Towards decolonizing community psychology : insights from the Palestinian colonial context

Abstract

Consequential to Zionist-settler colonialism in historic Palestine , the Palestinian people today do not live together as a vibrant and cohesive community in a clearly defined geopolitical space, but rather they are dispossessed and scattered in various socio-political contexts: one group lives in its native homeland, which was conquered in 1948 and holds an official Israeli citizenship; another group lives in the occupied West-Bank and Gaza and has been under Israeli colonial occupation since 1967; the rest of the Palestinian people are dispossessed refugees living in various locations mainly in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. In mainstream psychological research and practice each one of these Palestinian communities has been examined and treated as a “unique case” by and in itself in isolation of the whole, rather than examining the fragmentation itself as an outcome of a prolonged colonial condition. In this presentation I focus on collective-national identity as the thread that connects all Palestinian communities as one colonized collective group and unpack/deconstruct key situations in Palestine where mainstream psychology has been deployed and where decolonizing and liberation psychology can and should be implemented as an alternative way to understand the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle for self-determination. In such colonial context, people’s collective self-determination and anti-colonial national liberation movement constitute the very fabric of which academic community psychology must be constructed. Drawing on similar colonial conditions in the Global South, I contend that unless connected to the national liberation movement, academic psychology remains a toll of colonization rather than means for liberation.