The Western psychologization of global development: A cultural and decolonial approach

Abstract

Euro-American psychology’s strong focus on the individual mind and behavior has become a fundamental part of global development agendas. Concepts like self-regulation, self-actualization, self-efficacy, and behavior change decorate the development discourse. Scholars term this phenomenon the “psychologization of development.” The main driver of this focus is likely rooted in the hegemonic belief that Western psychological theories are universally applicable. Yet, the discipline’s embeddedness in Euro-American imperialism, globalization, and neoliberalism makes its theories particularly un-universal and unfit in many contexts. Nevertheless, people in non-Western societies are increasingly subjected to development interventions targeting their individual behavior. Using examples from research in sub-Saharan Africa of how articulations of harmful witchcraft may increase because of development interventions that promote individualized ways of being and thinking, this article prompts a cultural and decolonial perspective to reimagine other ways of doing development.

Keywords

cultural and decolonial psychological perspectives global development Malawi/sub-Saharan Africa Western psychologization

Psychological concepts and practices have come to play a substantial role in global development policies and practices. The Euro-American psychological discipline’s focus on individual cognition, attitudes, and behavior has, amongst others, been promoted in World Bank development reports (World Bank, 2014) and the 2030 Agenda’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs; Izutsu et al., 2015). This trend is evident in how terminology that focuses on the individual, like self-regulation, self-efficacy, self-actualization, behavior change, agency, resilience, and nudge, now dominate the global development discourse (Berndt & Boeckler, 2016; Klein & Mills, 2017; Rutherford, 2018). In turn, global development organizations mainstream this focus to local populations by implementing self-transformation interventions that are centered on development projects that target the individual behavior and mindset of their “beneficiaries” (Klein, 2016; Rutherford, 2018). Critical scholars argue that this approach abstracts people from their sociogeographic, historical, and cultural context, enabling individualized explanations to social inequality and poverty and turning development into a behavioral issue—a “problem of the mind” (Howell, 2011, p. 98; Morgan, 2016). Thus, instead of diagnosing societal and structural causes of distress, this approach troubleshoots and regulates the individual. Accordingly, equipping people with a behavior and mindset that helps them cope individually with(in) systemic barriers is understood as the best way to achieve poverty reduction and global development. This development ideology and practice is unfortunate, as people who “fail to develop” in accordance with conventional global norms may be accused of lacking achievement motivation (Rutherford, 2018), blame themselves for their social circumstances (Morgan, 2016), and/or be culturally blamed for not living up to dominant development ideals (Pot, 2019a). Furthermore, the narrow focus on individual psychology as the basis for personal progress obscures the role that historical and societal structures, like patriarchy, racism, colonialism, capitalism, and neoliberalism, play in reproducing hierarchies, oppression, poverty, inequality, and exclusion (Estrada-Villalta & Adams, 2018).

Scholars reviewing this process argue that global development is under psychologization (De Vos, 2012; Howell, 2011; Klein, 2016). In short, “psychologization” refers to the phenomenon in which psychological theory and practice transfers from its natural habitats in laboratories, universities, and therapeutic contexts, and starts infusing and dominating arenas outside its traditional disciplinary borders (De Vos, 2013; Madsen, 2018). This theoretical discursive spread has been defined as psychology coming to signify “other ways of forming, organizing, disseminating, and implementing truths about persons” (Rose, 1998, p. 59). Thus, psychologization occurs when something that had previously not been a psychological matter starts appearing as one; when psychological terminology is used to explain what consists of everyday and institutional life, that is, the life that plays out in schoolrooms, courtrooms, bedrooms, prisons, factories, and hospitals (Rose, 1998). Accordingly, psychologization can be argued to demonstrate the power and dominance that psychological theory and practice have in society at large (Madsen, 2020; Teo & Afşin, 2020).

Given psychology’s Euro-American origins, psychologization has primarily been a Western¹ concern (Madsen, 2014). However, since the 1990s, globalization has mainstreamed psychological theories and practices mounted on Western norms and ideas to societies in the so-called Global South (Parker, 2007). This transfer of norms has influenced and changed the way development is understood and implemented (Howell, 2011), and how recipients of development interventions define themselves and others (Mills, 2014; Morgan, 2016). The international development industry no longer exports tangible aid in the form of water, tents, nutrition, and blankets, “but Western ways of being” (Adolfsson, 2022, p. 13). Rather than dispensing food packets, agents distribute “knowledge, which pretends to cover the field of being, the very ontological sphere” (De Vos, 2012, p. 113). Thus, while aid and development recipients before the “psychological turn” were able to “be themselves,” they are now encouraged to alter their minds and behaviors, to demonstrate the right aspirations, attitudes, behavior, and cognitions. Although critics recognize the impact of Western hegemonic psychology on development, the actual consequences of this convergence are understudied (Estrada-Villalta & Adams, 2018; Klein & Mills, 2017; Madsen, 2018).

This article contributes with examples to nuance, critically reflect, and further an understanding of the cross-pollination between global development policy and practice and Western psychology. By using empirical examples from scholars on sub-Saharan African development as well as our own recent research in Malawi, we demonstrate how the psychologized focus on individual mind and behavior may be harmful for the recipients of such development interventions and may result in less development. The article unpacks how the psychologization of development acts as a vehicle for coloniality; that is, the enduring patterns of power that evolved following colonialism, which perpetuate and promote certain hegemonic norms about how life should be organized and experienced (Grosfoguel, 2002; Quijano, 2000). First, the article provides a trajectory of the various historical and recent motives behind Western psychology’s expansion into the development sector and its connection with the West’s colonial mission and ongoing coloniality. By linking individualized development incentives to people’s exposition and vulnerability to harmful articulations of ufiti (translated to witchcraft in English), we demonstrate the potential implications of this. In the following section, we apply a cultural and decolonial psychological approach that reimagines how de-psychologized, un-individualized and un-universalized development approaches may be more helpful for people who are subjected to global development interventions. Lastly, we suggest several policy implementations and avenues for future research.

