Examining citizenship regimes in Assam through a structural and cultural violence lens.

In this paper, we examine citizenship crisis in the Northeast Indian state of Assam through the lenses of structural and cultural violence. In 2019, close to two million people in Assam were disenfranchised by updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC). The vast majority of those disenfranchised are Miya people who have been subjected to legacies of persecution and violence since the early 19th century during British colonial rule. We map the contours of the citizenship crisis by centering the struggles of Miya communities who are most deeply impacted by violent citizenship regimes. Using a structural and cultural violence lens, we elucidate the linkages between colonial histories, (post)colonial policies, and institutional practices on the one hand and Miya people's everyday struggles on the other. Across these analyses, we demonstrate how current citizenship regimes operate as a form of state-sanctioned violence against Miya people. The implications of these analyses for rethinking contemporary notions of citizenship and belonging for community-engaged scholarship are discussed.

Counterstorytelling as Epistemic Justice: Decolonial Community-based Praxis from the Global South.

In this paper, we present community-anchored counterstorytelling as a form of epistemic justice. We-the Miya Community Research Collective-engage in counterstorytelling as a means of resisting and disrupting dehumanization of Miya communities in Northeast India. Miya communities have a long history of dispossession and struggle - from forced displacement by British colonial rulers in the early 19th century to the present where they face imminent threats of statelessness. Against this backdrop, we theorize "in the flesh" to interrogate knowledges and representations systematically deployed to dispossess Miya people. Simultaneously, we uplift stories and endeavors that (re)humanize Miya people, creating/claiming cultural, knowledge, and political spaces that center peoples' struggles and resistance. Across these stories, we offer counterstorytelling as a powerful mode of recentering knowledges from the margins-a decolonial alternative to neoliberal epistemes that maintain institutions/universities as centers of knowledge production.

From rhetorical "inclusion" toward decolonial futures: Building communities of resistance against structural violence.

In this paper, we name and uplift the ways in which Miya community workers are building communities of resistance as ways to address the manifold colonial, structural (including state-sponsored), and epistemic violence in their lives. These active spaces of refusal and resistance constitute the grounds of our theorizing. Centering this theory in the flesh, we offer critical implications for decolonial liberatory praxis, specifically community-engaged praxis in solidarity with people's struggles. In doing so, we speak to questions such as: What are the range of ways in which Global South communities are coming together to tackle various forms of political, social, epistemic, and racial injustice? What are ways of doing, being, and knowing that are produced at the borders and liminal zones? What are the varied ways in which people understand and name solidarities, alliances, and relationalities in pursuit of justice? We engage with these questions from our radically rooted places in Miya people's struggles via storytelling that not only confronts the historical and ongoing oppression, but also upholds desire-Interweaving and honoring rage, grief, pain, creativity, love, and communality.

Decolonizing "Community" in Community Psychology.

This article endeavors to craft pathways that disrupt dominant modes of knowledge production and imagine nonhierarchical epistemic possibilities in teaching community psychology. The first section of the article discusses how the decolonial turn inspires new ways of advancing the critical social justice agenda of community psychology. Drawing upon decolonial frameworks and allied critical theories, I outline how coloniality is entrenched in the ways we theorize, research, and teach about "communities"-and the importance of decolonizing the construct of community in community psychology. The second section presents three vignettes capturing student responses to endeavors in the classroom to dismantle notions of community-as-Other. I interpret these vignettes through a decolonial perspective in order to highlight how colonial discourses of community can be produced and potentially maintained in the classroom context. The third section outlines some pedagogical and curricular recommendations as a possible pathway toward decolonizing notions of community. I conclude with some questions/provocations geared toward advancing decolonial and liberatory praxis in community psychology.

Enacted cultural critique: Examining everyday violence in Garo Hills.

This article is a critical ethnographic illustration of community psychology praxis as enacted cultural critique. Community psychology praxis involves cultural critique so as to challenge, subvert, resist, and transform disempowering cultural constructions. Although it is important to appreciate and attend to cultural norms, there are many contexts where existing norms serve to marginalize communities. Drawing from a youth participatory action research initiative in the Garo Hills region of Northeast India, we examine the implications of community psychology praxis as enacted cultural critique in the context of endemic ethnic conflict. Enacted cultural critique in such a context entails deliberate, self-conscious efforts to interpret or make sense of the existing cultural context and create new ones. This creative activity involves collectively imagining, saying, writing, sculpting, fashioning and/or building new ways of being in and understanding our shared world. Our approach is characterized by an explicit recognition of the political nature of cultural analysis, which represents a significant departure from traditional, apolitical understanding of culture. Using the lens of community psychology praxis also allows for a more agentive view of culture-one that acknowledges that individuals and communities (re)create and (re)write culture through practices of everyday life and social and political mobilization.

Prioritizing the Local in an Era of Globalization: A Proposal for Decentering Community Psychology.

In this article, I outline a proposal for decentering the field of United States-based community psychology. Transnational migrations, border crossings, and proliferating neoliberal trade and global media characterize the contemporary moment we live in. These movements challenge any monolithic disciplinary narrative of community psychology. Drawing from liberation psychology and women of Color feminisms, I argue that decentering the field involves engendering more reciprocal, nonhierarchical relations between the core and peripheries of knowledge production. Specifically, I consider the decentering project in two related realms-content and agents of knowledge production. The first issue concerns the kind of research and theorizing we engage in, the issues or topics we investigate, and the subject populations we work with. The second issue pertains to the agents who engage in the aforementioned processes, exercising epistemic power, that is the authority to construct what is considered legitimate and valid knowledge. I conclude with the implications of the decentering project for a multistranded community psychology that is responsive to the cartographies of contemporary struggles.

Culture and community psychology: toward a renewed and reimagined vision.

Interest is growing in community psychology to look more closely at culture. Culture has resided in community psychology in its emphasis on context, ecology, and diversity, however we believe that the field will benefit from a more explicit focus on culture. We suggest a cultural approach that values the community's points of view and an understanding of shared and divergent meanings, goals, and norms within a theory of empowerment. Furthermore, we posit the importance of pluralistic, multi-method programs of research and action encompassing both idiographic and nomothetic approaches, and critical reflexivity of our roles and agendas. Culture can be further incorporated into all the branches and fibers of community psychology.