Peace Kiguwa | University of the Witwatersrand (original) (raw)

Papers by Peace Kiguwa

Psychology in Society, 2024

Bhekizizwe (Bheki) Peterson was an African literary scholar, filmmaker, artist, and community act... more Bhekizizwe (Bheki) Peterson was an African literary scholar, filmmaker, artist, and community activist. While all accurate descriptors, to describe him thus leaves absent his underlying project of Black Love. It is love that is present in his project of recovery of Black intellectual and cultural legacies; in his teaching and mentorship marked by intergenerational dialoguing in a joint quest for freedom; and it is love in his injunction to challenge our rigid disciplinary imaginations of interior lives and social imaginaries that attend to the "continuities and discontinuities between past, present and future" (Peterson, 2019b, p. 345). In this paper, I think with Bheki on 1) the act of writing; 2) African ontology's relevance for trauma and healing and 3) the moral template of personhood as part of his 'buzzing' against disciplinary imaginaries. This paper is an invitation to re-imagine disciplinary boundaries by orientating psychology to the scholarship of Bhekizizwe Peterson, and to take up his questions on the narratable subject and complexities of personhood. I consider Bheki's reflection on the act of writing and implications of narratable subjects that are part of a moral economy of what it means to be human.

Psychology in Society, 2024

This special issue of PINS commemorates and celebrates the work and thought of the late renowned ... more This special issue of PINS commemorates and celebrates the work and thought of the late renowned Professor of African literature and award-winning film-maker, Bhekizizwe Peterson. From different angles, the authors in this volume place psychology in dialogue with Peterson’s work, continuing a transdisciplinary conversation in which he was a consistently generous and enlivening interlocutor. Contemporary imperatives to decolonise intellectual traditions and reconceptualise personhood and psychic life in historical, social and political terms, are articulated in a societal context (South Africa and beyond, across the continent and the globe) that is repeatedly described as ‘in crisis’. In the here-and-now, the explicit agenda of PINS to explore psychology in society, entails theorising human life in pervasively dehumanising conditions of inequality, intergenerational trauma, and the precarity of planetary life. Peterson has much to say to these critical questions, and this special issue provides a unique opportunity for the readers of PINS to engage with his remarkable oeuvre of scholarly, artistic and activist work across the fields and modalities of literature, film, and literary and social criticism, opening
up invigorating lines for re-thinking the disciplinary praxis of psychology.

Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics

What imaginations of the self are evident in Black and African feminist visions of Black liberati... more What imaginations of the self are evident in Black and African feminist visions of Black liberation? How is love framed as a centring politics of Black liberation across social and political struggles? These two questions address two features of Black and African feminist social justice politics: first, a re-imagining of the self via routes of the communal self and love of oneself; and, second, a centring of love as fundamental to any project of Black liberation. Exploring these two trajectories, the article engages gendered love in terms of its material and affective registers within feminist struggles for justice and healing. To do this, select readings of African and Black feminist theorising, reflections, and activist works are explored including Pumla Gqola, Sharlene Khan, June Jordan, bell hooks amongst others. The intellectual diversity of these feminist contributions connects with reference to a feminist project that is rooted in (re)imaginings of love and self that are simu...

Feminist Encounters A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, 2023

American Psychologist

This contribution engages the work of the contemporary South African Psychologist, Kopano Ratele,... more This contribution engages the work of the contemporary South African Psychologist, Kopano Ratele, to illustrate the facets of sociopolitical and psychological dimensions of psychology from the Global South and its relevance for reimagining psychology across the continent and the global world. Ratele’s African psychology framework offers us both a contemporary and critical analytic lens to reflect on the psychic life of power from the vantage point of Africa. This article explores two thematic contributions of Ratele’s African psychology: (a) culture and tradition and (b) Black interiority. Ratele’s African psychology presents a marked departure from much African psychology scholarship in its attention to the psychopolitics of Black life and Black death. Furthermore, by presenting African psychology as orientation, Ratele can engage both ontological and methodological dimensions of Black subjectivity as diverse, complex, and nonessentialist. In putting forward Ratele’s scholarship as a key contribution to African and Black psychology, this article thus addresses the current epistemological impasse that seems to exist in psychology in Africa. This article concludes that Ratele’s African psychology may provide us with a means of addressing this impasse toward making psychology in Africa relevant.

