This handbook is the first to bring together the latest theory and research on critical approaches to social psychological challenges. Edited by a leading authority in the field, this volume further establishes critical social psychology as a discipline of study, distinct from mainstream social psychology. The handbook explains how critical approaches to social processes and phenomena are essential to fully understanding them, and covers the main research topics in basic and applied social psychology, including social cognition, identity and social relations, alongside overviews of the main theories and methodologies that underpin critical approaches. This volume features a range of leading authors working on key social psychological issues, and highlights a commitment to a social psychology which shuns psychologisation, reductionism and neutrality. It provides invaluable insight into many of the most pressing and distressing issues we face in modern society, including the migrant and refugee crises affecting Europe; the devaluing of black lives in the USA; and the poverty, ill-health, and poor mental well-being that has resulted from ever-increasing austerity efforts in the UK. Including sections on critical perspectives, critical methodologies, and critical applications, this volume also focuses on issues within social cognition, self and identity. This one-stop handbook is an indispensable resource for a range of academics, students and researchers in the fields of psychology and sociology, and particularly those with an interest in social identity, power relations, and critical interventions.
This handbook is the only major survey of critical theory from philosophical, political, sociological, psychological and historical vantage points. It emphasizes not only on the historical and philosophical roots of critical theory, but also its current themes and trends as well as future applications and directions. It addresses specific areas of interest that have forged the critical theory tradition, such as critical social psychology, aesthetics and the critique of culture, communicative action, and the critique of instrumental reason. It is intended for those interested in exploring the influential paradigm of critical theory from multiple, interdisciplinary perspectives and understanding its contribution to the humanities and the social sciences.
This handbook highlights the growing tensions surrounding the current dominant ethical clearance model which is increasingly being questioned, particularly in critical research. It draws on stories from the field in critical research conducted in a range of contexts and countries and on an array of topics. The authors involved in this collection encountered dilemmas, contradictions and surprises that brought about a change in their understanding of ethics. Throughout the book they discuss how ethics is an ongoing and situated struggle that requires researchers, at times, to traverse traditional ethical imperatives. Four sections lead readers through the complexities of grounded ethical practice: encountering systems, including Ethics Committees and institutions; blurring boundaries within research; the politics of voice, anonymity and confidentiality; and power relations in researching ‘down’, ‘up’, and ‘alongside’. This handbook is a resource for social science researchers using critical methodologies across a range of disciplines, as well as for students and teachers of ethics, in navigating the quandaries of ‘doing good’ while doing good research.
This book argues for the importance of considering social class in critical psychological enquiry. It provides a historical overview of psychological research and theorising on social class and socio-economic status; before examining the ways in which psychology has contributed to the surveillance, regulation and pathologisation of the working-class ‘Other’. The authors highlight the cost of recent austerity policies on mental health and warn against the implementation of further austerity measures in the current climate The book pulls together perspectives from critical social psychology, feminist psychology, sociology and other critical research which examines the discursive production of social class, classism and classed identities. The authors explore social class in educational and occupational settings, and analyse the intersections between class and other social categories such as gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality. Finally, they consider key issues in debates around social class in the broader social sciences, such as the limitations of approaches informed by poststructuralist theory. This book will be a useful resource for both academics and students studying class from a critical perspective.
This handbook highlights a range of ground breaking, radical and liberatory clinical and critical community psychology projects from around the world. The disciplines of critical community psychology and clinical psychology are currently experiencing radical innovations that in this book are characterised as moving from the individualising practice realm toward an altogether more contextualising orientation. Both fields are responding to an array of political, social and economic injustices and a global political context. Community and clinical psychologists have found themselves reorienting their practice to confront, resist and subvert the structures that are so damaging to the lives of the vulnerable people they work with. This text posits that these approaches refute and resist the psychologising that has strengthened oppressive structures. Such practices are starting to engage in the political character of power-knowledge relationships that demand a more ‘action-oriented’ and less ‘clinical’ psychology praxis and there is a growing interest in, and commitment to, social justice in the field of mental wellbeing. Using examples of scholar, activist and practitioner work from around the world, this collection explores and documents those practices where the traditional remits of community and clinical psychology have been subverted, altered, stretched, changed and reworked in order to reframe practice around human rights, creativity, political activism, social change, space and place, systemic violence, community transformation, resource allocation and radical practices of disruption and direct action.
