are not objects but subjects, not subjects but co-researchers, a psychology with and for and not about persons, remains important We should not deceive ourselves, given the current conditions and the difficulty of overturning these encrusted conditions quickly, that this would be possible in the short term The call for a global psychology needs to be augmented by analysis of power as it exists on the global level It needs to address global justice, or what is maybe easier to grasp, global injustices, in order to comprehend the psychological status quo Scientific psychology has hardly contributed to an understanding of power and its connection to subjectivity Most of the work that addresses power differential that exists in the world, in structures, between psychologies, or even the power of psychology, 10 THE IMPOSSIBLE CONDITIONS OF THE POSSIBILITY … 169 individualization, responsibilization, or governmentality, has emerged from the psychological humanities and other social sciences We are not denying that psychologists have been instrumental in supporting justice and combatting injustice, but this has happened not because but despite the character of psychology Indigenous and critical psychologies are part of the marginal group But choosing among psychologies, may they be traditional or not, is not a real choice Given the imbalances of power, money, and status associated with scientific psychology, indigenous or critical psychology, or the psychological humanities, we can easily assume a trend in existing societies with its economic values, that follows something that represents external success The possibility of a global psychology, given processes of psycolonization of neoliberal globalization, remains highly elusive The normativity of an alter-global psychology could be defended There should be more justice in the world, and the lack of justice needs to be analyzed Power in psychology needs to be theorized and understood as a condition for the apparent impossibility of a global psychology The history of psychology as an instrument of injustice needs to be recorded Even a struggle against windmills needs to be maintained, from a moral point of view, as does the democratic project in an increasingly undemocratic world Yet, we should not deceive ourselves that a shift in global power balance would lead to a psychological state where psychological language, concepts, and practices are not informed by power, if power is not challenged Thus, it would be naive to assume that a different worldhistorical trajectory would have led to a better global psychology Amazon Studios’ television series “The man in the High Castle” operates with the premise that Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan had won the Second World War Indeed, we can perform a thought experiment and ask what psychology would look like in Nazi America Arguably some technological knowledge might take on similar forms as we know it, but psychological practice might be based on a Jungian depth psychology and psychological research might focus on race differences and theories that were developed in Nazi Germany (e.g., Ganzheitspsychologie) It would be a half-global psychology for those countries colonized by the Germans (with Japanese psychology being in the other part of the world) Given the existing economic world order that produces winners and losers, the above analyses, which were focused on power and the (im)possibility of requirements such as more equality between and within countries, more international justice, the end of colonization, more 170 T TEO AND B AFSIN ¸ democracy and solidarity among countries, could be augmented by analyses of internal values and virtues that guide the discipline Based on the history of science in the world, the differentiation and increased complexity of knowledge that makes it difficult for any individual to be knowledgeable in several fields of knowledge (or even in several subfields of psychology), the value or virtue of epistemic modesty would logically follow Our own knowledge horizons are always limited and, therefore, we need to be humble and modest when making claims about global psychology We believe that Yang was guided by such values Yet, epistemic humility is not at the core of the discipline, and is not endorsed by the leaders in the field, in textbooks, and public announcements Instead we find the opposite, such as exaggerated knowledge claims, fact statements based on problematic studies, anecdotal evidence based on single experiments that are not corroborated but presented as science, claims to Truth when interpretations were not determined by data, and sensationalized and fraudulent findings that attract attention for the time being Why? The current climate of science is one of neoliberal academia (see Giroux, 2015), where selling, marketing, and producing research that draws most attention is cherished Indeed, epistemic grandiosity, the opposite of what the project of a global psychology needs, is promoted in a highly competitive, output-oriented academic context Global psychology no longer needs military intervention, but rather a world market on which psychology can be sold, while modesty gets lost Of course, we know that not necessarily the best products, or in our terminology, the most relevant products, are sold Issues such as language of publication or presentation, where English has become the lingua franca of psychology, add additional complexities to the idea that we need justice among