American Psychologist, 2023

This contribution engages the work of the contemporary South African Psychologist, Kopano Ratele,... more This contribution engages the work of the contemporary South African Psychologist, Kopano Ratele, to illustrate the facets of sociopolitical and psychological dimensions of psychology from the Global South and its relevance for reimagining psychology across the continent and the
global world. Ratele’s African psychology framework offers us both a contemporary and critical analytic lens to reflect on the psychic life of power from the vantage point of Africa. This article explores two thematic contributions of Ratele’s African psychology: (a) culture and tradition and (b) Black interiority. Ratele’s African psychology presents a marked departure from much African psychology scholarship in its attention to the psychopolitics of Black life and Black death. Furthermore, by presenting African psychology as orientation, Ratele can engage both ontological and methodological dimensions of Black subjectivity as diverse, complex, and nonessentialist. In putting forward Ratele’s scholarship as a key contribution to African and Black psychology, this article thus addresses the current epistemological impasse that seems to exist in psychology in Africa. This article concludes that Ratele’s African psychology may provide us with a means of addressing this impasse toward making psychology in Africa relevant.

Unsettling Apologies

In 2016, on social media, Penny Sparrow described black people as “monkeys” in a racist rant. In ... more In 2016, on social media, Penny Sparrow described black people as “monkeys” in a racist rant. In the same year Vicki Momberg, a victim of a smash and grab incident, described the police using the “K” word in a fit of emotive interaction with the black policemen who came to assist her. Two years later, another white South African, Adam Catzavelos, used similar language to describe black people in a public video. This chapter explores the event of public racist practice as a discursive and affective field that implicates bodies – white and black – through the lateral motion of affective economies of racial nostalgia and outrage. The reflexive racist outburst and the emotive public reaction attest to profound embodied histories of racial revulsion, pain and injury. We argue that both the demand for and performance of the public apology do different affective and embodied work that is bound up with a desire for recognition of the human. In the end, the public apology serves as a superficial exculpatory gesture that still refuses a recognition of the human in the other. We reflect on the meanings of this for broader meanings for and of reconciliation.

Intimacy and injury: In the wake of #MeToo in India and South Africa, 2022

This chapter explores the role and function of affect in women’s activism against sexual and gend... more This chapter explores the role and function of affect in women’s activism against sexual and gender violence in South Africa through a focus on the use and effect of emotion work in galvanising social response, as well as in the circulation of emotion between bodies. In so doing, I make an argument for a more concentrated look at the place of emotions to show how social movements take on a life of their own and achieve multiple and often unforeseen effects that attest to their unpredictability.

Community psychology: South African Praxis, 2022

(Un)silence LGBTI experiences and identities in Institutions of higher learning in Southern Africa,, 2022

Feminist Formations, 2021

The article engages the work of Audre Lorde on rage between Black women. Focusing on her 1984 ess... more The article engages the work of Audre Lorde on rage between Black women. Focusing on her 1984 essay "Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger," the article explores destructive rage and Lorde's concern about the effect of this rage on Black women's capacity to build community together and feminist politics more broadly. Adopting an affective reading of Lorde's analysis, the article dissects her attention to the affect of rage as interwoven with other affective registers that include hate and pain. Lorde's insight and politics highlights a dimension of rage that is important to consider in contemporary Black women's feminist politics and organizing—the capacity for rage to destroy sisterhood and authentic healing. Her project of attending to such rage as a means to render it less powerful in effect remains an urgent one for us today.

WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, 2022

Toni Morrison's novel Love invites us to consider structuring systems in how Black women embody a... more Toni Morrison's novel Love invites us to consider structuring systems in how Black women embody and practice love for each other. What is the affective quality of healing love between Black women? What happens when the social and psychic structuring of this love are implicated in patriarchal, racializing, and classed systems of relating? The paper engages two primary concerns: (1) how the erasure and distortion of Black women's love is made possible when love's backdrop consists of anti-Black, capitalist, and racist systems and histories, and (2) why Black women's reclamation of love for each other is necessary to a project of healing and community building.

Sexual Medicine, 2022

BACKGROUND Assessment of sexual risk behavior among youths is crucial for HIV prevention strategi... more BACKGROUND Assessment of sexual risk behavior among youths is crucial for HIV prevention strategies. However, the literature on sexual behavior in youth during the COVID-19 pandemic is sparse. AIM This study surveyed sexual risk behavior among youth in Soweto, South Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic national lockdown in 2020. METHODS We conducted a cross-sectional telephonic survey on socio-demographics and HIV risk behaviors among youth aged 18-24 years during level 3 of the lockdown. Frequencies and their respective percentages were determined for categorical variables and stratified by biological sex. Chi-square analysis was used to compare categorical variables. All data were analyzed using SAS software. OUTCOMES A risk assessment for HIV questionnaire was used to assess sexual risk behaviors. Also, substance use was assessed through a developed yes/no questionnaire. RESULTS Of the 129 participants, 83.0% (n = 107) had a sexual partner; 52% of those who had a sexual partner were females, 60.7% (65/107) had one current sexual partner and 39.2% (42/107) had more than 1 sexual partner. Most reported sex within 1 week (54.2%, n = 58/107) and 30.8% within a month (30.8%, n = 33/107). Sex was with a dating partner (86.0%, n = 92/107) and 63% used a condom during last sexual contact. Males were more likely than females to have one-night stand sexual partners (23.5% vs 7.1%; P = .0176), make weekly changes in partners (17.7% vs 5.4%; P = .0442) and used condoms with their partners (92.2% vs 53.6%; P < .0001) during last sexual contact. The majority reported alcohol use (69.0%, n = 89/129). Males were more likely than females to use alcohol on a weekly basis (21.4% vs 6.4%; P = .0380). About 55.9% had penetrative sex under the influence of substances. CLINICAL TRANSLATION This study gives an insight to the sexual risk behaviors among young people which is crucial for HIV prevention interventions. STRENGTH & LIMITATIONS This was the first study investigating sexual behavior in youth during the COVID-19 pandemic. The main limitations of this study relate to the sample size and sampling strategy. As the sample was not representative of the population of young people in Soweto and South Africa, the results cannot be generalized. However, the findings have relevance for future research in HIV prevention for young people in other settings in South Africa. CONCLUSIONS Interventions on promoting sexual health and reducing HIV risk behavior such as sex following alcohol consumption in young people are needed, especially during a pandemic such as COVID-19. Mulaudzi M, Kiguwa P, Zharima C, et al., Sexual Risk Behaviors Among Youth in Soweto, South Africa During the COVID-19 National Lockdown. Sex Med 2021;10:100487.

The paper reflects on the emotions accompanying processes of racialization. I argue that during m... more The paper reflects on the emotions accompanying processes of racialization. I argue that during moments of interaction and encounter characterized by relations of racial subjectification, specific emotions are intrinsic to how the individual navigates and mediates his or her social space. Using a psycho-social lens, the paper will argue that we need to move beyond an analysis of racial subjectivity that only engages the discursive positioning of subjects in discourse. I am therefore not only interested in how individuals may indeed occupy particular discursive positions (as socio-political subjects) but also how particular emotions simultaneously accompany these subject positions. I would argue that these emotions play a crucial role in sustaining relations of power as well as reinforcing racialized subjectivities in essentialist and limiting ways. Drawing on data collected exploring black students’ navigation of social and material space within a tertiary institution, the paper arg...