This groundbreaking new textbook takes a different perspective on social psychology, focused on the social and cultural worlds we inhabit, and encompassing a wide range of core social psychology topics – from the self to relationships, gender to health, racism to mental distress. Taking a critical approach, this book explores how qualitative methods and interpretational analyses can be used to examine human behaviour and what it is like living in today’s media-led world. It explicitly challenges all forms of Othering, taking a fresh look at human values, embodiment, agency, communication, thinking and feeling. It goes beyond the individualising scientific approach taken by traditional psychology, instead concentrating on the psychology of what makes us human – qualities like empathy and compassion, courage and dignity, kindness and sympathy – and how we can nurture them. Offering a fascinating alternative to existing resources and enhanced by carefully chosen full-colour illustrations, the book and associated companion website include original pedagogical features such as reflective exercises, further resources and a glossary, offering opportunities for readers to customise their learning experience. Featuring a course mapping section that sets out how the text can be used in relation to psychology curriculum requirements and common course structures, this interdisciplinary resource provides accessible and engaging reading for students studying psychology and other disciplines, including sociology, cultural studies, politics and media studies, as well as applied areas such as nursing, policing and management. It is also for anyone who is interested in what psychology can tell us about our lives and place in the world.
This handbook questions, debates and subverts commonly held assumptions about disability and citizenship in the global postcolonial context. Discourses of citizenship and human rights, so elemental to strategies for addressing disability-based inequality in wealthier nations, have vastly different ramifications in societies of the Global South, where resources for development are limited, democratic processes may be uncertain, and access to education, health, transport and other key services cannot be taken for granted. In a broad range of areas relevant to disability equity and transformation, an eclectic group of contributors critically consider whether, when and how citizenship may be used as a lever of change in circumstances far removed from UN boardrooms in New York or Geneva. Debate is polyvocal, with voices from the South engaging with those from the North, disabled people with nondisabled, and activists and politicians intersecting with researchers and theoreticians. Along the way, accepted wisdoms on a host of issues in disability and international development are enriched and problematized. The volume explores what life for disabled people in low and middle income countries tells us about subjects such as identity and intersectionality, labour and the global market, family life and intimate relationships, migration, climate change, access to the digital world, participation in sport and the performing arts, and much else.
Critical Race Studies Across Disciplines exhibits essays by Black studies scholars from various disciplines outside of legal studies which directly and indirectly incorporate critical race theory into their analysis of the Black experience. As scholar-activists or scholactivists, these academics are firmly committed to African American liberation.
The Psychology of Gender and Health: Conceptual and Applied Global Concerns examines the psychological aspects of the intersection between gender and health and the ways in which they relate to the health of individuals and populations. It demonstrates how gender should be strategically considered in the most routine research tasks—from establishing priorities, constructing theory, designing methodologies, in data interpretation, and how to practically apply this information in clinical contexts. The topics covered in its chapters answer the needs of professionals, students, and faculty, providing an up-to-date conceptual tool that covers the relationships that exist between gender and health. The book will not only help users build expertise in psychology in gender and health, but also contribute to the awareness and training of psychologists as dynamic actors in the implementation of the gender perspective in their studies, reflections, research, and health interventions. Offers specific literature on the gender perspective in health and psychology Addresses a broad and diverse audience, and its coverage is uniquely comprehensive Utilizes an intersectional approach to race, class, sexual orientation, nationality, disability status, and age Updates on the pressing concerns of gender violence Covers specific content on transgender and same-sex attracted populations that includes a focus on men and masculinity Deals with hot topics on infertility, immigration, and HIV/AIDS
The Psychology of Journalism takes a media psychological approach towards a better understanding of key aspects of news production and reception. Media Psychology is an emerging discipline which is concerned with understanding the interaction between individuals and communication technology. Scholars interested in this area ask questions concerning the way in which communication between individuals is shaped by the media in terms of both its social and cultural characteristics. At a time when the role and function of news journalism are under intense public scrutiny, The Psychology of Journalism explores the psychological processes involved in the production, delivery, and consumption of news. With contributions from an international team of scholars with backgrounds in both media and psychology, the chapters provide theoretical and empirical evidence to better understand why and how journalists and audience alike select, attend, understand, and co-construct meaning from reported events.This book is suitable for students and researchers in Journalism, Media Communication, Political Communication, and Psychology.
This first-of-its-kind volume brings discursive psychology and peace psychology together in a compelling practical synthesis. An array of internationally-recognised contributors examine multiple dimensions of discourse—official and casual, speech, rhetoric, and text—in creating and maintaining conflict and building mediation and reconciliation. Examples of strategies for dealing with longstanding conflicts (the Middle East), significant flashpoints (the Charlie Hebdo case), and current heated disputes (the refugee ‘crisis’ in Europe) demonstrate discursive methods in context as they bridge theory with real life. This diversity of subject matter is matched by the range of discursive approaches applied to peace psychology concepts, methods, and practice. Among the topics covered: Discursive approaches to violence against women. The American gun control debate: a discursive analysis. Constructing peace and violence in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Discursive psychological research on refugees. Citizenship, social injustice, and the quest for a critical social psychology of peace. The emotional and political power of images of suffering: discursive psychology and the study of visual rhetoric. Discourse, Peace, and Conflict offers expansive ideas to scholars and practitioners in peace psychology, as well as those in related areas such as social psychology, political psychology, and community psychology with an interest in issues pertaining to peace and conflict.
