Geetha Reddy

The Open University, School of Psychology and Counselling, Faculty Member

University of Groningen, Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, Faculty Member

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I am Geetha, a social, political, and cultural psychologist working on understanding how people make sense of colonisation, multiculturalism, and migration in contemporary societies.

My research takes an intersectional perspective on identities, highlighting the power structures that influence an individual's psychology. I speak and write about using a decolonial critical psychological paradigm in my research, teaching, and practice. I am especially interested in how social scientists can study and address social issues across disciplinary boundaries.

www.drgeethareddy.com

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Angeline Khoo

S. Munirah Alatas, Ph.D.

Universiti Malaya

Universiti Brunei Darussalam

Ee Lin Lee

Western Washington University

Joyce Nga

Eve Hoon

University College London

Mercy Karuniah Jesuvadian

Nanyang Technological University

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The Endurance and Contestations of Colonial Constructions of Race Among Malaysians and Singaporeans

Frontiers in Psychology, 2019

Psychological literature on race has discussed in depth how racial identities are dialogically co... more Psychological literature on race has discussed in depth how racial identities are dialogically constructed and context dependent. However, racial identity construction is often not compared across different socio-political contexts. By researching racial identity construction in three different multicultural countries, Malaysia, Singapore, and the United Kingdom, we examined how three racial identities, Chinese, Malay, and Indian, are constructed among Malaysians and Singaporeans in this qualitative study comprised of 10 focus group discussions (N = 39). We applied Dialogical Analysis to the data. This paper shows that both racial ingroups and outgroups constructed all three racial identities, with ingroups constructing their identities more heterogeneously compared to outgroups. Participants also engaged with colonial constructions of the three racial identities. The geographical locations, and therefore their perceptual contexts, of the participants differed. Yet, colonial constructions of race endured in contemporary identity construction and were contested in the group settings. We conclude that the socio-political context as understood by the context of colonialism and post-coloniality influenced their racial identity constructions. Participants, regardless of differences in geographical location, used similar colonial constructions of Malay, Chinese, and Indian identities to position themselves as well as Others in their group interactions. These findings show that there is value in conceptualising the context beyond that which individuals are immediately presented with, and that psychologists should consider the inclusion of cultural legacies of colonialism in their conceptualisation of the present context.

Geetha Reddy

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