Studies in Gender and Sexuality

ABSTRACT Threading across different discursive, cultural, and political moments of the postaparth... more ABSTRACT Threading across different discursive, cultural, and political moments of the postapartheid context, gender-based violence, inarguably, is a phenomenon that must be read contextually and as contingent upon intersecting configurations of power that are tied to historical, political, and material fractures of our colonial legacies. Three immediate intersecting threads of analyses are undertaken here: (1) how extant knowledge archives on gender-based violence discursively reference spatial geographies and frozen temporalities of violence that result in the implicit racialization of gender-based violence and the psychological pathologization of its associated subjectivities in South Africa; (2) using Fanon’s concept of sociogeny, we read gender-based violence through a psychosocial lens to address this problematic; and (3) extending Fanon’s idea of psychopolitics, we argue that the trauma, racial alienation, and toxic gendering of society within coloniality is reflected in a neurotic structuring of the psyche itself.

South African journal of higher education, 2018

Citizenship and social justice have been explored from ethical and theoretical perspectives in ed... more Citizenship and social justice have been explored from ethical and theoretical perspectives in education. Furthermore, alienation or belonging in institutional cultures, often invoking social locations such as gender and race, were explored. Little research, especially empirical research, exists at the nexus of narrative, citizenship, belonging and subjectivities. In contexts of ongoing inequalities and associated student protests, legacies of unequal histories come into conflict in the crucible of higher education. Narrative as theory-method may usefully provide ways in which citizenship and identity may be connected to socio-historical processes and justice in higher education. Narratives of student experiences have the potential to provide insight into the nuances of subjectivities in personal and collective stories of belonging and alienation. They may also highlight how universities can be spaces where students may engage in non-normative negotiations and reconstructions of sub...

Transforming Research Methods in the Social Sciences, 2019

Social Science & Medicine, 2015

Violence is a serious public health and human rights challenge with global psychosocial impacts a... more Violence is a serious public health and human rights challenge with global psychosocial impacts across the human lifespan. As a recently classified middle-income country (MIC), South Africa experiences high levels of interpersonal, self-directed and collective violence, taking physical, sexual and/or psychological forms. Careful epidemiological research has consistently shown that complex causal pathways bind the social fabric of structural inequality, socio-cultural tolerance of violence, militarized masculinity, disrupted community and family life, and erosion of social capital, to individual-level biological, developmental and personality-related risk factors to produce this polymorphic profile of violence in the country. Engaging with a concern that violence studies may have reached something of a theoretical impasse, 'second wave' violence scholars have argued that the future of violence research may not lie primarily in merely amassing more data on risk but rather in better theorizing the mechanisms that translate risk into enactment, and that mobilize individual and collective aspects of subjectivity within these enactments. With reference to several illustrative forms of violence in South Africa, in this article we suggest revisiting two conceptual orientations to violence, arguing that this may be useful in developing thinking in line with this new global agenda. Firstly, the definition of our object of enquiry requires revisiting to fully capture its complexity. Secondly, we advocate for the utility of specific incident analyses/case studies of violent encounters to explore the mechanisms of translation and mobilization of multiple interactive factors in enactments of violence. We argue that addressing some of the moral and methodological challenges highlighted in revisiting these orientations requires integrating critical social science theory with insights derived from epidemiology and, that combining these approaches may take us further in understanding and addressing the recalcitrant range of forms and manifestations of violence.

This report is submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosoph... more This report is submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Witwatersrand. Johannesburg, February 2014

Psychology in Society, 2024

Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics

Feminist Encounters A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, 2023

American Psychologist

American Psychologist, 2023

This contribution engages the work of the contemporary South African Psychologist, Kopano Ratele,... more This contribution engages the work of the contemporary South African Psychologist, Kopano Ratele, to illustrate the facets of sociopolitical and psychological dimensions of psychology from the Global South and its relevance for reimagining psychology across the continent and the
global world. Ratele’s African psychology framework offers us both a contemporary and critical analytic lens to reflect on the psychic life of power from the vantage point of Africa. This article explores two thematic contributions of Ratele’s African psychology: (a) culture and tradition and (b) Black interiority. Ratele’s African psychology presents a marked departure from much African psychology scholarship in its attention to the psychopolitics of Black life and Black death. Furthermore, by presenting African psychology as orientation, Ratele can engage both ontological and methodological dimensions of Black subjectivity as diverse, complex, and nonessentialist. In putting forward Ratele’s scholarship as a key contribution to African and Black psychology, this article thus addresses the current epistemological impasse that seems to exist in psychology in Africa. This article concludes that Ratele’s African psychology may provide us with a means of addressing this impasse toward making psychology in Africa relevant.

