Post by Admin on Dec 1, 2023 11:38:01 GMT
What does resiliency mean in the context of oppressive systems?
By Tiffani Elliott -01/12/2023
www.madintheuk.com/2023/12/what-does-resiliency-mean-in-the-context-of-oppressive-systems/
Pop culture, media, books, and research shape our perception of truth through master narratives or dominant storytelling. In American culture, the master narrative of resiliency often paints a heroic figure who, despite the odds, overcame adversity and ended up on top. This ability to “bounce back” from adversity often serves as a source of inspiration and is praised in American culture. However, applauding individual resiliency often overlooks racist, patriarchal, and capitalistic structures that require people to be resilient in the first place.
A recent article in press with the American Psychologist addresses issues with traditional conceptions of resiliency in psychological research. It then suggests a way forward that redefines narratives and centres the identities and experiences of Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ individuals and communities.
In efforts to have a strength-based approach to the study of adversity and trauma, psychology and other allied disciplines incorporate concepts of resiliency into their work. For instance, when examining the impact internalized homophobia has on LGBTQ+ mental health outcomes, researchers also highlight LGBTQ+ community connectedness as a powerful protective factor in overcoming adversity.
Although this preferable approach moves beyond traditional deficit-based frameworks, a team of psychologists led by Kate McLean, director of the LISTEN (Learning about Identity through Story Telling and Engaging with Narratives) Lab, argue that a “structural-psychological approach” to resiliency will improve strength based frameworks. This framework moves beyond the narrow and dominant focus of individual experience to account for broader socio-political context and historical factors that uphold systems of inequality and impact individual functioning.
The team writes:
“The hyper-focus on the individual in theory, design, and measurement promotes a story about resilience that hinges on individual responsibility and blames people for their poor choices without attention to the lack of choice that structural entities impose.”
They “argue for a redefinition of resilience in the context of these larger structures of inequity and oppression and the cultural and historical forces that continually shape them.”
Examples include using race and socioeconomic status as variables without recognizing racism and capitalism.
They explain that researchers, industries, and academic disciplines (like psychology) that fail to link individual functioning to macro structures are complicit in creating and using “harmful master narratives about resilience.
This is seen “in the form of publications, funding, and intervention efforts paid to concepts like grit and growth mindset, in which children of colour and poor children, for example, are expected to overcome the “odds” of racism and poverty by developing individual strengths.”
The question, they argue, “is not whether children can (or should) nurture a growth mindset, but why we collectively invest so much attention and resources in a story about individual-level skill sets rather than a story about the sociohistorical context that created the need for these interventions in the first place.”
The researchers argue against Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems model, the traditional model used in psychological research to understand resiliency. They then draw on scholarship that has rightfully centred the voices of marginalized groups to uplift the “Indigenist Ecological Systems Model” and the “M(ai)cro Model” as examples of a structural-psychological approach to resiliency.
By Tiffani Elliott -01/12/2023
www.madintheuk.com/2023/12/what-does-resiliency-mean-in-the-context-of-oppressive-systems/
Pop culture, media, books, and research shape our perception of truth through master narratives or dominant storytelling. In American culture, the master narrative of resiliency often paints a heroic figure who, despite the odds, overcame adversity and ended up on top. This ability to “bounce back” from adversity often serves as a source of inspiration and is praised in American culture. However, applauding individual resiliency often overlooks racist, patriarchal, and capitalistic structures that require people to be resilient in the first place.
A recent article in press with the American Psychologist addresses issues with traditional conceptions of resiliency in psychological research. It then suggests a way forward that redefines narratives and centres the identities and experiences of Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ individuals and communities.
In efforts to have a strength-based approach to the study of adversity and trauma, psychology and other allied disciplines incorporate concepts of resiliency into their work. For instance, when examining the impact internalized homophobia has on LGBTQ+ mental health outcomes, researchers also highlight LGBTQ+ community connectedness as a powerful protective factor in overcoming adversity.
Although this preferable approach moves beyond traditional deficit-based frameworks, a team of psychologists led by Kate McLean, director of the LISTEN (Learning about Identity through Story Telling and Engaging with Narratives) Lab, argue that a “structural-psychological approach” to resiliency will improve strength based frameworks. This framework moves beyond the narrow and dominant focus of individual experience to account for broader socio-political context and historical factors that uphold systems of inequality and impact individual functioning.
The team writes:
“The hyper-focus on the individual in theory, design, and measurement promotes a story about resilience that hinges on individual responsibility and blames people for their poor choices without attention to the lack of choice that structural entities impose.”
They “argue for a redefinition of resilience in the context of these larger structures of inequity and oppression and the cultural and historical forces that continually shape them.”
Examples include using race and socioeconomic status as variables without recognizing racism and capitalism.
They explain that researchers, industries, and academic disciplines (like psychology) that fail to link individual functioning to macro structures are complicit in creating and using “harmful master narratives about resilience.
This is seen “in the form of publications, funding, and intervention efforts paid to concepts like grit and growth mindset, in which children of colour and poor children, for example, are expected to overcome the “odds” of racism and poverty by developing individual strengths.”
The question, they argue, “is not whether children can (or should) nurture a growth mindset, but why we collectively invest so much attention and resources in a story about individual-level skill sets rather than a story about the sociohistorical context that created the need for these interventions in the first place.”
The researchers argue against Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems model, the traditional model used in psychological research to understand resiliency. They then draw on scholarship that has rightfully centred the voices of marginalized groups to uplift the “Indigenist Ecological Systems Model” and the “M(ai)cro Model” as examples of a structural-psychological approach to resiliency.