Decolonizing Psychology: Globalization, Social Justice, and Indian Youth Identities (Explorations in Narrative Psychology)

"In recent years, the news media has directed a significant amount of attention to the effect of globalization on the second most populous nation in the world: India. With the emergence of new economic opportunities and the influx of foreign popular culture and commodities, India has experienced an enormous sea of change in the last few decades. In Decolonizing Psychology: Globalization, Social Justice, and Indian Youth Identities, author Sunil Bhatia focuses on the psychological tensions that these changes have brought upon Indian youth today. Drawing on dozens of interviews, Bhatia offers readers a compelling glimpse and analysis of how these youth populations are engaging with the emerging presence of globalization in their day-to-day lives. As Bhatia explains, young Indians use the term 'world class selves' as a way to identify and describe the ways in which globalization has strengthened their standing in the world. By frequenting urban cafes and bars, watching American television and cinema, traveling abroad, and regularly consuming foreign commodities, Indian youth absorb the westernized culture and view themselves as peers to their western counterparts. At the same time, however, these young Indians proudly hold onto their homeland's traditions governing family and religious values. With remarkable clarity and nuance, Bhatia sheds an important light on the universalizing power and the colonizing dimensions of Euro-American psychology. By integrating insights from postcolonial, narrative, and cultural psychologies to explore how Euro-American scientific psychology became the standard approach, Bhatia reminds readers of whose stories are not being told, what knowledge is not being considered, and whose lives are not included in the central understanding of psychology today."-- Back cover Decolonizing Psychology sheds light on the universalizing power and the colonizing dimensions of Euro-American psychology. The book integrates insights from postcolonial, narrative, and cultural psychology to ask how Euro-American scientific psychology becomes the standard-bearer of psychology throughout the world, whose stories get told, what knowledge is considered as legitimate, and whose lives are considered central to the future of psychology. Urban Indian youth represent one of the largest segments of the youth population across the world and yet remain so utterly invisible in the discipline of psychology. By using ethnographic and interview methods, this book draws a nuanced narrative portrait of how urban youth in Pune, India, who belong to the transnational elite, middle and working classes, reimagine their identities within the new structural and neoliberal cultural contexts of globalization and neoliberalization. The book examines how particular class identities shape youth narratives about globalization and “Indianness” generally, as well as specific stories about self and identity, social inequality, dignity, poverty, family, relationships, work, marriage, and practices of consumption. The book articulates an alternative vision of psychology in which questions of social justice and equality are seen as central to its mission, and it is argued that a psychology is needed that urgently and meaningfully speaks to the lives of the majority of the world’s population -- Oxford Scholarship Online __Decolonizing Psychology__ sheds light on the universalizing power and the colonizing dimensions of Euro-American psychology. The book integrates insights from postcolonial, narrative, and cultural psychology to ask how Euro-American scientific psychology becomes the standard-bearer of psychology throughout the world, whose stories get told, what knowledge is considered as legitimate, and whose lives are considered central to the future of psychology. Urban Indian youth represent one of the largest segments of the youth population across the world and yet remain so utterly invisible in the discipline of psychology. By using ethnographic and interview methods, this book draws a nuanced narrative portrait of how urban youth in Pune, India, who belong to the transnational elite, middle and working classes, reimagine their identities within the new structural and neoliberal cultural contexts of globalization and neoliberalization. The book examines how particular class identities shape youth narratives about globalization and “Indianness” generally, as well as specific stories about self and identity, social inequality, dignity, poverty, family, relationships, work, marriage, and practices of consumption. The book articulates an alternative vision of psychology in which questions of social justice and equality are seen as central to its mission, and it is argued that a psychology is needed that urgently and meaningfully speaks to the lives of the majority of the world’s population. Introduction: Decolonizing Psychology: Transnational Cultures, Social Justice, and Indian Youth IdentitiesChapter 1: Decolonizing Moves: Beyond Eurocentric Culture, Narrative, and IdentityChapter 2: The Cultural Psychology of Globalization: Constructing Desirable Identities and SpacesChapter 3: Psychology and the Neoliberal Self: Global Culture and The "New Colonial" SubjectsChapter 4: Stories and Theories: Globalization, Narrative and Meaning-MakingChapter 5: Travelling Transnational Identities: Imagining Stories of "Ultimate" IndiannessChapter 6: Outsourcing the Self: Work, Love, and Money in the Call Center CultureChapter 7: Identities Left Behind: Globalization, Social Inequality and the Search for DignityChapter 8: Towards a Transnational Cultural Psychology: Narrative and Social Justice in the Age of Unequal GlobalizationChapter 9: Studying Globalization at Home: Reflections on Method, Self-Reflexivity and Narrative Inquiry In Decolonizing Psychology: Globalization, Social Justice, and Indian Youth Identities, Sunil Bhatia explores how the cultural dynamics of neo-liberal globalization shape urban Indian youth identities and, in particular, he articulates how Euro-American psychological science continues to prevent narratives of self and identity in non-Western nations from entering the broader conversation