Unsettling Apologies

Intimacy and injury: In the wake of #MeToo in India and South Africa, 2022

Community psychology: South African Praxis, 2022

(Un)silence LGBTI experiences and identities in Institutions of higher learning in Southern Africa,, 2022

Feminist Formations, 2021

WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, 2022

Sexual Medicine, 2022

Studies in Gender and Sexuality

South African journal of higher education, 2018

Transforming Research Methods in the Social Sciences, 2019

Social Science & Medicine, 2015

Microbicide trials can be feasible to carry out with sex workers however one needs to understand ... more Microbicide trials can be feasible to carry out with sex workers however one needs to understand what other products are being used to avoid any contraindications. Further it is recommended that condom-compatible lubrication should be provided, accessible and distributed as part of the HIV prevention response for the country. Sex workers (SW) have been identified as the population at greatest risk of acquiring and/or transmitting HIV and other STI due to reported high rates of multiple concurrent relationships, as well as their inconsistent use of condoms. SW face a number of challenges including poor work & living conditions, drug and alcohol usage, limited access to health care services due to stigma and discrimination, low levels of education, susceptibility to violence at the hands of their clients, managers, partners and police. SW in SA is still criminalized. Currently HIV prevalence rates amongst FSW in SA is thought to be as high as 40-69% compared to 13.3% amongst women in the general population. This calls for urgent research to understand factors that lead to increased susceptibility to HIV acquisition. This research investigated behavioural aspects such as harmful vaginal practices that FSW engaged in as well as the products they used to tighten, dry, warm and cleanse the vagina as behaviours which could contribute or exacerbate HIV and STI susceptibility. The main objective of the study was to understand the practices they engaged in, as well as to explore their beliefs and motivations for engaging in those practices and what the implications of introducing vaginal microbicides to this population will be.

It is my contention that exclusions within many higher education institutional spaces in South Af... more It is my contention that exclusions within many higher education institutional spaces in South Africa today are most effective through the ‘invisibilizing’ of informal spaces and practices of interaction. These spaces are invisible – in the sense that they are taken-for-granted in their everyday banality – and therefore it is often difficult to challenge, let alone call attention to their effects. Understanding the complexities of racial exclusion and belonging within institutions of higher learning in the post-apartheid context must include a grappling with these informal cultures and spaces of exclusion and belonging, the critical nuanced spaces within which black bodies in the academy are excluded. The paper reflects on key moments of racialization within higher education context for many black students entering the academic space as already interpellated ‘black bodies’. Narrative perspectives have proposed the significance of ‘critical moments’ in a given interaction or life experience more generally that influences how people attach meaning and/or respond to these interactions and experiences. Drawing on data collected exploring black students’ navigation of social and material space within a tertiary institution I discuss how moments of belonging and exclusion are produced within institutional context that are rooted to such invisible practices and interactions. Lastly, I argue that for many black bodies within the academy, negotiating these different moments of belonging and exclusion necessitate a dual and difficult process of knowing how and when to ‘read’ race into these encounters and practices as well as strategic self-positioning during such moments

