EPILOGUE: SOME QUESTIONS FOR THE FUTURE
The contributing authors to Toward a Global Psychology: Theory Research,
Intervention, and Pedagogy have introduced and described the parameters
of a relatively new, but increasingly important specialty within the discipline
of psychology. They have delineated the mission and foci of global
psychology; its origins, development, and current status in the industrialized
and postmodern world and in the less familiar majority world; its emerging
conceptual models, research methods, psychotherapeutic and macro-level practices,
ethical and legal regulatory mechanisms, and educational and training needs;
and avenues for becoming more competent and engaged as globally oriented
psychologists and psychology students.
Toward a Global Psychology offers rich and varied evidence for the
globalizing of psychology. In part, the globalizing of psychology
seems to be an outgrowth of a more general process of globalization.
The economic, political, social, and technological developments that are
accelerating in the early 21st century represent macro-level forces, which
are moving psychology toward a science and profession without borders vis-à-vis
understanding, dialogue, and integration of knowledge across countries and
cultures. A number of significant paradigm shifts are underway that
attest to the transformation of psychology into a less insular discipline.
Examples include the rise and acceptance of cross-cultural psychology and
multiculturalism, the growing interest in cultural and indigenous psychologies,
and the challenge posed by normative alternatives to mainstream “universalist”
perspectives in psychology that emphasize the situated and relational nature
of human action and experience. Concrete evidence for the globalizing
of psychology can be found in ongoing efforts to formulate a universal code
of ethics for psychologists, the proliferation of exchange programs and sources
of funding that support transnational goals and activities in psychology,
more urgent calls for the revision of the existing psychology curriculum
to meet the needs of a rapidly changing world, and the growing commitment
by international psychology organizations to diversify their membership by
including psychologists in the majority world, to capacity-build scientific
psychology in the majority world, and to establish ties with policy-making
entities to improve the quality of life in the majority world.
At the same time, many areas of psychology, at least as understood and
taught in the United States, remain relatively untouched by these developments.
For example, the history of psychology is frequently conceptualized in a
thoroughly parochial manner, such that the contributions of most non-U.S.
authors to post-World War II developments in psychology are ignored
(e.g., Schultz & Schulz, 2004). Textbooks delineating theories
of personality remain wedded to individualistic models that ignore extensive
research on more collectivistic modes of personality functioning. Handbooks
of social psychology implicitly present “Americanized” models of social functioning
as if they can account for social behavior everywhere. Considerable work
must be done in order to break free from these ethnocentric versions of psychology.
THE GLOBAL EXPANSION OF PSYCHOLOGY
During the last 30-40 years, the presence of psychology has grown in many
Western and non-Western countries. European psychology, for example,
has not only regained the vitality that it partially lost in the 1930s-1950s,
but it also has expanded rapidly in recent decades. In this context,
Tikkanen (2005) estimates that the number of individuals trained in psychology
in the 31 countries comprising the European Federation of Psychologists’
Associations (excluding Russia, Ukraine, and some other nations) is 293,000,
and that the number of professional psychologists in Europe will likely surpass
371,000 by 2010. By way of comparison, the U.S. Census Bureau (2003)
reports a total of 277,000 employed psychologists in the United States for
the year 2002.
Large numbers of psychologists have also been reported for some Latin American
countries, such as Brazil and Argentina. Hutz, McCarthy, and Gomes
(2004) state that at present over 140,000 licensed psychologists practice
in Brazil alone, although only about 900 of them hold doctoral degrees.
And, what is the world’s capital of psychology as measured by the number
of licensed psychologists? It is Buenos Aires, where, according to
Klappenbach (2004), 32,976 predominantly psychoanalytically oriented psychologists
practice. However, “research is not a principal activity in Argentine
psychology” (Klappenbach, 2004, p. 143), and the same may be said for psychology
in many other countries in the majority world, including Brazil, Indonesia,
and Nigeria. One consequence of this state of affairs is that psychologists
from these countries have exerted little influence on mainstream academic
psychology in Europe and the United States, although Argentine psychologists
have played a significant role in the global landscape of psychoanalysis.
The rapid worldwide expansion of psychology has never been fully analyzed.
Consequently, a number of questions can be raised that only future studies
and events can fully answer. Here are some of those questions:
1. At present, U.S. psychology occupies a central place in psychology worldwide.
Will European psychology gradually assume a similar position in the near
future given evidence that the number of European psychologists has surpassed
the number of psychologists in the United States?
