Seeking utopia: Psychologies' waves toward decoloniality

Abstract

This paper provides a review of empirical studies published with a decolonial epistemic approach in psychology. Our goal was to better understand how decolonial approaches are being practiced empirically in psychology, with an emphasis on community-social psychology. We first discuss the context of colonization and coloniality in the research process as orienting information. We identified 17 peer-reviewed empirical articles with a decolonial approach to psychology scholarship and discerned four waves that characterize the articles: relationally-based research to transgress fixed hierarchies and unsettle power, research from the heart, sociohistorical intersectional consciousness, and desire-based future-oriented research to rehumanize and seek utopia. Community-social psychology research with a decolonial approach has the potential to remember grassroots efforts, decolonizing our world.

Keywords: community psychology; decoloniality; empirical research; relationality; social psychology.