Indigenous Psychology Compared to What? Some Complexities of Culture, Language, and Social Life

Both Hwang (2019) and Sundararajan (2019) seek to reconcile 2 goals: to legitimize multiple "local" psychologies and to construct a universal, culture-inclusive theory of social and cognitive structures. After noting some tensions and potential contradictions present in the wide range of projects encompassed by the Indigenous Psychology (IP) movement, I focus on some complexities of culture, language, and social life not always factored into how indigenous psychology is conceived. Rather than assuming that a culture's ethnopsychology transparently articulates all the ways that people live and interact, we need to appreciate the multiplex nature of cultural symbols and practices. This includes tacit understandings better articulated by cultural phenomenology, as well as the polysemous meanings of language and other symbolic forms. Methodologies such as polyvocal ethnography help attenuate power/knowledge imbalances by seeking a mutuality of the interpretive gaze through full collaboration and reflexivity. Finally, a universally applicable psychological theory will need to attend to the complex relationships between individuals and the sociocultural systems that form them but that also engender disavowed motives and meanings. A transcultural theory of culture, sociality, and psychological being should take such dynamics into consideration to explore how global political-economic challenges and stressors play out in people's lived subjectivities, activity, and sociality in diverse cultural contexts.