2. English has become the language of global psychology thanks to the cultural,
economic, military, and scientific dominance of the United States.
Will this trend continue or will other languages, such as Chinese and Spanish,
become more important over time? What effects might this have on global
psychology? Will international congresses of psychology become more
linguistically diverse? Will some regional psychology associations
become dominated by languages other than English?
3. Some majority-world countries report more psychological activity and
accomplishments of a certain kind than others, for example, research productivity
(e.g., China vs. Indonesia). What are the sources of variation in the
specific activities of psychologists in different parts of the majority world?
Under what circumstances do applied psychological issues become so prominent
that a culture of basic research can emerge only with great difficulty in
a given country or region?
4. Similarly, economic and political factors have most often been cited
as mediating the state of psychology in countries of the majority world.
To what extent do cultural variables, such as individualism, ethnicity, language,
and religion contribute to the acceptance of psychology, the length of time
it has existed in a particular country, and its future prospects?
THEORY, RESEARCH, INTERVENTION, AND PEDAGOGY
Notwithstanding the panoply of viewpoints within Toward a Global Psychology,
there are several key themes that run through the book, which deserve mention.
These include the criticism of mainstream, reductionistic psychology as being
parochial and inadequate to tasks of making sense of, studying, and intervening
in psychological phenomena-in-context, advocacy for multidisciplinary, multilevel
approaches to studying and responding to global issues and problems that
have psychological dimensions, the importance of transnational collaboration
both regionally and worldwide, concern about pressing global challenges,
including intergroup conflict, degradation of the natural environment, threats
to physical and mental health, the status of at-risk populations (e.g., women,
children, migrants and refugees), and the need for greater contextual sensitivity,
knowledge, skill, and an ethic of social responsibility among psychologists
already involved in global psychology as well as among psychology students.
Toward a Global Psychology has succeeded in laying out the history
and contemporary standing of the specialty, which do not bear repeating
here. However, it is reasonable to examine where global psychology
has left off and where it may be headed. That is, given its origins
and development, is it possible to discern the direction that global psychology
is likely to take in the next decade or so? In contemplating the future
of global psychology, we chose to identify a number of unanswered questions
raised by our contributing authors that we believe must be addressed if the
conceptual models, investigative strategies, practical applications, and
professional training in global psychology are to advance to a more mature
stage. Although many more unanswered questions could be raised that
might clarify the future course of the field, the ones listed below address
matters of a more general and urgent nature. While the answers to these
question are as yet unknown, they will become evident, as will the way in
which the field will move ahead, as globally oriented psychologists focus
their talents and energy on them.
Theory
1. What are the respective merits of reductionistic, normative,
and mixed conceptual models as applied to psychological phenomena-in-context?
2. To what extent do normative and mixed models meet the formal criteria
of theory, and should they be subjected to such an evaluation, which is
itself culture-bound?
3. Under what circumstances is each approach - reductionistic, normative,
and mixed - most promising in facilitating an understanding of global phenomena
and providing direction for research and practice?
4. One question that deserves special attention pertains to normative paradigms,
whose popularity is gaining momentum among social scientists across many
disciplines. Clearly, there is a host of different normative systems
throughout the world. If the aim of global psychology is to incorporate
these systems, might not an epistemological nightmare emerge in which global
psychology becomes a highly fragmented Tower of Babel of countless different
psychologies? How can global psychologists forge a more global psychology
out of these multiple normative systems, one that is characterized by the
distillation of genuine universals, or at least a more complete understanding
of the social practices that give meaning to human action and experience?
4. The indigenous analysis of academic achievement in East Asia, as reported
in Chapter Five, provides an in-depth illustration of a phenomenon-in-context.
Are there other examples of how indigenous theories, methods, and practices
“fit” different phenomena-in-context or are there limits to what indigenous
approaches can explain even within the same cultural context?
5. In a related vein, what are the benefits and drawbacks to different
forms of indigenous psychologies, for example, those which reject entirely
any contribution to theory, research, intervention, and pedagogy that is
not grassroots in origin as opposed to the adaptation of psychological tools
born in a different culture to the realities of psychological phenomena-in-context
in the host culture?
Research
1. To what extent is are qualitative research methods sensitive to and
capable of capturing human action and experience in diverse societies and
cultures? Can they be matched in a systematic fashion to specific sociocultural
contexts so as to maximize the validity and utility of their findings?
2. How can qualitative research methods be used to study problems associated
with the majority world, such as mounting population pressures, epidemics,
human rights violations, poverty, urban life, and violent conflict?
