Communalism

Abstract

In recent years there has been an upsurge of interest in expressions of cultural integrity among African Americans. Many more recent efforts have argued that such expressions of integrity are rooted in an African cultural legacy and that these Afrocultural expressions continue to help shape the contours and textures of the African American experience (e.g., Boykin, 1983Boykin, , 1986Nobles, 1991;Stuckey, 1987;Thompson, 1983). Among expressions thought to be embodied in this cultural legacy are the following: spirituality, which suggests a focus on the vitalistic, shared essence of all things; the oral tradition, which places a premium on the spoken word; rhythmic-movement expressiveness; and communalism, which highlights the social interdependence of people (e.g., Downloaded from Problem Behaviors: Further Evidence&dquo; m the Journal of Adolescence (1996). Constance M. Ellison is an associate professor of human development and psychoeducational studies in the School of Education at Howard University. Her areas of research interest are cognition, learning, and cultural diversity, with a special emphasis on metacognition and cultural learning orientations among preschool-and elementary school-age children. She has coauthored a paper titled &dquo;Comparing

Culture: A Possible Predictor of Morality for African American Adolescents

“…Perhaps communalism and morality were unrelated for this sample of African American adolescents because the communalism measure did not adequately tap into adolescents' communal beliefs and/or the morality measure did not tap into moral situations, which were salient for these adolescents. A more sensitive and developmentally appropriate measure of communalism orientation designed for young adults, like the Communalism Scale (Boykin et al, 1997), may have yielded findings that support the proposed hypotheses. Future work should continue to explore this possible relationship.…”

“…Communalism implies an awareness of the fundamental interdependence of people with a premium placed on social bonds and obligations (Boykin, Jagers, Ellison, & Albury, 1997). This is not to suggest that a communal orientation is found exclusively among people of African descent.…”

“…This is not to suggest that a communal orientation is found exclusively among people of African descent. Rather this conceptualization of communalism is defined and assessed from an Afrocultural worldview (Boykin et al, 1997). According to Ward (1995), communal attitudes, which are traditionally found in the Black community, aid in the development of a morality of care for African American youth.…”

Key Concepts, Theories, and Issues in African/Black Psychology: A View From the Bridge

“…Some instruments that specifically address the worldview construct are the World-View Opinionnaire (Kelsey & Ransom, 1996), the Individual/collective World-View Scale (McCombs, 1996), the Worldview Scale (Baldwin & Hopkins, 1990), and the Worldview Analysis Scale (Obasi, Flores, & James-Myers, 2009). Utsey et al (2009) identify the African Self-Consciousness Scale (ASCS; Baldwin & Bell, 1985), the Oshodi Sentence Completion Index/Africentric Sentence Completion Test (Oshodi, 1999), Africentric Home Environment Inventory (Caughy, Randolph, & O'Campo, 2002), the Belief Systems Analysis Scale (BSAS; Montgomery, Fine, & James-Myers, 1990), the Communalism Scale (Boykin, Jagers, Ellison, & Albury, 1997), the Africultural Coping Systems Inventory (Utsey, Adams, & Bolden, 2000), and the Africentrism Scale (Grills & Longshore, 1996) as instruments that assess African-centered psychological constructs.…”

Depressed mood and environmental mastery as potential pathways linking family relationship quality and disease self‐management for African Americans with hypertension

“…However, family relationships other than intimate partnerships remain largely understudied, and merit greater attention given recent research findings supporting their importance for determining long‐term health outcomes (Woods et al, 2020). Moreover, specific to African American health outcomes, prior research has outlined the contributions of non‐marital family relationship quality to hypertension self‐management and lifestyle change (Flynn et al, 2013; Thornton et al, 2019; Woods et al, 2022; Yang et al, 2019) which may align with African American cultural prioritizations of communal healing and family networks (Boykin et al, 1997; Chioneso et al, 2020).…”