various nations (see also Wierzbicka, 2014) Smaller countries, which not participate in the world market of psychology due to linguistic or financial reasons, will be forgotten Differentiations that have made it possible for the upper classes to enjoy psychological thinking may not translate to the working classes in a country On the other hand, a psychology of the upper classes in the West may very well have relevance to upper classes in the periphery (see Bhatia, 2018) Indeed, globalization may have produced a reality where some forms of Western psychology are more relevant to people in power in a developing country than to the marginalized in a Western country 10 THE IMPOSSIBLE CONDITIONS OF THE POSSIBILITY … 171 Conclusion Given the current global external and internal circumstances an alterglobal psychology in the vision of Yang appears impossible The international academic system that is based on hierarchical competition for recognition and power makes it difficult to focus on marginally marketable ideas, while this system itself is embedded in the international project of neoliberal globalization Regular individual academics suture themselves into both systems and in order to be successful will choose ideas that will reward them There is a market for indigenous psychology, but it is extremely small and there may only be space for a very few leaders that cannot engender a whole research industry Academics would need to endorse epistemic modesty when striving to learn about indigenous psychologies outside of their horizons There are, to remain in the logic of neoliberal ideology, no incentives to so Even psychologists outside of the center have few incentives to develop a global psychology based on the message of indigenous psychologies What remains is the call to justice to the reality of the indigenous character of the many psychologies that exist around the world It is a moral intervention to demand that psychologists justice to the varieties of psychology Even the call for justice is interrupted by different ideas of doing justice, such as that including or excluding indigenous subjectivity makes a better psychology An alter-global psychology outside the mainstream is thinkable but at the moment not doable given the impossible conditions that need to be fulfilled to make that happen There is no need for the mainstream to relinquish power Even if we had a balance between power, money, and recognition, it would not be clear that the alter-global psychology as envisioned by Yang would be the best possible way of moving forward Yet, many psychologists avoid talking explicitly about their normative lenses What we mean by solving our problems, which is often mentioned as a research goal in indigenous psychology? What are these problems? Are they merely cultural? Where politics and economy come into play? Despite the fact that the indigenization movement in psychology was an anti-colonial and originally a political act, it seems to be losing its “resisting” character, while showing only a culturally-descriptive face However, indigenization cannot solely be a “cultural turn” when it interrogates the authority of psychologists and reorients us toward everyday life and lay people’s wisdom Are we looking for truth and solutions 172 T TEO AND B AFSIN ¸ with and for our participants or about them? Should there be a congruity between a native psychologist and a phenomenon, or congruity between a psychologist and another human being? Are we really working on a phenomenon or with a person? Can we experimentally deceive subjects as long as we properly debrief them—something we probably not try to in our lifeworld? Such questions provide insights into what makes a balanced alter-global psychology unique Thus, despite these conditions and problems, we suggest that we should pursue the project of an alter-global psychology Academia and society have provided niches and subcultures where one can pursue the advancement of such a global psychology It would remain at the margins given the apparatuses that it would have to combat, with few disciplinary rewards Doing justice to psychology means not abandoning the insight into the necessity of an alter-global psychology that is comprehensive, modest, and sensitive, and that is for and with people, despite seemingly impossible internal and external conditions for achieving this goal Injustice has to be named even when one cannot find a solution Note Yang’s ideas on indigenous compatibility (IC) are complex and seem to have changed over the years Yang (2000) distinguished three major indigenous compatibilities: Context-independent, context-dependent and reflective The first referred to isolating phenomena from their contexts, which is happening in decontextualized empirical studies of American mainstream psychology (see p 250) He refers to the problem that we discuss in this chapter Later, (Yang, 2003), he discussed only two major kinds as contextindependent and context-dependent IC (see p 279) and omitted the reflective one without explanation More recently, Yang (2012) did not use the distinctions at all and seemed to assume a high compatibility with Western psychology References Adams, G., & Estrada-Villalta, S (2017) Theory from the South: A decolonial approach to the psychology of global inequality Current Opinion in Psychology, 18, 37–42 American Psychological Association (2010) Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.) 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