The history of the psychology behind global development agendas

The founding of the psychological discipline in the late 19th century is well anchored within an era of European colonialism, patriarchy, industrial revolution, and the quest for modernity (Bulhan, 2015; Malherbe & Ratele, 2022; Nsamenang, 2007). In Developing Minds, Klein (2016) connects psychological interventions to the modernity incentives that came out of Western regimes’ colonial domination in the Global South. She notes that, “Interventions from colonisation through to the neoliberal era . . . have always had a psychological dimension” (Klein, 2016, p. 43). In governing the colonized populations, the colonial powers intervened in their subjectivities with the aim of controlling their minds and behaviors (Bulhan, 2015; Fanon, 1952/2004, 1963/2012; Ratele, 2019). The engineers behind these interventions—that is, the Western powers—had hegemonic presumptions of the Western world as the blueprint of the modern and developed human (Klein, 2016). In the aftermath of World War II, development interventions were implemented in the war-scarred states of Europe to secure two fundamental conditions. The first was securing reconciliation and peace in the West by establishing democracy, capitalist integration, and technological infrastructure (Klein, 2016). The second was modernizing the population by conditioning and shaping individuals’ aspirations, attitudes, and worldviews; their minds and behaviors (Klein, 2016). This development formula later became “an important blueprint for the West’s modernizing mission for the Global South” (Klein, 2016, p. 45). Accordingly, interventions in the distant Other’s livelihood changed from direct colonial exploitation and oppression to economic and technological modernization and mental processes. In the mid-1980s, the former director of the US Agency for International Development (the world’s largest donor organization of global development), Harrison (1985), stated in Underdevelopment Is a State of Mind that social instability and poverty could be explained to a large extent by “underdeveloped” people’s traditional and irrational behavior (Estrada-Villalta & Adams, 2018). By the end of the 20th century, the entire meaning of development had changed significantly. As Howell (2011) notes, “Development had always been a project of modernization and transformation” (p. 98). However, it was only in the mid-1990s that the explicit aim of transforming populations became prominent, shifting from perceiving such transformations as a natural consequence of development policies (Howell, 2011). This change is reflected in the understanding of development interventions as efforts “to change whole societies and the behavior and attitudes of the people within them” (Duffield, 2014, p. 42).

In more recent times, the World Bank’s 2014 World Development Report, Mind, Society, and Behavior, posited a “lack of self-control” as the reason for individual poverty (World Bank, 2014, p. 120). In line with this convention, psychological models that promote behavioral change, like self-regulation and self-actualization, are deemed the most effective for furthering the “right” mindset that aligns with the economic standards in the capitalist and neoliberal growth and development paradigm (Estrada-Villalta & Adams, 2018; Rutherford, 2018). The current global development agenda, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), has mental health as an integral part, stressing that psychological well-being is crucial for achieving sustainable development (World Health Organization, 2018). As a response to this inclusion, there has been an accelerated interest in psychology playing a part in realizing the SDGs (Flores & Rubin, 2022; MacLachlan & McVeigh, 2021). While it may be argued that the recognition and incorporation of mental health in the SDGs adds a policy focus on psychological aspects, scholars warn of a furthering of “individualized and psychologized responses to poverty” (Mills, 2018, p. 844). Sustainable development is understood as secured by long-term behavioral change (Hayward, 2016). The belief is that “Training transmits knowledge, and in the [development] donor’s view, once transmitted, knowledge permanently transforms those in whom it has been instilled” (Swidler & Watkins, 2017, p. 175). Transferred into development interventions on the ground, in what are often referred to as “developing countries,” scholars note that individual capacity building and training of target groups have become the main focus of development agents (Classen, 2013; Swidler & Watkins, 2017). Through training activities and practices, recipients of development incentives are thus “equipped” with the right mindset; the right psychology to change their individual lives. Additionally, it is also important to note that research funding in “developing countries” is now explicitly linked to this development agenda. As a result, it is challenging to secure funding for research that falls outside of these objectives. Working as psychologists in settings with limited resources in South Africa, Barnes and Milovanovic (2015) were often “called on to design agency-based behavioral change interventions to encourage poor people to take the steps to protect themselves and their children from their unhealthy environments” (p. 224). However, as they highlight, the emphasis on individual behavior change and self-actualization might hinder the ability of communities to collectively resist the oppressive societal systems that perpetuate poverty among individuals and groups. Relatedly, Morgan’s (2016) research on how development interventions targeting street children in sub-Saharan Africa demonstrates the individualization and psychologizing of social problems. Several of Morgan’s (2016) research participants (“including the young people and the facilitators as well as practitioners and donors”) expressed an internalization of the psychologized development discourse. As one interviewee noted regarding partaking in the interventions, “[the intervention] helps us change our mind psychologically, become responsible citizens and start to do things responsibly” (p. 179). The danger with this individualized development discourse is a lack of recognition of the structural socioeconomic, political, and historical explanations of inequality. Instead of questioning the systematic political drivers behind people’s distress, this approach pathologizes poverty and blames the victims, who, when internalizing, may, as Morgan (2016) notes, blame themselves.

