The Imbalance between Knowledge Paradigms of North and South: Implications for Peace Psychology

Abstract

Peace psychology is sensitive to geopolitical context. Given that much of the development of peace psychology has been in the global North, holding the Symposium on the Contributions of Psychology to Peace in South Africa provided an opportunity to explore different paradigms underlying approaches in different spaces and places. Systems of knowledge making (epistemologies) and of the way we construct reality (ontologies) are not only culturally bound in time and space, but are also embedded in power relations. We recognise that it is something of an over-simplification to cluster the diverse forms of peace psychology under the simple polarities of North and South as the reality is more compl..