This paper reflects on the processes of learning and change through a project of curriculum innov... more This paper reflects on the processes of learning and change through a project of curriculum innovation in the specific context of higher education in the Humanities. REAP (Reaching for excellent achievement programme) is an intervention with students from marginalised learning histories with the potential for excellence, enabling them to participate in postgraduate studies and contribute to future knowledge production. The project explores the ‘cultural capital’ (Bourdieu) of students in relation to the world of ideas that we take as the terrain of the social sciences. In the process we have been challenged to rethink the conventional opposition of local (African) and global (Western) knowledge systems, revealing the taken-for-granted assumptions evident in both systems. The aim of the project is to shift the practices and knowledge bases of undergraduate students to enable them to do more than simply succeed in the existing frameworks of higher education and to generate new scholarship. To draw on Bourdieu’s metaphor of learning as being like ‘fish in water’ in contexts where ‘habitus’ matches the social world of universities, this experience, for both our students and ourselves, has been like swimming upstream. The teaching task is not simply to provide new or different cultural content but rather to develop new forms of conceptual engagement that can deepen critical intellectual practices in the academy and in everyday life. If university education is to have an impact on social transformation, it must do more than induct students into moribund disciplinary domains. But it must also do more than substitute the weighty history of ideas with a populist commodification of common sense regardless of the origins of this knowledge. The complexities of the social world require the full psychological participation of students in order for them to alter the future typologies of knowledge.

Studies of heteronormativity have emphasized prescriptive sex and gender-role stereotypes related... more Studies of heteronormativity have emphasized prescriptive sex and gender-role stereotypes related to its normative content and function. The self-labelling practices amongst some gay and lesbian-identified individuals have been of interest to gender and feminist scholars related to apparent their re-inscription of the heteronormative. Through the popular constructs of ‘top’ versus ‘bottom’ critics, have argued that the heteronormative content is reproduced in essentialist and hegemonic ways. And yet, ‘top-bottom’ politics meets certain erotic needs for LGBT youth, including reasons related to physical safety for LGBT living in dangerous spaces. This paper explores the discursive constructs and meanings of gay sexuality through reference to the self-labels of a group of young gay-identified students in a Stepping Stones Workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa. The workshop was designed to address sexual and reproductive health concerns and issues amongst heterosexual members of society and has been scientifically evaluated in South Africa. The Stepping Stones has never been used amongst non-heterosexual members, thereby limiting our knowledge of the sexual and reproductive health concerns and issues amongst this cohort. The workshops were an attempt to address this gap assesses the utility of the Stepping Stones manual for LGBTIQ youth. We also explore the dynamics of safe sex negotiation and risk related to ‘top-bottom’ positioning. The discussion demonstrates the different meanings of gay sexuality in terms of identity, sexual practice and appearance for the participants.

What paradoxes, ambiguities and affects of race circulate when black bodies occupy social and ph... more What paradoxes, ambiguities and affects of race circulate when black bodies occupy social and physical space not originally designed or articulated with them in mind? Nirmal Puwar’s theorisation of the body politic and its intersection with race and gender challenges the so-called neutrality of space and embodiment. Engaging processes and moments of racialization calls for layers of analysis that interrogate both the normalization and disruption of spaces that have become racialized. In an attempt to engage this complexity, the current discussion provides an analysis of institutional spaces within higher education within a post-apartheid academy, exploring the ambiguous emotions that not only circulate in the emergence of the ‘black subject’ but also the strategic responses of ‘race traveling’ – moving between race groups and performing different racialized subjectivities – adopted by black students within this context. Bourdieu’s theorisation of social reproduction of Doxa through practice is further utilized to explore the effectiveness of these strategies.

Centre for Sexualities, AIDS and Gender University of Pretoria, 2021

The Monograph explores South Africa’s militarised ideological responses to the COVID pandemic and... more The Monograph explores South Africa’s militarised ideological responses to the COVID pandemic and its consequences. Demonstrating how discursive frames collide and collude to (re)produce particular responses to COVID-19 and their performative powers, the work explores simultaneous responses to gender-based violence in South Africa during the pandemic lockdown. The work contributes to studies on decolonial sexuality and gender studies. The analysis highlights effects of policing and militarisation to further highlight re-inscriptions of violent heterosexuality and its gendered binaries.