To sum up, it is the individualization and behavioralization of development, the ability to shape subjectivities, that has made conventional Western psychological theory a popular element in global development policy and practice (Burman, 2020; Estrada-Villalta & Adams, 2018).

The universal individual

The success with conventional Euro-American psychology mainstreaming into the global development arena is likely an effect of the discipline’s claim that many of its models and theories are universally applicable (Bhatia & Priya, 2021; Koch, 2007). According to this perspective, psychological traits are assumed to appear in the same manner regardless of cultural and contextual circumstances. However, criticism toward the American Psychological Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the most applied system for identifying and diagnosing psychological abnormality, shows that the criteria for diagnoses often fail to account for cultural differences (Bredström, 2019; Kriegler & Bester, 2014). The DSM primarily relies on mental health and illness concepts derived from Western societies and is b(i)ased on observations of behavior that are considered abnormal within a Western cultural context, without sufficient consideration for how those same behaviors might be considered normal or acceptable within other cultural contexts (Hinton & Good, 2009; Summerfield, 2001). For instance, scholars argue that the current diagnostic criteria for posttraumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), as outlined in the DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2022), are based on a Euro-American understanding of trauma that has limited applicability to the experiences and responses to trauma of people from diverse cultural backgrounds (Friedman et al., 2011; Kimmell et al., 2021). Thus, the idea of universalism is not culture-free, but rather profoundly established within a hegemonic Western paradigm (Ratele, 2019), and often said to support ideological ends (Teo & Afşin, 2020). Researchers assert that the psychological disciplines’ focus on individualist ways of being has served both as generator and catalyst for the governance of the Western neoliberal agenda, which furthers the idea of self-controlled, self-sufficient, and self-actualized personhood (De Vos, 2012; Dhar & Dixit, 2022; Rose, 1998). Within this norm, individuals are understood as autonomous agents who independently and free from sociohistoric, economic, and geographical constraints can overcome structural inequality and achieve personal—and thereby societal—growth (Klein & Mills, 2017; Morgan, 2016; Rutherford, 2018). While this prototype of personhood is contested for being unrepresentative of people and societies in the West, it is even more questioned when applied to individuals and groups outside the West (Estrada-Villalta & Adams, 2018; Ratele, 2019). Global South psychologists agree that the Western psychological knowledge-system often is irrelevant for their local settings, and even works as a vehicle for cultural oppression, often referred to as coloniality (Bhatia & Priya, 2021; Maldonado-Torres, 2017).

Coloniality

While the explicitly colonial era is over, Western powers continue to be present in Global South contexts, and the ethnic and racial categories constructed and maintained during the colonial period still condition how and what people think of themselves and others. This type of power has been termed coloniality (Escobar, 2007; Grosfoguel, 2002; Mignolo, 2007, 2010; Quijano, 2000, 2007). As a product of imperialism and colonialism, coloniality is “maintained alive in books, in the criteria for academic performance, in cultural patterns, in common sense, in the self-image of peoples, in aspirations of self, and so many other aspects of our modern experience” (Maldonado-Torres, 2007, p. 243). The coloniality concept is commonly understood as three intimately linked, yet different dimensions: coloniality of power, knowledge, and being. Coloniality of power identifies how racial, social, and political power relations established by colonial regimes created discriminating and stereotyped discourses that continue to reflect the postcolonial world, and how these hierarchies in turn formed and continue to form the Western capitalist and neoliberal world order (Quijano, 2000). Coloniality of knowledge, Dastile and Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013) state, refers to the phenomenon of epistemological colonization, whereby Euro-American knowledge dominated and destroyed other knowledge systems, particularly in the colonial world, while simultaneously exploiting and assimilating elements that it found useful for the imperialist agenda. The last dimension, coloniality of being, regards the psychological and physical conditions of the colonized. Being is commonly defined by the components of time, space, and embodied subjectivity and intersubjectivity; that is, societies’ collective ways of being, including their traditions, taboos, prejudices, attitudes, rites, and myths (Maldonado-Torres, 2017). The most explicit characteristic of coloniality is prevalent in how hierarchies and power relations established by colonial oppression still materialize as natural facts (Bulhan, 2015; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2014). The more implicit aspects are revealed in how some ways of being, seeing, and knowing are presented as more correct than others (Adams et al., 2018; Ratele, 2019). These “more correct” ways are “reflected in contemporary ‘development’ policies . . . among other forms of social, economic, and political control” (Maldonado-Torres, 2016, p. 1).

To sum up, patterns of coloniality operate as accepted truths about human mind and behavior, and as a dominant field of knowledge, Western psychological theory and practice reproduce the power to sustain certain ways of being, seeing, knowing, experiencing, and organizing everyday life. Thus, when hegemonic assumptions like ideals of independent and individualized personhood are championed as norms in contexts where such ways of being are nonstandard and/or disputed, they express a form of coloniality.

