COMMUNITY-BASED PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH AS A CRITICAL ENACTMENT OF COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY

South Africa's history of colonization, expressed particularly through the violent system of apartheid, calls for participatory approaches to research and practice that aim to decolonize knowledge construction, transform modes of community engagement, and address dominant power relations. This article reflects on how these challenges are addressed in the Spiritual Capacity and Religious Assets for Transforming Community Health through mobilising Males for Peace and Safety project in a low-income community in the Western Cape, South Africa. This analysis focuses on some of the possibilities and challenges relating to using community-based participatory research as a community engagement strategy for the purposes of enacting critical community psychology in an African context. (C) 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.