The (hi)stories we live by: Power/knowledge and family therapy in Africa

There is a need to Africanise family therapy so as to serve the interest of local communities. Western approaches to family therapy have been accused of being irrelevant to African contexts. They are seen as forming part of a dominant scientific knowledge which invalidates local folk and cultural ps ychologies and thereby continuing a historical tradition of oppressive colo nial power relations. This paper aims at archaeologising and evaluating suc h criticism by situating family therapy within different fields of knowledg e that have emerged historically and are currently co-existing in Africa. T he advantages and disadvantages of dominant family therapy approaches in Af rican contexts are explored by focussing on power relations between differe nt knowledges in Africa. It is argued that many global narratives of family therapy offer congenial companionship to many local African narratives, bu t that family therapists should pay more attention to local spiritual and p olitical narratives so as to attain more legitimacy and validation by local communities.