The moral being

In Malawi, like in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa—as well as in many places across the globe—the self and the moral being are to a large extent based on norms related to mutual dependency and reciprocity (Lwanda, 2005; Nsamenang, 2006). In contrast to the Western context, which treasures individualistic traits such as independence, self-sufficiency, and self-actualization, individuals in other parts of the world may thrive and survive because of their mutual obligations and reliance on others (Adjei, 2019; Markus & Kitayama, 1994). People are often expected to share the responsibility for challenges and needs of their extended family and community, and to prioritize the collective well-being over individual interests (Mbiti, 1990; Nsamenang, 1995, 2004). Like many sub-Saharan African contexts, Malawian society is characterized by what Geschiere (2013) calls “a powerful egalitarian ideology” (p. 36), where social life at all levels “is defined by complex relations of reciprocal dependence” (Swidler & Watkins, 2017, p. xii). As Chabal and Daloz (1999) highlight, obligations are fundamental to selfhood in sub-Saharan Africa: “the question is not whether to be party to a system of obligations or not but how to manage one’s place within such a system. To have no obligations is not to belong; it is not to be fully and socially human” (p. 48). For people in immobile, unequal, and poor societies, like most of Malawi, the norms of interdependence, reciprocity, and solidarity create informal security nets that secure them from unexpected risks (Ferguson, 2013; Swidler & Watkins, 2017). Therefore, accumulation of wealth is tightly linked to one’s obligations to the society, and those who fail to fulfil their reciprocal obligations may be perceived as immoral, antisocial, and egoistic (Englund, 1996; Ferguson, 2006; Marie, 2000). Accordingly, to practice individualism, independency, and self-actualization may be perceived as the very antithesis of morality and is often associated with selfishness, greed, and antisocial behavior (Comaroff & Comaroff, 1993; Englund, 1996; Lwanda, 2005). Furthermore, in Malawi, and many other places, such immoral behavior is also often strongly associated with evil supernatural powers like witchcraft (Ashforth, 2005; Englund, 1996; Geschiere, 2013; Lwanda, 2005; Marie, 2000).

Western individualism, development norms, and witchcraft

In many parts of the world, including sub-Saharan Africa, people may attribute collective and personal misfortune and suffering to the interaction of evil supernatural and spiritual powers. Witchcraft is a type of invisible, yet powerful supernatural violence that invokes what Ashforth (2005) terms spiritual insecurity. Lwanda (2005) notes that the belief in and fear of witchcraft is a sociopsychological phenomenon nearly unanimous among the Malawian population. A recent Afrobarometer (2022) study reveals that 74% of the population strongly believes in the existence of witchcraft. The violence associated with acts of witchcraft is perceived as just as harmful and real as other forms of violence, with its pervasive threat and secretive dimension often making it even more powerful. While anyone can be accused of and face assaults for being a witch, or being in conspiracy with witches, Malawian children, women, and elderly people are the most exposed and vulnerable. Whereas women, often elderly, are accused of being witches, children are typically seen as their victims, their innocent and incognizant assistants, their proxy warriors (Mgbako & Glenn, 2011). Younger women are often victims of witchcraft that attacks their fertility. Barrenness—both human and agricultural—is typically seen as the result of bewitchment (Chilimampunga & Thindwa, 2012; Mgbako & Glenn, 2011). Generally, all types of disasters, such as poor harvests, poverty, sickness, and death, may be explained as perpetrated by malicious spirits like witches or ordinary individuals who use evil forces like witchcraft to inflict harm on others (Government of Malawi, 2021; Lwanda, 2005).

For many, the spiritual insecurity and anxiety related to witchcraft pervade most aspects of everyday life (Ashforth, 2005). As the antithesis of morality, witches, as Marie (2000) notes, “take without giving, accumulate without retiring, exploit, steal, pillage and kill, assume no obligation but take everything . . . they always want more and use it for their own benefit without redistributing” (p. 143). As such, unshared accumulation of goods is a sign of immorality, and therefore, unbridled individual success may be dangerous when not shared. One common way to protect oneself from being attacked by others’ sanctions, vengeance, and harmful acts of witchcraft is to strive to redistribute one’s wealth and assets (Ashforth, 2005; Lwanda, 2005). As Englund (1996) clarifies, witchcraft presents a perspective and argument on the very nature of what it means to accumulate wealth:

Witchcraft unravels a relational notion of personhood; accumulation is endowed with moral adequacy as long as the enterprising person makes his or her constitutive relationship visible, usually through gift-giving, patronage or feasting. Conversely, the morally despised form of accumulation derives from the perception of the person as individual. (p. 260)

