Countering Cultural Imperialism in Psychology: A Scoping Review of the Concepts of Anti‐, De‐, Post‐, and Neo‐Coloniality as Used in the Scientific Literature

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite the growing attention to counter‐concepts of coloniality in the social sciences and humanities, the ways in which they are defined in psychology are often unclear. This scoping review aims at identifying and creating possible assemblages of the ways in which journals in psychology define and use the concepts of anti‐, de‐, post‐, neo‐coloniality. To this goal, we identify academic and scientific articles concerned with contemporary consequences or critiques of coloniality. We present the main themes and narratives, including specific issues and practices as well as broader discourses, about which the 30 resulting articles were concerned in their critical definitions and uses of coloniality. First, the impact of epistemic violence and imperialism on academic and clinical practices is a common concern to these critiques. Epistemic violence tends to create a sharp division between the victimized global South and the abusive North. Second, all criticisms of coloniality value the crucial role of bottom‐up movements in which the community, rather than intellectuals or academics, aims at creating new forms of community‐based knowledges. Third, these knowledges engage in difficult and critical dialogues with or oppositions to Western epistemologies, methodologies, and research orthodoxies, from which they aspire to partially liberate. These three positions and narratives frame anti/de/post/neo‐psychology as a general movement to question taken‐for‐granted truths and epistemologies, in a never‐ending critical and reflexive process.