An Ontological Turn for Psychology in the Age of the Machine and Global Warming

Abstract

Abstract: This essay pays homage to indigenous psychology by reiterating its central theme – decolonization – through a variant of the theme in the call for an ontological turn. Ontology refers to human’s basic commitments and assumptions about reality, namely what things are, and what they could be. It is argued that ontologies have consequences. The ontology of objects privileged in science facilitates the acquisition of objective knowledge in the physical world, but cannot improve our understanding of the culturally different other whose lives may be shaped by ontology of subjects. Ethnographic data from Southeast Asia are used as illustration of how ontology of subjects may fill a moral vacuum in value-neutral science and give psychology better insights into the problems of advanced technology ranging from automatization to global warming.