Consequently, to conduct independent personhood molded on norms of individualism, independency, and self-actualization may not only violate communal moral principles (Englund, 1996; Haynes, 2017), but may pose social risks and harm for individuals in the form of witchcraft assaults and accusations (Ashforth, 2005; Marie, 2000). Indeed, imported ideas of development that focus on hegemonic Western norms of the individualized mind and individualized behavior may—besides failing—also actively create unexpected detrimental outcomes for the so-called beneficiaries of development incentives (Adams et al., 2018; Nsamenang, 2008). Although the link between Western-imposed individualism molded on neoliberal ideology and sub-Saharan African articulations of witchcraft is well documented—especially by anthropologists (see Ferguson, 2006; Geschiere, 2013; J. H. Smith, 2008)—development actors working in African contexts often fail to acknowledge this moral and social reality (Leistner, 2014; Swidler & Watkins, 2017). The principal misconception lies in the belief that African recipients, with only limited assistance from development actors, will readily embrace and adopt Western norms of independence and individualism, which in turn will foster autonomous agency that eventually will do away with poverty (Swidler & Watkins, 2017). Much of the same development assumption is made regarding beliefs in witchcraft; that primitive superstitious beliefs will disappear with increased levels of development and education (Englund, 1996; Geschiere, 1997; Leistner, 2014). Yet, despite decades of Western-led interventions in the name of development, beliefs in witchcraft have not ceased. Rather, in many African regions the opposite has occurred, with assaults related to witchcraft beliefs seeming to have escalated (Kroesbergen-Kamps, 2020; J. H. Smith, 2019). Scholars link this increase of supernatural harm to heightened levels of social and economic inequity because of intensified foreign involvement, which has fueled neoliberal capitalism and furthered corruption, inequality, exclusion, social instability, land alienation, and power asymmetries, disrupting social relations and informal safety nets (Hickel, 2014b; Lwanda, 2005; Murrey, 2015; Redding, 2019). According to some theories, the social discourse of witchcraft may be understood as local idioms for making sense of exploitation, social inequality, and public unrest (Comaroff & Comaroff, 1993; Geschiere, 1997, 2013; White, 2000); discourses that intersect with understandings of capitalism and state and society interactions (Ashforth, 2005; Englund, 1996; Ferguson, 2006). Consequently, development incentives with their neoliberal understandings may paradoxically arrest development, as they may generate antisocial and material individualism, which breaches with communal social life, and is often associated with selfish accumulation of wealth through acts of witchcraft (J. H. Smith, 2008). Although the association between foreign involvement—such as development interventions—and articulations of witchcraft has had extensive implications for how many sub-Saharan Africans conceptualize development (McNamara, 2015; J. H. Smith, 2008), this link is surprisingly underrecognized (T. A. Smith et al., 2017). For instance, Leistner (2014) argues that given the considerable influence that beliefs in witchcraft have had on development implementation, it is extraordinary that the subject remains completely ignored in the vast body of literature dealing with African development. We argue that ignoring the role of supernatural phenomena like witchcraft in global development reflects a Western prerogative and power over the definition of what is considered important in development policy and practice.

Malawi: The research context

Like many African postcolonial nations, Malawi faces challenges in competing within the globalized and rapidly advancing neoliberal world (Mathur & Mulwafu, 2018; Zulu, 2012). And like other postcolonies, the state is deeply dependent on foreign loans and aid (Chasukwa & Banik, 2019; Ngwira & Mayhew, 2020), governed by transnational agencies like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (Moyo, 2009; Murithi, 2009). In addition, Malawi has a remarkably high presence of international development agencies (Kloster, 2021; Pot, 2019b). People in rural districts, where about 80% of the population lives (World Bank, 2021), are often subjected to development interventions that aspire to change their life circumstances for the better (Classen, 2013; Johnson, 2018; Pot, 2019a; Swidler & Watkins, 2017). As described above, much of this change is understood to happen by training individuals to change their mind and behavior, with little focus given to political and structural change. The architects of development agendas are often based in Western places, politics, and practices (Nsamenang, 2008; Watkins, 2013). Even though they have good intentions, their lack of knowledge of local contexts is evident in the many unsuccessful attempts to create sustainable development (Classen, 2013; J. H. Smith, 2008). Yet, the “failure” is often assigned to the local recipients (Swidler & Watkins, 2017). Pot (2019a) for example, demonstrates how culturalism—that is, “the intellectual figure that reduces culture to mere essence and that makes culture the ultimate interpretation of human behavior” (Fassin, 2001, p. 302)—played out in a development project to reduce teenage pregnancies among the Yao ethnic group in southern Malawi. She notes how “behavioral, and cultural factors were overemphasized to activate community representatives to take action in line with project aims. At other times, culturalism strategically served to explain project success and failure” (Pot, 2019a, p. 338). Rather than assessing the design of the interventions, unsuccessful development projects may be explained by behavior associated with the local culture.

In the following section, we provide empirical examples both from other scholars’ and our own research on the relationship between Western-informed development interventions and articulations of witchcraft.

Development means “everyone moving forward together”

We start with our own data from the first author’s doctoral dissertation, based on ethnographic fieldwork over five months in two rural villages in southern rural Malawi in 2017. The second author is a Malawian ethnographer with extensive experience of working with foreign researchers (including the first author) in different rural settings in Malawi. She was the cultural expert, guide, and interpreter of the project (speaking both Chichewa and Yao, the languages of the two largest ethnical groups). Most individuals from the two rural villages where we conducted fieldwork belong to the Yao ethnic group, primarily practicing Islam and mostly residing in southern Malawi. Others comprise a blend of Chewa, Ngoni, and Lomwe ethnicities, predominantly practicing Christianity. People in these villages often referred to the first author as mnzunga, a term which translates to English as white, wealthy, European woman (Paass, 2016). This reflected a colonial history intertwined with connotations of the enduring perceptions many Malawians have of white Europeans. As such, the first author’s presence in these villages was arguably a representation of coloniality and the interconnected structural and systemic inequality linking the local Global South and Western contexts (Adolfsson, 2022). The first author being both mnzunga and an English-speaking researcher involved several dimensions of power. Taking measures to minimize the potential influence that this power asymmetry might have on the informants and their interactions with us, we were always explicit about the importance of interlocutors’ role as experts of their social and cultural context, expressing gratitude to learn from them and hear their views and opinions on the many development incentives in their community (Adolfsson, 2022).

