Decolonisation in and Beyond Community Psychologies: A Transnational Plurilogue

In the midst of multi-dimensional crises, genocides, and dispossessions, community psychology is compelled to reflect critically on its mission to promote just, sustainable, and dignified ways of being. Central to this reflection is a willingness to examine community psychology’s position and, indeed, complicity within structures of coloniality. As such, the decolonial turn in community psychology represents an attitude that compels an interrogation and a reimagination of community psychology’s ethico-political orientation. We therefore begin this chapter by considering how community psychologists responding to the decolonial turn might work with others to conceptualise, build, and consolidate community and, in doing so, offer roots and routes for a decolonising community psychology. We then introduce the Handbook of Decolonial Community Psychology, which we understand as a transnational plurilogue, one whose purpose is to forge solidarities and connections between different struggles. Following this, we speak to the Handbook’s chapters, each of which fall under one of two thematic sections: Stories of Decolonising Community Psychology, and Processes of Embodied Community Psychology. We conclude by offering a number of questions that, we hope, are able to guide and embolden commitments to decolonising community psychology.