IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ctwqxx/v38y2017i9p1990-2008.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Psy-expertise, therapeutic culture and the politics of the personal in development

Author

Listed:
  • Elise Klein
  • China Mills

Abstract

Expertise stemming from the psy disciplines is increasingly and explicitly shaping international development policy and practice. Whilst some policy makers see the use of psy expertise as a new way to reduce poverty, increase economic efficiency, and promote wellbeing, others raise concerns that psychocentric development promotes individual over structural change, pathologises poverty, and depoliticises development. This paper specifically analyses four aspects of psy knowledge used in contemporary development policy: child development/developmental psychology, behavioural economics, positive psychology, and global mental health. This analysis illuminates the co-constitutive intellectual and colonial histories of development and psy-expertise: a connection that complicates claims that development has been psychologized; the uses and coloniality of both within a neoliberal project; and the potential for psychopolitics to inform development.

Suggested Citation

  • Elise Klein & China Mills, 2017. "Psy-expertise, therapeutic culture and the politics of the personal in development," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(9), pages 1990-2008, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:38:y:2017:i:9:p:1990-2008
    DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2017.1319277
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436597.2017.1319277
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/01436597.2017.1319277?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daniel Nehring & Mariano Plotkin & Piroska Csúri & Nicolás Viotti, 2024. "Re-Thinking Therapeutic Cultures: Tracing Change and Continuity in a Time of Crisis and Change," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 29(2), pages 287-298, June.
    2. China Mills, 2018. "From ‘Invisible Problem’ to Global Priority: The Inclusion of Mental Health in the Sustainable Development Goals," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 49(3), pages 843-866, May.
    3. Erica Burman, 2018. "(Re)sourcing the Character and Resilience Manifesto: Suppressions and Slippages of (Re)presentation and Selective Affectivities," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 23(2), pages 416-437, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:38:y:2017:i:9:p:1990-2008. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/ctwq .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.