Many of the informants expressed a sense of helplessness and apathy toward the numerous international development organizations operating in their community, as they felt they had no say or impact on their own activities. Many development projects focused on life-skill training interventions and cash transfer programs that concerned specific behaviors and mindsets of certain individuals, with aims like “empowering women and girls,” “preventing adolescent pregnancy,” and “keeping girls in school,” and did not include all villagers (Adolfsson & Moss, 2021). This is in line with Classen’s (2013) observation that organizations’ development incentives in Malawi are seldom community based. However, this way of singling out certain individuals and groups to benefit from development activities made little sense to the community members. Many expressed sentiments along the lines of “why only these people, rather than focusing on everybody?” (Adolfsson & Moss, 2021, p. 630). For the villagers, this method of implementing development went against their perception of what development ought to entail. They believed that development should be advantageous to everyone in the community; based on their understanding, development should move everyone forward together (Adolfsson & Moss, 2021). Furthermore, as it was not transparent how people secured a place on the enrolment list for development organizations, suspicions of corruption were raised, which fueled envy and resentment. The lack of transparency, villagers told us, caused people to speculate if the beneficiaries of development interventions had engaged supernatural powers like witchcraft to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of the community (Adolfsson & Moss, 2023). This link between suspicions of witchcraft and the accumulation of wealth is tied to the notion that wealth gained “without sweat” is gained through magic (Lwanda, 2005; Sanders, 2009). That is, goods obtained without visible work are understood to have been accumulated under mysterious circumstances; when people—seemingly overnight—become affluent seemingly without reason (Englund, 1996). As J. H. Smith (2008) asserts, witchcraft allows an individual or a witch the ability to achieve selfish success without engaging in labor or effort. Thus, when people gain goods—here being foreign development interventions—without a transparent trace of the effort required to obtain them, they may be accused of corruption or of having used witchcraft to prosper. However, participants across the field setting explained that there are ways to achieve individual prosperity without encountering jealousy or accusations of greediness and witchcraft (Adolfsson & Moss, 2023). One manifested way was for individuals to be transparent and open with the effort they had put in to achieve their success. As one young female participant explained, although successful in school, the villagers could not accuse her of witchcraft as they had seen her struggle to get where she was (Adolfsson & Moss, 2023). That is, they had seen that there were no supernatural forces involved. Perhaps the most evident way to avoid accusations of witchcraft was, according to our research participants, to share opportunities and benefits. This reciprocity aspect was highlighted by a male focus group discussion participant who explained:

If you help others with what you get, you can’t get bewitched, nothing can happen to you. People can be jealous, for example if you have bought a car, but if there is need in the village, maybe someone is sick, then they know that they can go to you for help. (Adolfsson & Moss, 2023, p. 437)

Here, this informant maintains a common notion among the villagers, that sharing is caring, which works in the opposite way to witchcraft. The villagers’ conception of development as a collective effort was further reinforced by their aspirations for their community. Many had clear ideas of how their society could best develop. Amongst others, they wished for public goods, like safer roads for their children’s school commute, a new maize mill, a water scheme, electricity, and a functioning hospital (Adolfsson & Moss, 2021). This collective understanding of development is intricately connected to the understanding of the moral being as interconnected and obligated to social responsibility. In a related vein, one key informant from the first author’s urban fieldwork, who previously worked for a major international organization in Malawi, shared an incident where her former organization had distributed bags of maize-meal in a rural community. However, the organization only provided aid to the households they deemed poor by their own criteria. When the organization left the village, the chief gathered all the maize-meal bags and divided the contents evenly between all the households. According to the informant, the chief did this to prevent suspicion and allegations of corruption and jealousy from the villagers. As she noted, “everybody got to get something!” (Adolfsson & Moss, 2023, p. 433). This act of resistance, which challenges the standard procedure of the organization, is possible when tangible assets are allocated, yet such redistribution and other more collective ways of doing development become harder when the “assets” are in the form of individual coaching of behavior and mindset.

On the same topic, several of the informants from the rural community in which we worked reported that the organization’s lack of transparency and unfair way of operating had created suspicion toward the village’s chief. Some said that the unjust allocation of interventions and goods was due to his nepotism and corruption, and that the chief unfairly benefitted his family and friends at the expense of the rest of the community by registering them on the enrolment list for the organizations. The chief, on the other hand, expressed frustration at this dilemma of being caught in foreign definitions and ideas of how development should be done in his community. To him, the organizations came from “the outside” with their own criteria of poverty and need, which he had no ability to influence. Here, we see how external ideas of how to conduct development combined with ignorance of local ways of organizing and experiencing everyday life, as well as of the local power dynamics, may create unforeseen and detrimental outcomes (Adolfsson & Moss, 2021, 2023). The importance of traditional leadership lies in the role of exercising power, authority, and governance (Chinsinga, 2006; Logan, 2013), which is essential for maintaining morality and stability and for fostering a sense of community (Swidler & Watkins, 2017). Thus, in this case, if the chief’s credibility is called into question, it risks jeopardizing his authority and, by extension, the social fabric, stability, and well-being of the whole community.

