Critical Community Psychology

Critical Action and Social Change

Carolyn Kagan, Mark Burton, Paul Duckett, Rebecca Lawthom, Asiya Siddiquee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429776175
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This accessible textbook draws upon progressions in academic, political and global arenas, to provide a comprehensive overview of practical issues in psychological work across a diverse range of community settings.

Interest in community psychology, and its potential as a distinctive approach, is growing and evolving in parallel with societal and policy changes. Thoroughly revised and updated, this new edition covers crucial issues including decolonial approaches, migration, social justice, and the environmental crisis. It has a new chapter on archive research, working with data, policy analysis and development, to reflect the continuously developing global nature of community psychology. Key features include:

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• Sections and chapters organised around thinking, acting and reflecting

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• Case examples and reflections of community psychology in action

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• Discussion points and ideas for exercises that can be undertaken by the reader, in order to extend critical understanding

Aiming to provide readers with not only the theories, values and principles of community psychology, but also with the practical guidance that will underpin their community psychological work, this is the ideal resource for any student of community, social, and clinical psychology, social work, community practice, and people working in community-based professions and applied settings.

Contents

Introduction

What is critical community psychology?

Core elements of a critical community psychology

The contested nature of community

Community as social ties

This section is concerned with the theoretical context of critical community psychology. Key ideas and concepts are introduced which underpin the chapters on critical community psychology action and reflection. We explore the nature of critical community psychology; the core elements of critical community psychology; the contested nature of community; and the nature of social ties and participation. By the end of this section you will have had a lot to think about, and will have some ideas about what we mean by critical community psychology.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Summary

In this chapter we explain the origins of the book, both in our relationships to each other and in the place where we all worked and lived, Manchester, UK. We talk about the importance – or not – of Manchester as the place in which we developed our critical community psychology approach, characterised by learning through action (action learning) and action through learning (action research). We consider issues to do with language and representation throughout the book and what we mean by critical. Finally, we give an orientation to the three parts of the book and to the importance of Think! Act! Reflect! as the organising theme for the book, and the critical disruptions that are used throughout.

Critical community psychology in Manchester, UK

When we wrote the first book we all worked and lived together in or near Manchester, UK. Things have changed. Rebecca still works and lives near Manchester. Paul lives and works in Australia; Asiya lives and works in China; and Carolyn and Mark still live in Manchester but are retired from paid employment and working as activist scholars or scholar activists. With the advances in internet facilities we have still been able to co-operate over revising the text. This means that this is now a book about critical community psychology, written by a mixed group of academics and scholar activists or activist scholars. When we wrote the first edition of the book, four of us – Carolyn, Rebecca, Paul and Asiya – all worked together at Manchester Metropolitan University, on curriculum design of award bearing undergraduate and postgraduate courses as well as short courses; teaching; supervising; researching; writing, and doing the myriad other things that working in the university entailed. Mark held a visiting professorship at the university, collaborating on research projects, writing and some teaching, whilst managing a complex multi-professional service for people with learning difficulties in the city. We had the largest critical mass of community psychologists in the UK, probably in Europe, in our department, along with critical psychologists and people working in innovative areas of psychology. We were (and are) also friends. We are able, still, to draw on the experiences of our undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral community psychology students, our various research teams and the many community groups and organisations and people we work with and with whom we have struggled, and continue to struggle, in solidarity for greater social justice and to create a better world.

In the past seven years the challenge of impending climate catastrophe has become clearer, so we work, not only for social justice but for climate justice too. Other things have changed during this period as well, some local, some national and some international, including:

1 There has been a move to right wing, nationalist, populist and some fascist regimes around the world, including the election of Trump in the USA.

2 The full aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis has played out, leading to ramped up austerity and letting the bankers off the hook – this is marked in the UK but evident in other places too.

3 The Hoffman Report – relating to USA based American Psychology Association (APA) ethics guidelines, national security interrogations and torture, but with reverberations around the world – was published and we mobilised around an anti-torture position within the British Psychological Association (BPS).

4 The BPS Division of Clinical Psychology wrote a report that asked for psychology to move away from the biological model of mental illness.

5 Fake news, alternative facts, have become rife, and there has been a push back from positivist science to reclaim the narrative on fact and fiction.

6 There has been increased momentum in the neoliberalism of higher education – the introduction of teaching quality and knowledge exchange quality frameworks, to sit alongside the research quality framework in the UK, and higher education funding cuts in UK and Australia.

