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dc.date.accessioned2022-01-31T09:41:33Z
dc.date.available2022-01-31T09:41:33Z
dc.date.issued2022
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10852/90309
dc.description.abstractWestern psychology has, over the course of three decades, come to play a significant role in the implementation of global development agendas, especially centered on societies in the so-called ‘Global South’. The individual focus that underpins many Western psychological theories and practices often clashes with many people’s ways of organizing and experiencing the world. Paired with the principle of universality, which has a strong foothold within many established Euro-American psychological orientations, such an individual approach may lead to an ignorance of context and local realities, which in turn may have detrimental outcomes for the local beneficiaries of global development interventions. In this thesis, applying a cultural psychological framework, I examine the intersection of Western psychology and development theory and practice by focusing on how people in the recipient end of development programs in Malawi understand and negotiate the ‘development’ implemented in their communities. As such, this doctoral thesis aims to contribute to the manifold debate on the role of Western psychology theory and practice in global development implementation.en_US
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.relation.haspartPaper I. Adolfsson, J. S. & Madsen, O. J. (2020). “Nowadays there is gender”: “Doing” global gender equality in rural Malawi. Theory & Psychology, 30(1), 56-76. DOI: 10.1177/0959354319879507. The article is included in the thesis. Also available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354319879507
dc.relation.haspartPaper II. Adolfsson, J.S. & Moss, S. M. (2021). Making meaning of empowerment and development in rural Malawi—International individualism meets local communalism. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 9(2), 623-636. DOI: 10.5964/jspp.7549. The article is included in the thesis. Also available at: https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.7549
dc.relation.haspartPaper III. Adolfsson, J.S. & Moss, S. M. (2021). “Even the NGOs never talk about ufiti [Witchcraft]”: A decolonial and feminist cultural psychological analysis of individualized development clashing with communal ways of being. Human Arenas (2021). The article is included in the thesis. Also available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42087-021-00230-1
dc.relation.haspartPaper IV. Adolfsson, J. S. (2021). Naturalizing fear of Malawian witchcraft and denaturalizing Western norms of individuality: Decolonizing dominant Western assumptions. Submitted, Frontiers in Psychology. To be published. The paper is not available in DUO awaiting publishing.
dc.relation.urihttps://doi.org/10.1177/0959354319879507
dc.relation.urihttps://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.7549
dc.relation.urihttps://doi.org/10.1007/s42087-021-00230-1
dc.titleThe psychologization of development: Westernization, individualization, and the universalization of human ways of beingen_US
dc.typeDoctoral thesisen_US
dc.creator.authorAdolfsson, Johanna Sofia
dc.identifier.urnURN:NBN:no-92903
dc.type.documentDoktoravhandlingen_US
dc.identifier.fulltextFulltext https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/90309/1/PhD-Adolfsson-2022.pdf


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