These notions are not exclusive to rural Malawi. Research from across sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere reveals how development interventions may create contradictory and negative outcomes (see Adams et al., 2018; Hickel, 2014a; Klein, 2016; Swidler & Watkins, 2017). As earlier mentioned, the accumulation of riches and progress is typically understood as goods that should be of benefit to the entire society (Englund, 1996; J. H. Smith, 2008). Individuals who fail to achieve their social obligations are often perceived as selfish, greedy, antisocial, and immoral—even witches (Geschiere, 2013). In Bewitching Development, J. H. Smith (2008) provides valuable insights into the intricate ways in which witchcraft acquires meaning in relation to, and intersects with ideas of, development in the Taita hills of Kenya. For the people of Taita, the unexpected changes resulting from foreign development initiatives resulted in increased prosperity for some individuals, while leaving many others with shattered hopes and aspirations. This gave rise to moral dilemmas, which the Taita community expressed through allegations of witchcraft (J. H. Smith, 2008). Overall, J. H. Smith demonstrates how the Western discourse on neoliberal development incentives as “personal development” conflicts with how Kenyan societies may negotiate and navigate their social and economic realities. J. H. Smith highlights the Taita community’s perception of development as a collaborative undertaking. This, he notes, is illustrated by the Swahili term for development, maendeleo, which signifies the “energy that manifest for the public good” (J. H. Smith, 2008, p. 4). This relates to our Malawian informants’ collective notion of development as “everyone moving forward together” (Adolfsson & Moss, 2021, p. 630). The above demonstrates how development interventions that emphasize Western-informed psychological ideals of development, prompting individual progress and independent personhood, might conflict with more communal notions of development.

Moreover, this development ideology and practice is not restricted to specific locations in the global South. Based on their fieldwork from a British market town, Studdert and Walkerdine (2016) explore characteristics of one working-class community’s manifestations of “communal being-ness.” One of the current key understandings of how spaces, such as local contexts like the market town, should be governed in terms of poverty alleviation, the authors argue, is the notion of local knowledge as deficient and lacking credibility; that in “current approaches to community, it is all too common to present community as reactionary and backward looking” (Walkerdine, 2016, p. 703; see also Bauman, 2001). Like our Malawian context, Walkerdine (2016) holds that poverty alleviation projects in Britain and elsewhere continually “produce the poor as aspirational individuals” (p. 703), often with a moralistic and patronizing undertone. Hence, similar to our Malawian study, the existing communal knowledge of how interventions could be done more efficiently in their particular context is ignored. Accordingly, the deeper historical, cultural, and socioeconomic roots to why people—globally—remain in poverty are overshadowed by governmentality, and neoliberal ideological understandings of what development should entail.

To sum up the first section of this article, the psychologization of development is problematic in many ways. The universalization, Westernization, and individualization that psychologization promotes perpetuates coloniality by furthering hegemonic knowledge about how individuals should best develop. First, by assuming universal standards of human and societal development, this idea of development divorces individuals from their cultural context, promoting behavioral change by framing personhood in essentialized ways based on notions of individuality, autonomy, self-control, self-sufficiency, and self-actualization. Second, while often clashing with local norms of how development is best organized and achieved, like “everyone moving forward together” (Adolfsson & Moss, 2021, p. 630), this promotion of development may also end up blaming individuals and/or their culture for failing to develop within fundamentally unequal structures. Finally, as well as being unsustainable and lacking effectiveness, such development interventions may not only conflict with local understandings of the nature of morality and result in suspicions and allegations of corruption, but may also lead to accusations of witchcraft, which can disrupt the very fundamental fabric of communal societies. Consequently, by ignoring local understandings of what constitutes morality and development, such interventions promote the coloniality of power, knowledge, and being; arguably sustaining the same dynamics of Western cultural dominance that characterized the colonial era.

Deconstructing hegemonic ideas of development: A decolonial and cultural psychology approach

There are various psychological subdisciplines that strongly critique the idea of universal applicability attributed to many Western branches of psychology (see Adams et al., 2015; Adjei, 2019; Bhatia & Priya, 2018; Malherbe & Ratele, 2022; Nsamenang & Dawes, 1998). They argue that the impact of Western psychology on development policy and practice has been largely overlooked (Klein, 2016; Klein & Mills, 2017). Therefore, a cultural and decolonial psychological framework helps to challenge the psychologization of development and the coloniality it perpetuates.

By promoting “a contextualist perspective” (Nsamenang, 2008, p. 73) and “a relational understanding of the world” (Estrada-Villalta & Adams, 2018, p. 204), we may challenge hegemonic ideas like universalism and individualism that underpin conventional Western psychology. From this perspective, “To study psychology is to study culture” (Ratele, 2019, p. 21). That is, culture is essential for experiencing, understanding, and organizing human life. Social norms regarding what is considered moral, enjoyable, beautiful, and true are seen as socially and culturally constructed and are regarded as social facts that constitute people’s social worlds, and which in turn influence how people perceive themselves and others (Shweder, 2006). Within their respective cultural contexts, these social facts are equally legitimate. For example, issues concerning witchcraft are frequent in Malawi national newspapers, TV shows, comic strips, films, and social media. Every evening since 1998, the Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) has been airing the very popular news program Nkhani za m’maboma (News from the Districts; Englund, 2007; Lwanda, 2005). This 10-minute bulletin consists of six to 10 items, with one or two centered around witchcraft, “always presented in a matter-of-fact style without additional commentary” (Englund, 2007, pp. 301–302; Lwanda, 2005). Accordingly, as with news concerning conventional and nonspiritual violence, witchcraft-related assaults are part of the “social facts” of the Malawian news and social media discourse. Hence, as Shweder (2006) asserts, ontologies that include beliefs in the supernatural, like witchcraft, are just as legitimate and rational as a touchdown is within the context of American football. To give another example, a Malawian Law Commission recently reviewed the 1911 instated Witchcraft Act (Government of Malawi, 2021). Under colonial rule, the British administrators that governed Malawi established that phenomena like witchcraft and evil magic did not exist, and therefore instated a law that abolished accusations of witchcraft and witchcraft-related violence (Ashforth, 2015; Mgbako & Glenn, 2011). The British administrations in Africa generally believed that beliefs in and articulations of witchcraft were rooted in primitive and irrational superstition and would disappear with the increasing influence of Christianity, modernity, and development (Hund, 2004; Mesaki, 2009). However, despite a century and half of Western interventions in the name of Christianity, modernity, and development, the belief in witchcraft has not disappeared. Rather, as we have shown, in many regions of sub-Saharan Africa, it has increased. Recently, the Malawian Special Law Commission on the Review of the Witchcraft Act recommended “recognizing the existence of witchcraft” (Government of Malawi, 2021, p. 4) to better fit with the general understanding of the population. The commission found that “the general populace believes that witchcraft is real and manifests whether one is a practitioner or not” (p. 4). The commission recommended “that witchcraft cases shall be tried in the same way as other criminal cases” (p. 16). These examples demonstrate the sociopolitical, historical, and cultural reality—the social facts—of witchcraft beliefs and articulations in Malawian everyday life.

