Special issue - The third wave of cultural psychology: the indigenous movement

Since the end of World War II there have been three large-scale academic movements attempting to incorporate non-Western cultural factors into psychological research: modernisation theory, research on individualism/collectivism, and the indigenisation movement. These waves in cultural psychology have not risen randomly: what’s fascinating is that they reflect the power structure of the scientific community as well as the power relationships between Western and non-Western countries. This article reviews the main ideas of these three academic movements as well as the sociohistorical background relevant to their incubation, in order to illuminate the epistemological implications of the emergence of the third wave, the indigenous movement. Is the new wave what we have been waiting for, or just more scientific ethnocentrism in disguise?

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