Unsettling orthodoxy via epistemological jailbreak: Rethinking childhood, psychology, and wellbeing from the Caribbean

ABSTRACT

This article offers a critical overview of the coloniality of the broad fields of psychology and global mental health, as well as advocates anti-colonial approaches to childhood studies and wellness that move beyond Western frameworks and Eurocentric models. More specifically, by drawing upon transformative approaches to wellbeing being practiced by mental health promoters from the Caribbean who are committed to decolonisation, we propose, via the notion of ‘epistemological jailbreak,’ that researchers commit to more inclusive, emancipatory, and praxis-driven research agendas that decentre the hegemony of liberal worldviews and disrupt the homogenising tendencies of conventional knowledge production. To do so, we first provide a brief summary of the ways in which colonial power has shaped global health before contextualising Caribbean realities and castling light on the neuro- and Eurocentrism of childhood development. Next, we detail the multifaceted intricacies and complexities that characterise childhood throughout the Caribbean before concluding with examples of how researchers in the region and beyond are advancing both pluralistic notions and historical-material analyses of wellbeing through anti-colonial and Indigenous approaches to childhood development, cultural therapy, and community health.

KEYWORDS:

• Caribbean
• coloniality
• childhood and youth studies
• mental health
• wellbeing

Acknowledgements

We would like to extend our appreciation to Dr. Afua Twum-Danso Imoh, the external referees, and the editorial team of Third World Thematics for the time, labour, and support they respectively devoted to this special issue and the improvement of our paper, not to mention for making it a constructive and collective process. Any errors or omissions are the authors’ own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The prefixes neuro- and psy- used here denote disciplinary combinations within the wider fields of neuroscience and psychology. We employ the catch-all term ‘neuro and psy sciences’ to signify the wide family of disciplines that fall under these prefixes; highlighting that there is strong semblance between understandings of childhood and youth within contemporary Western psychology and brain development studies (Rose and Abi-Rached 2013).

2. As a critical concept, (neuro)psychologisation is defined as the extensive reach of neuro and psy discipline into various fields of study (e.g. clinical sciences), social practices (e.g. school-based education) and social relations (e.g. parenting) to show how we are increasingly subjected to the psy disciplines all of our life.

3. Writing in his sociological account of Caribbean family life Welfare and Planning in the West Indies (1946, 82–83), T. S. Simey categorised four West Indian household types as ‘The Christian Family, based on marriage and a patriarchal order […] Faithful Concubinage, again based on a patriarchal order, possessing no legal status […] The Companionate Family, in which the members live together for pleasure and convenience […] The Disintegrate Family, consisting of women and children only.’

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by fellowship awards from the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF).

Notes on contributors

Shelda-Jane Smith

Shelda-Jane Smith is a lecturer in human geography at The University of Liverpool. Her research interests coalesce around public health, race, and the environmental and medical humanities. She is interested in the fields of liberation and community psychology as well as critical studies of biomedical practice. She combines her research with her community organising with the Merseyside Caribbean Community Centre and the Liverpool African-Caribbean Grassroots Initiative.

Adaeze Greenidge

Adaeze Greenidge is a postgraduate student and researcher at the University of the West Indies with an interest in the transformative fields of liberation psychology, political ecology, environmental justice, gender justice, and critical development studies. With a background in psychology and gender and development, Adaeze’s research focuses on wellbeing and nature, social change, and postcolonial studies.

Levi Gahman

Levi Gahman works for the University of Liverpool and remains an affiliate faculty member with the University of the West Indies’ Institute for Gender and Development Studies. His focus includes anticolonial praxis, environmental defence, and movement-engaged participatory research. Levi is also author of Land, God, and Guns: Settler Colonialism and Masculinity (Zed Scholar) and Building Better Worlds: Ideas and Inspiration from the Zapatistas (Bristol University Press).