Overcoming essentialism in community psychology: The use of a narrative-discursive approach within African feminisms
- Authors: Mavuso, Jabulile M-J J , Chiweshe, Malvern T , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/434131 , vital:73033 , ISBN 978-3-030-20000-8 , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20001-5_2
- Description: A decolonial feminist community psychology approach understands individual experience as being embedded in, enabled and shaped by discursive and social power relations, and that transformative change is only possible through this contextualised understanding of individual experiences. African feminisms have been concerned with the challenging task of exploring and producing accounts of the complexity and multiplicity in womxn’s (and mxn’s) experiences of localised, multiple forms of oppression and the resistances enacted against them. We demonstrate how the utilisation of a narrative-discursive method in research that is guided by poststructural and postcolonial African feminist theorising may be a useful tool in realising the goals and aims of both decolonial feminist community psychology, and African feminist theorising. In this chapter, we draw on research that explored Zimbabwean womxn’s narratives of abortion decision-making and South African womxn’s and healthcare providers’ narratives of their experiences of the pre-abortion counselling healthcare encounter in the Eastern Cape public health sector. We also draw on our own intervention, a policy brief that had been developed into pre-abortion counselling guidelines which were informed by womxn’s narrated experiences. We argue that applying a narrative-discursive approach to African feminist theorising enables understandings of African womxn’s experiences and resistances which are informed by definitions of racial identity and culture, womxnhood, and social reality as dynamic social concepts and practices. These kinds of understandings facilitate community psychology interventions that are relevant and ‘emancipatory’ as they stem from the multiplicity of participants’ narrated experiences and the social and discursive power relations implicit in these narratives.
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- Date Issued: 2019
Psychological knowledge production about abortion: the politics of location and representation
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Mavuso, Jabulile M-J J , Chiweshe, Malvern T , du Toit, Ryan
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/443734 , vital:74148 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjsrh-2018-200208"
- Description: Despite considerable psychology research being conducted on abortion, there has been no study of the history of psychological knowledge production on the topic. The aim of our research was to analyse journal articles published in English language psychology journals using a politics of location and of representation analytical lens.
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- Date Issued: 2019
Cultural De-colonization versus Liberal approaches to abortion in Africa: The politics of representation and voice
- Authors: Chiweshe, Malvern T , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/443661 , vital:74142 , xlink:href="DOI/Handle/URL https://www.ajol.info/index.php/ajrh/article/view/175092"
- Description: Political discussions on abortion in Africa take place in the context of most countries having restrictive abortion legislation and high levels of unsafe abortion. In this paper two major political positions regarding abortion in Africa: a de-colonisation approach based on a homogenized view of ―culture‖, and a liberal approach based on ―choice‖ and rights are outlined. Using the Questions and Answers sessions of a United Nations event on maternal health in Africa as an exemplar of these positions, the paper argues that neither approach is emancipatory in the African context. A de-colonisation approach that uses static and homogenized understanding of ''culture'' risks engaging in a politics of representation that potentially silences the ―Other‖ (in this case women who terminate their pregnancies) and glosses over complexities and multiple power relations that exist on the continent. A liberal approach, premised on choice and reproductive rights, risks foregrounding individual women‘s agency at the expense of contextual dynamics, including the conditions that create unsupportable pregnancies. The paper argues for a grounded reproductive justice perspective that draws on the insights of the reproductive justice movement, but grounds these notions within the African philosophy of Hunhu/Ubuntu.
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- Date Issued: 2018
A narrative-discursive analysis of abortion decision making in Zimbabwe:
- Authors: Chiweshe, Malvern T , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143882 , vital:38291 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: The available research on abortion-decision-making tends to focus on the ‘factors’ or ‘influences’ that are seen to affect abortion decision-making. This approach is rarely able to account for the complex, multi-faceted nature of abortion decision-making, and is often not located within a framework that can unpick the complex array of power relations that underpin the ‘process’ of abortion decision-making. Data reported on in this paper were collected from three sites in Zimbabwe. Narrative interviews were conducted with 18 women who had terminated pregnancies (six at each site) and semi-structured interviews were conducted with six service providers. The women employed discursive resources around stigma, religion, health and culture in telling stories around abortion shame, abortion as justified and the fearful, secretive act of abortion. Comparisons of the way women positioned themselves and how they were positioned by health service providers point to the availability and embeddedness of social discourses and power relations that work to enable/constrain reproductive justice.
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- Date Issued: 2015
Health Psychology and the framing of abortion in Africa: a critical review of the literature
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Chiweshe, Malvern T , Mavuso, Jabulile M-J J
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143871 , vital:38290 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Despite 97% of abortions performed in Africa being classifiable as unsafe, there has been virtually no engagement in knowledge production about abortion in Africa from psychologists, outside of South Africa. Taking a feminist health psychology approach, we conducted a systematic review of published research on this topic featured in PsycINFO over a six year period. We analysed the 39 articles included in the review in terms of countries in which the research was conducted, types of research, issues covered, framings, and main findings. The results show that apart from a public health framing, perspectives that foreground contextual, social, cultural, gendered perspectives dominate. While abortion services, unsafe abortion and the incidence of abortion were well researched, so too were attitudes and public discourses on abortion. Clinical psychological, reproductive justice or rights and medical framings received little attention. We outline the implications of this knowledge base for feminist health psychology in Africa.
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- Date Issued: 2015