A Postmodern Psychology of Asian Americans

Laura Uba

Description

Focusing on race, culture, acculturation, ethnicity, and ethnic identity—concepts commonly used to account for the behaviors of Asian Americans and other minorities—A Postmodern Psychology of Asian Americans examines the effects of modern psychology's epistemological and ontological premises on its investigative methods and concepts. Author Laura Uba looks at the social creation of psychological facts, including portrayals of ethnic and racial groups, and demonstrates, especially in ways pertinent to the study of minorities, that modern psychology needs to reconsider its ways of thinking about study samples, investigative methods, facts, and concepts used to describe and explain behaviors.

Illustrations

Preface

1. Modernist Epistemology

2. Postmodernism

3. Privileged Methodological Texts and Narratives

4. Construction of Race and Culture

5. Acculturation and Assimilation

6. Ethnicity and Identity

7. Conclusion

Appendix A: Traditional Types of Psychological Studies

Appendix B: Deconstructing in the Classroom

Notes

References

Name Index

Subject Index

Sujets

• Personality
• Psychology
• Identity
• Ego
• Social

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791489079
• Langue: English

Extrait

A Postmodern Psychology of Asian Americans

SUNY series, Alternatives in Psychology

Michael A. Wallach, editor

A Postmodern Psychology of Asian Americans

Creating Knowledge of a Racial Minority

Laura Uba

State University of New York Press

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Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2002 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207

Production by Judith Block Marketing by Patrick Durocher

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Uba, Laura. A postmodern psychology of Asian Americans : creating knowledge of a racial minority / Laura Uba. p. cm. — (SUNY series, alternatives in psychology) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 0-7914-5295-6 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-5296-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Asian Americans—Psychology. 2. Asian Americans—Race identity. 3. Postmodernism—United States—Psychological aspects. I. Title. II. Series.

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Contents

preface

Illustrations Preface Chapter 1 Modernist Epistemology Chapter 2 Postmodernism Chapter 3 Privileged Methodological Texts and Narratives Chapter 4 Constructions of Race and Culture Chapter 5 Acculturation and Assimilation Chapter 6 Ethnicity and Identity Chapter 7 Conclusion Appendix A: Traditional Types of Psychological Studies Appendix B: Deconstructing in the Classroom Notes References Name Index Subject Index

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Illustrations

Figure

Figure 1.1.

Tables

2.1 5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1 6.2

What White Triangle?

A Comparison of Modernist and Postmodernist Assumptions Acculturation in the Form of Types Acculturation as the Sum of Dichotomies Acculturative Forms Defining Types of Adaptation A Psychological Model of Ethnic Identity Minority (Cultural/Racial) Identity Development Model

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26 106 107 108 125 126

Preface

1 How can we know about Asian Americans? Psychology’s response has been a modern, empiricist one: We can know by relying on scientifically gathered data and logical reasoning about that data. That position has been based on psychology’s adoption of the scientific method which basically grew out of the metaphysical and epistemological assumptions of the Reformation, Re- naissance, Enlightenment, and Scientific Revolution. The tradition of treat- ing the scientific method as sine qua non to knowledge has given this method a largely unquestioned status among psychologists. However, tracing the roots of that tradition provides a grounding for assessments of whether that method, as currently used in psychology, provides the most meaningful way to learn about Asian Americans and psychological issues relevant to them. The Enlightenment has been customarily portrayed as a period of intellectual efflorescence revealing the epistemological basis for objective understanding of reality. However, Western philosophy and science did not develop in a social vacuum: Many of the assumptions underlying modern science have nonscientific grounding in religious beliefs, social disruptions, political orientations, and rationalizations. Religious beliefs in an orderly physical and human universe estab- lished by God implied that just as everyone in Dante’s Inferno was placed where he or she deserved, so everyone in society was in his or her deserved place: the bourgeois and the peasants, the believers and the infidels, men and women, the colonizers and the colonized, and white people and people of color. St. Paul’s (Romans 13) declaration that rulers were ordained by God was a rationale not only for the divine right of kings, but more broadly for sanctioning the status quo. Pantheism reinforced the idea that what is, should be, as all are parts of God (Toulmin, 1990). Social hierarchies, for instance, were considered legitimate reflections of God’s plan, omniscience, omnipo- tence, and benevolence (Griffin, 1989).

