Twenty-third International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

Given the Caribbean region’s post-colonial history with entrenched systems of racism, patriarchy, and colorism, it is imperative that cross-cultural investigators using 21st century research paradigms honed and crafted from strengths-based approaches interrogate issues of national and cultural identity, push-pull factors in migration, acculturative influences, psychological resilience and coping within non-pathologizing frameworks of Afrocentricity. This perspective borrows from multiple theorizing in the negritude movement, Franz Fanon’s iconic work, and the Black Psychology paradigm shifting theorizing as they rejected and deconstructed Eurocentric models of explaining black psyche and behaviors. Moving from the mechanistic, binary constructions placing a premium on only quantitative models with a devaluation of qualitative approaches, this presenter argues that the kind of cross-cultural research that offers the most qualitatively-rich analyses is ethnography. As a cross-cultural tool, it triangulates participant observations, interviews, and case studies. The ethnographic report generated from this data gathering methodology and comprised of multiple sections illuminate: the uniqueness of indigenous psychologies, provide important historical contexts, address issues of language, cultural rituals, and norms and ground the work from multidisciplinary perspectives offering more integrative, cogent analyses of cultural phenomena. Further, even research ensconced in generating knowledge for academic consumption should look to the ultimate goal of nation building and community development.