Abstract
Although the discipline of psychology has completed a century in India and has established itself well institutionally, the visibility and respectability of its discourses among other social sciences are modest and its contributions to societal development almost negligible. A critical examination of the development of psychology in India indicates that adopting the model of natural science to conduct psychological investigations was accorded more importance than making it socially responsive, especially during the colonial and early postcolonial period. The editors of various ICSSR surveys of psychology have expressed similar concerns about the discipline, yet they have noted that there are visible efforts to bring in changes in the discipline toward making it culturally sensitive. However, these efforts have not been sufficient to make it socially relevant and theoretically rich. It has become imperative to rethink the teaching and practices of psychology to address the challenges posed by globalization and its accompanying neoliberal ideology resulting in unprecedented changes in social structure and human subjectivities. In this chapter, we present an analysis that provides a historical context to the development of modern psychology in postcolonial India. We suggest that a sound grounding in the philosophy and history of science and politics of knowledge is needed to develop critical consciousness among psychologists to fulfill the expectations of the people, especially those who have been pushed to the margins of society.
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Notes
- 1.
WEIRD, a term proposed by Henrich, Heine & Norenzayan (2010) refers to Western, educated, industrial, rich, and (supposedly) democratic settings that have influenced knowledge construction in mainstream psychology.
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Mishra, A.K., Padalia, D. (2021). Re-envisioning Psychology: A Critical History of Psychology in India. In: Misra, G., Sanyal, N., De, S. (eds) Psychology in Modern India. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4705-5_10
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