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Coupled with religious beliefs about man’s duty to have “dominion” over God’s creations and the assignment of man to the role of rational, objective overseer, such assumptions were conceptual bases for much of the colonialism of the time. A corollary to the Biblical idea of human dominion over nature and other creatures was that civilized men were meant to save and have dominion over people of color (Toulmin, 1990). Consequently, white men thought of themselves as naturally entitled to speak for the latter and obligated to determine and restrict how those said to have an inferior social status could behave. Indeed, Western scholars thought, God had des- tined the social and intellectual colonization of some people. Such thinking was subsequently used as a rationale, for example, in the colonization of the Philippines. In a parallel way, males were deemed destined to rule females, who were to be used, submissive, and deprived of voice about their views. Women were regarded as inferior, weak, and childlike while people of color were considered all those plus animalistic. The perspective of the colonizers was elevated over the perspectives of the colonized; the voices of the colo- nized, it was assumed, could be safely ignored because they do not add to understanding. Like colonialists, intellectual explorers thought that they could understand less exalted people (i.e., the ignorant, people of color, and fe- males) better than those people could themselves. The modern era and modern science developed in that attitudinal environment. Although no longer as chauvinistic and imperious as men of that time, most researchers today in some ways still assume they know more about their human study participants than the latter know about themselves, impose meanings and explanations on their behaviors, and listen to the latter only from the former’s perspective and for the former’s purposes. Rather than ask respondents what accounts for their behavior, researchers raised on those assumptions and methods usually limit responses to a particular set of catego- ries and then assume that they can see connections between influences and behaviors that respondents cannot identify themselves. This approach con- tributes to homogenizing portrayals in which the complexity and multiple meanings of experiences are swept aside so that people can be viewed only in the inquirer’s terms. The definitions, views, and assumptions of psychological methods used to study Asian Americans were historically developed by Europeans and 2 European Americans. Like colonialists, white scientists traditionally thought of themselves as just people, normal for the human species, and that assump- tion has probably contributed to the belief that the views of (white) Enlight- enment scholars were natural, neutral, and objective. Currently, we still see that many white Americans, albeit without the same colonialist intent, regard people of color as “others” and themselves as simply people. For instance, when black Americans are pictured on greeting

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cards, the cards are regarded as being for black customers; but when white people are pictured, the card manufacturers intend the card to be for every- one. Likewise, in psychological research, the European Americans upon whom the research is disproportionately based are still regarded simply as normative humans. Just as females had been viewed as orbiting around or the opposite of males (Tavris, 1991), a glance at introductory psychology books today dem- onstrates that in psychology European Americans are to some extent treated as the center of the psychosocial universe with marginalized minorities as orbiting satellites around them and their behaviors—indeed, the behaviors of humans around the world—are explained in comparison to research on European Americans. That social order and dichotomous white-nonwhite categorizations are reinforced by that repeated comparison to white Ameri- cans. As with females’ behaviors that differ from those of males, Asian Americans’ behaviors and attitudes are presumed to be in need of explana- tion to the extent that they differ from those normative white Americans. Studies of people of color commonly focus on how they are distinguished from European Americans in (exotic) culture, (deficient) acculturation, and (separate and marginalized) minority status. In research on Asian Americans, the contrasts have been exaggerated by long-standing Orientalism, a concept Edward Said (1978) used to char- acterize French and British colonialist attitudes toward people of the Middle East. Orientalism was characterized by a belief that the Orient—a romantic, exotic place supposedly populated by naturally feminine and passive people who valued hierarchical, traditional authorities—was antithetical and infe- rior to the democratic and individualistic orientation of the West. That myth was an ideological basis for subjugation of the colonized in Asia. That colonialist explanatory perspective also embraces the pretense that power relations, economic roles, and racial politics and hierarchies are irrelevant to the behaviors and experiences of Asian Americans (K. Chan, 1996). From the perspective of postcolonial theory, which contests the ideol- ogy underlying ethnocentric, Western imperialism, many portrayals and ways of treating people of color today resurrect colonialist views of the “other.” Colonialist interests emphasized views of the “other” in terms of their ability to upset or sustain the existing distribution of power (and may be paralleled in some psychological research on high-achieving Asian American students occupying slots in coveted colleges, for example). From that perspective, a desire to establish a hegemonic perspective that protects the status of those in power sometimes hides behind the search for knowledge (Foucault, 1969). As a societal institution, even science is most responsive to the interests of those in power (Ritzer, 1997). If modern science’s claims of authoritative, objective perspective were ripped of their