Self, Community and Psychology is a reader for students at the University of South Africa studyin... more Self, Community and Psychology is a reader for students at the University of South Africa studying community psychology. It brings together some of the best recent local work written from critical, social constructionist, participatory and liberatory perspectives.

Contents:

* Liberation psychology
* Critical reflections on community and psychology in South Africa
* Social psychology and research methods
* Psychology: an African perspective
* Sociocultural approaches to psychology: dialogism and African conceptions of the self
* Frantz Fanon and racial identity in postcolonial contexts
* Feminist critical psychology in South Africa
* Heterosexuality
* Activity theory as a framework for psychological research and practice in developing societies
* Participatory action research and local knowledge in community contexts
* Street life and the construction of social problems
* The role of collective action in the prevention of HIV/Aids in South Africa
* Understanding and preventing violence

Critical Psychology is an approach rather than a theory, an orientation towards psychological kno... more Critical Psychology is an approach rather than a theory, an orientation towards psychological knowledge and practice, and to relations of power in general. It is an orientation that cuts across the various sub-disciplines in psychology, and is made up of diverse theoretical perspectives and forms of practice. As such, the best way to grasp critical psychology is by getting a sense of its agendas and functioning across a spread of theories and practices. This is exactly what this book offers, a broad and flexible introduction to critical psychology that explores the diverse concerns of this orientation as it applies to the socio-political contexts of post-apartheid South Africa. The book expands on the theoretical resources usually referred to in the field of critical psychology – Marxism, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, feminism – by providing substantive discussions of Black Consciousness, post-colonialism and Africanist forms of critique.

This book is also a response to the need to rethink a more politically aware and participant psychology in South Africa; it hence features focus chapters on racism, community development, HIV/Aids and participatory action forms of research.
Contents:

* Section 1: Theoretical resources
* Psychology: an African perspective
* Dialogism and African conceptions of the self
* Frantz Fanon, Steve Biko, psychopolitics and critical psychology
* Fanon and the psychoanalysis of racism
* Psychoanalysis and critical psychology
* Marxism and critical psychology
* Psychology and the regulation of gender
* Foucault, disciplinary power, critical psychology
* Governmentality and technologies of subjectivity/self

* Section 2: The South African context
* Feminist critical psychology in South Africa
* Criticial reflections on community and psychology in South Africa
* Theorising the role of collection action management of HIV/AIDS in South Africa
* South African psychology and racism
* About black psychologies

* Section 3: Forms of practice
* Activity theory as a framework for psychological research and practice in developing societies
* Participatory action research in community contexts
* Community psychology: emotional processes in political subjects
* Discursive practice: analyzing a Lovelines text on sex communication for parents
* Writing into action: the critical research enterprise
* Liberation psychology
* Human development in ‘under-developed’ contexts

Psychology as a discipline has been criticised for perpetuating sexism, reproducing gender inequa... more Psychology as a discipline has been criticised for perpetuating sexism, reproducing gender inequality, and neglecting marginalised perspectives. Internationally, an increasing attempt is being made to provide a critical gender analysis of the discipline and practice, and to theorise the contribution that psychology may make to addressing such issues. Making an important contribution to this critique and written by a team of experienced authors, The Gender of Psychology addresses the diversity of psychological knowledge and practice through the lens of gender. This text will stimulate critical and applied thinking, and prove indispensable to students in the social sciences, particularly those in the disciplines of Gender, women's studies and psychology.

The text is divided into three key sections:
Section 1: (Re)production of knowledge in psychology
Section 2: De/reconstructing psychological knowledge about gender
Section 3: Gendered Practice and Profession

Provocative and intellectually challenging, Gender and Migration critically analyses how gender h... more Provocative and intellectually challenging, Gender and Migration critically analyses how gender has been taken up in studies of migration and its theories, practices and effects. Each essay uses feminist frameworks to highlight how more traditional tropes of gender eschew the complexities of gender and migration. In tackling this problem, this collection offers students and researchers of migration a more nuanced understanding of the topic.