Accounting for colonial complicities throughRefusalsin researching agency across borders

Abstract

Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang develop the concept of "refusal" as an essential methodology for decolonizing social sciences, that I suggest provides an opening for white scholars to contribute to decolonizing projects. In this article, I reflect on my attempts at engaging with my colonial complicities, as a white European woman doing research on comprehensive sexuality education and young people's agency in Tanzania. I present this discussion as a series of refusals interspersed throughout more conceptual discussions on how feminist and social psychological theorizing, and post-/de-colonial problematizations of it, have advanced my understanding of agency, and shaped my approach and research design. In drawing these literatures together, along with my own practical efforts at applying them, I attempt to mark out, but also problematize, potentials for white people's anti-colonial praxis in working across borders. I conclude with some broad thoughts on the particularities of refusals connected to whiteness and the neoliberal university.

Foundations for a decolonial big data psychology

“…Especially in the Global South, big data psychologists are not easily able to elide such ethical negotiations. Our model constitutes but one (potentially privileged) mode of engagement, echoing the critical reflections of Coultas (2022) on the importance of "refusal" as an ethical and reflexive practice in decolonial research. Even as cultural insiders, our overlapping positions of privilege and marginalization necessitated deliberative vigilance in the context of a turbulent democracy.…”

Psychology as a site for decolonial analysis

“…In her consideration of these tensions, Coultas (2022) also draws heavily on the concept of refusal (although, given her positionality, in a different way from Atallah and Dutta). Given the possibilities for epistemic violence, “the importance of putting limits on social science research becomes undeniable, but … refusals are not a prohibitive stance” (p. 413).…”

“…A similar issue—how or even whether to engage decolonial perspectives when one occupies positions of privilege—is the focus of a contribution from Coultas (2022), who addresses this question from her position as an employee and then researcher working for over a decade with international non‐governmental organizations in East and Central Africa. Reflecting this position, her concern is how

white social psychological scholars, activists, and practitioners [and, one can add, researchers of any background working from positions of power within the modern/colonial whitestream academy] might take‐up our responsibilities of anti‐colonial praxis, in ways that contribute to, but do not co‐opt projects aimed at decolonizing psychology and studies of social issues.

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“And now we resist”: Three testimonios on the importance of decoloniality within psychology

“…It calls into question whose knowledge we draw from and how particular methodological approaches often fail to capture the complexities of our communities. A decolonial praxis challenges conventional knowledge that has been disseminated, and how community voices are centered within the project (Coultas, 2021; Cruz, 2008). As Cruz (2008) attests, academia “continues to be a site where [knowledge] is produced and legitimated, a place where those with access to it can insert themselves in the reproduction of the kind of capital that allows a few to say what counts as valid for the rest of us” (p. 653).…”

“…Decolonization, and the act of decolonizing, is not a replacement word for social justice, liberation, or performativity. There are connections, yet the process of decoloniality aims to alter ways of doing, seeing and being, as well as our relationship to others within existing structures rooted in colonial structures of power (Atallah & Dutta, 2021; Coultas, 2021; Quijano, 2000). This form of oppressive dehumanizing power produces hegemony in ways that we might not even perceive or questions.…”