3. How can qualitative research methods be applied to support indigenous
psychologies (i.e., a psychology developed within a culture) and indigenization
(i.e., the adaptation of psychological tools imported from another culture)?
4. Like the distinct theoretical approaches noted above, there are quantitative,
qualitative, and mixed-method approaches. Under what circumstances
does each appear to be most promising?
5. How can we facilitate the integration of research findings from non-English
speaking countries and from majority-world countries into global mainstream
of psychology?
Intervention
1. What does global psychology mean in terms of practice within the cultural,
economic, historical, political, religious, and social fabric of a given
country or region?
2. How does global psychology address such dimensions as individualism-collectivism,
science-folklore, secular-theocratic, and democratic-authoritarian when
it comes to applied practice, particularly in times of rapid sociocultural
change during which the relevance of these dimensions within a particular
context may be in flux?
3. To what extent are macro-level interventions conceptually driven, whether
by a system-analytic perspective or some other formulation that purports
to be sensitive to culture, ethics, and power?
4. What guidelines are available to accommodate clashing cultural values
in the planning and implementation of macro-level interventions?
5. Are preventive macro-level efforts feasible regionally and worldwide,
just as they are with at-risk individuals within a single locale or society?
6. What are the methodologies available for appropriately evaluating the
outcomes of macro-level interventions, especially when implemented in unfamiliar
cultural settings?
7. Most existing ethical and legal mechanisms for regulating the practice
of psychology rest on assumptions of individualism and fail to account for
prevailing conditions that foster individual dysfunction. What ethical
guidelines and legal mandates should be developed that address toxic contextual
conditions and that guide grassroots and larger scale interventions to emancipate
people from such conditions?
8. How can a universal code of ethics be truly applicable across diverse
cultural contexts whose values and traditions rest on differing assumptions
of what constitutes morality and the good life? Is there as set of
basic humans values to guide the development of universally ethical practice
in psychology?
9. Do preliminary guidelines for universally ethical practice need to be
more concise with respect to the growing number of psychologists who teach,
conduct research, and practice transnationally?
Pedagogy
1. How can existing theories, research findings, and practices from cross-cultural
psychology be more fully integrated into undergraduate and graduate textbooks
and curricula so that globally oriented discussions of cultural influences
on human action and experience become important ingredients of mainstream
psychology?
2. Beyond the call for more relevant education and training, what should
constitute a core curriculum, professional coursework, and supervised experience
in the field of global psychology? In particular, what is the curriculum
needed to create a full capacity global citizen, one who embodies a value-based
fusion of the individual and the discipline?
3. How are psychologists and psychology students to acquire the knowledge,
skill, and commitment of social responsibility to function effectively in
the globalized world of the 21st century?
4. How can psychologists and psychology students be trained to work in
different sociocultural contexts and in research and applied settings around
the world?
5. How can pedagogical outcomes relevant to a global psychology be validly
assessed if they are to be improved?
CONCLUSION
As we noted, these are but a few pointed questions that globally oriented
psychologists are posing and for which they are beginning to pursue answers.
Those answers, and other developments in theory, research, intervention,
and pedagogy, will certainly advance the field of global psychology greatly
over the next few years. While it is an exciting period for psychologists
and psychology students who are interested in global psychology, it is also
a challenging one. There are myriad forces and events that could influence
the direction of the specialty, some of which can be dimly envisaged (e.g.,
the expected course of globalization) and others which cannot be anticipated.
The future course of global psychology also rests on the awareness and commitment
of psychologists to communicate and collaborate in a horizontal and multidisciplinary
fashion on various levels in an effort to understand and address the shared
concerns and issues that face humankind.
Perhaps, the most telling question that remains to be answered concerns
the foundation and identity of the discipline of psychology as we know it.
As the process of globalizing psychology ensues, how will its science and
practice be transformed from the form in which it is currently constituted?
Psychology will continue to evolve as it has in the past. Although
this inevitable evolution can be forecast with limited accuracy, it would
seem that the beliefs and customs of other cultures will be incorporated
more extensively into the fabric of scientific and professional psychology
in the future. Conversely, as psychology becomes more globally integrated,
the history of psychology will be reconceptualized as transnational and
multilingual, rather than as Western and English-dominated. New books
that deconstruct the history of psychology (e.g., Brock, in press) will
play a significant role in how psychologists and psychology students construe
the discipline of psychology and their own identity within it.
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Klappenbach, H. (2004). Psychology in Argentina. In M. J. Stevens &
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