Editorial Statement: The Globalization of Psychology, the Psychology of Globalization

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/bethunivj.34.2017.0100
• Published date: 01 January 2017
• Date: 01 January 2017
• Pages: 100-104
• Author: Prof. Jamil Khader, Ph.D.

100

BETHLEHEM UNIVERSITY JOURNAL 34 (2017)

Editorial Statement

The Globalization of Psychology, the Psychology of Globalization

We are pleased to present the thirty fourth volume of the

Bethlehem University Journal

as a

special issue on psychological research in Palestine and the world. This special issue draws

from original papers and other related scholarship presented at the First Annual International

Psychology Conference entitled, “Psychological Research in Palestine between Theory and

Practice,” which was held at Bethlehem University, Bethlehem, Palestine, from April 22-23,

2016.

This special issue embodies the new vision of BUJ as outlined in the last volume (Khader,

2016, pp.9-5; pp. 114-120). This vision called for transforming the state of research in

Palestine, in particular, and the Arab world, in general, through the internationalization of

research communities in the region within a subaltern cosmopolitan approach to research.

This special issue demonstrates four major principles of this new approach to research and

the production and dissemination of knowledge in Palestine and the Arab world.

First, we suggested that Palestinian academic journals invest in the publication and

dissemination of special issues on timely and interesting themes especially, in the humanities

and other “soft” sciences. These special issues can actively participate in the wider

international conversations and debates that inform the different disciplines and shape the

production of specialized and transformative knowledge in their respective fields.

This special issue, therefore, is dedicated to the field of psychology and more specifically,

to the theme of the globalization of psychology and the psychology of globalization. In

particular, this issue reflects back on the debate over Jeffrey Arnett’s article on the “neglected

95%”—that is, the global communities that are excluded from the studies, upon which

American psychologists draw their generalizations about human psychology (Arnett, 2008;

Arnett, 2009; Haeffel, et al., 2009). This issues thus clears a space for reconsidering the

dialectic between the global and the local, the universal and particular, and Western and non-

Western epistemologies and theories from the specific perspective of research communities

in Palestine.