From a decolonial and cultural psychological perspective, hegemonic Western psychology bears responsibility for the ways in which its theories, explanations, concepts, tools, findings, and practices have affected societies that may experience, value, and organize life differently from the individualistic, self-actualizing, and self-promoting values of the West. Therefore, it is critical to deconstruct the dominant idea of universality that underpins many Western psychological approaches. It becomes crucial to recognize the importance of culture and context and the specific perspectives of what it means to be human in different societies. The way personhood—the responsible and moral being—is perceived and valued is essential for how development is conceptualized and organized. From this perspective, hegemonic Western psychology must be understood as equally indigenous, with its own particularities and peculiarities; shaped within its own cultural context. In addition, dominant ideas of human mind and behavior must be understood as potentially harmful for individuals and groups who live according to other cultural values and norms. Consequently, it is important that powerful disciplines like Western psychology stop imposing their culturally based assumptions on others.

By applying a cultural and decolonial psychological framework, we may reimagine how de-psychologized, un-individualized, and un-universalized development approaches may be more in line with local ways of being and seeing the world, which may be more helpful for people who are subjected to global development interventions.

Avenues for future research and policy implications

If we wish to promote well-being in diverse cultural contexts, we must challenge and deconstruct the assumptions that underlie Western discourses on development. This means challenging the power dynamics involved in development policy and practice. Rather than treating “poor development” as a problem of mind and behavior, we must address the sociohistoric, economic, and political factors and systemic barriers that keep people in inequality and poverty. That is, we need to reflect on the fundamental questions concerning development: what it means for different actors and recipients. Future research, both within and outside the psychological domain, needs to critically examine the power relations embedded in the coloniality of the Western psychologization of development, and explore alternative knowledges and practices. This requires interdisciplinary and interregional collaboration, involving scholars from different disciplines, and across different countries and continents. Additionally, it is equally important to prioritize and include the experiences of local communities and to incorporate their knowledge into research designs and policy recommendations. This means taking seriously the cultural context of the people we engage with. To avoid doing harm, scholars, as well as donors and development actors, must engage with local societies in a participatory and respectful way, working with individuals and groups, not imposing on them. This requires us to acknowledge that the people we collaborate with are sovereign governors of their lives, and the obvious experts in their cultural context. We must thoroughly engage in the local context, paying attention to local values and norms, the gestures, traditions, and taboos, and the local conceptualizations regarding the organization of everyday life. When development locally means “everyone moving forward together” (Adolfsson & Moss, 2021, p. 630), external practitioners need to alter their conceptualization and implementation of development accordingly. Moreover, it is equally important to acknowledge the numerous ways in which people might challenge and resist external interventions in their lives. For instance, the above description of the Malawian chief who recollected and reallocated the maize-meal is an act which may and could—if acknowledged—inform development practitioners and policymakers about local ideas of how best to organize collaborative and more inclusive ways of doing development.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Aurelia Neumark for proofreading the article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was funded by the Norwegian Research Council (grant no. 254947).

ORCID iD

Johanna Sofia Adolfsson

Notes

Author biographies

Johanna Sofia Adolfsson is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University Oslo. Adolfsson’s main academic interests include how EuroAmerican psychology as a dominant academic field affects people in non-Western cultures, particularly through its strong influence on Global development policy agendas. Adolfsson has worked on research projects in Eastern Africa since 2016. Recent publications include (with D. Banik & B. Dulani), “Power, Politics, and the Supernatural: Exploring the Role of Witchcraft Beliefs in Governance for Development,” in Forum for Development Studies (2024), (with S. M. Moss), “‘Even the NGOs Never Talk About Ufiti [Witchcraft]’: A Decolonial and Feminist Cultural Psychological Analysis of Individualized Development Clashing with Communal Ways of Being,” in Human Arenas (2023), and (with S. M. Moss), “Making Meaning of Empowerment and Development in Rural Malawi—International Individualism Meets Local Communalism,” in The Journal of Social and Political Psychology (2021).

Gertrude Finyiza, a social anthropologist affiliated with the University of Denver, has conducted fieldwork and anthropological research in rural Malawi since 2008. Her primary areas of interest are international development, gender studies, and maternal health. Recent publications include: (with C. G. Aukrust et al.), “‘It Is the Child With the Big Head’ – Primary Healthcare Providers’ Perceptions of Paediatric Hydrocephalus in Blantyre, Malawi: A Qualitative Study,” in Global Public Health (2023), and (with H. Pot & B. C. de Kok), “When Things Fall Apart: Local Responses to the Reintroduction of User-Fees for Maternal Health Services in Rural Malawi,” in Reproductive Health Matters (2018).

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