7 There is rising inequality everywhere, particularly income inequality in many places, leading to destabilisation and the normalising of extreme right wing discourses.

8 Indigenous communities from around the world have found their livelihoods more threatened than ever as big corporate business tears up the spaces in which they live, and those of us living in the rich parts of the world continue to consume to excess, thriving on the products of this destruction.

9 There is instability in many regions, leading to war, conflict, displacement and famine.

10 Nuclear brinkmanship is taking place between various combinations of Russia, China, North Korea and the USA.

11 Islamophobia has become a fully matured form of state-sponsored violence in the UK and elsewhere.

12 A referendum was held in the UK with a narrow margin between those who voted for the UK to leave the European Union (Brexit) and those who didn’t, with considerable turmoil, division and chaos in both Parliament and the country following.

13 Seventy-two people lost their lives as a fire engulfed Grenfell Tower in London – almost certainly corporate greed will emerge as a contributory factor as the inquiry into the disaster proceeds.

14 Psychology was at the heart of a science crisis – the scandal about faking data in replication studies had reverberations across the scientific world with seepage into the public consciousness and contributing to greater mistrust of institutions and expertise.

All of these changes have had a direct impact on us all, but most particularly on those already marginalised in different ways. Despite this, though, people have expressed voice, resilience, courage, solidarity, continued to bring joy to each other and to their children and, most importantly, promoted hope. We struggle, though, along with many, with the realisation that the list of threats nearly overwhelms the sites of resistance and us! We hope that our critical community psychology approach remains relevant, and supports people working for progressive change.

The book is the result of many years working, teaching and thinking together – even at a distance – and realising that we have developed a form of praxis (the inseparable union of theory and practice) that remains firmly grounded in our time and place together, but enriched with the life changes we have undergone. One of the many questions we have asked ourselves, in relation to our praxis, is “to what extent is it important that we were bound together through time and place and that the place is Manchester?” When we discussed this, we thought about other developments of which we have been a part and asked ourselves the same question. When we worked together, it was at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), which prior to 1992 was Manchester Polytechnic. The kind of institution we worked in is firmly embedded in the history and policies affecting university–community relations (Kagan & Diamond, 2019). We were lucky to have had, at times, an enabling context, in terms of opportunities for innovative practice in academia, but also in public services. We were lucky to have been friends and to have shared the same value base. At Manchester Polytechnic we developed the first Psychology of Women course in the country (Kagan & Lewis, 1990). Whilst place was important in bringing like-minded people together to work, discuss and create, we do not link this development to Manchester in particular, but rather to women’s networks and the women’s movement more widely. Whilst this is not a feminist community psychology book, we continue to work with, and be inspired by, feminist thought and the bravery of much feminist struggle. Feminist theory and principles underpin our work. Manchester has distinguished itself this year by erecting (through public subscription) a statue of Emmeline Pankhurst, who led the more militant suffragette movement in the UK at the turn of the twentieth century – the second statue of a woman in the city (the first being of the imperialist queen Victoria).

Our department produced the first book on qualitative research methods in psychology (Banister, Burman, Parker, Taylor & Tindall, 1997) but again, although being in the same place at the same time was important for the group of authors, we do not link this development specifically to Manchester, but rather to the critical turn in social psychology following the so-called ‘crisis of social psychology’ in the 1970s and 1980s. For a period of more than 20 years our department was known for its critical work. During this period, we developed the first Masters programme in community psychology in the UK. The situation, now, is not so enabling. There is no longer a named Masters programme in community psychology at MMU. Departmental developments have reflected routes to professional psychology status (community psychology has no formal route to professional recognition in the UK), maximising student recruitment. Undergraduate programmes retain community psychology for all students, which is good, but pressure is on to demonstrate how this part of their course contributes to their ‘employability’, as university priorities are drawn ever more close to government priorities. Research, teaching and even third stream activity is subject to national metrics, and time is mapped on to them. It is difficult to find space to develop community relationships, and yet, as we have shown, some remarkable work still emanates from academia (Benneworth, 2013; Kagan & Diamond, 2019). Indeed, Levin and Greenwood (2018) argue that action research promises the only meaningful frame of action for university–community work. From outside in, it is relatively easy for community groups to collaborate with academics from the elite, research intensive universities, who have additional funds and seemingly more time, but, ironically, it is less easy to collaborate with those traditionally working well with communities (Brown & Carasso, 2013).

Even though our horizons have broadened in terms of time and space, and we are influenced by colleagues and friends from around the world, we link the development and evolution of our work in critical community psychology firmly to Manchester: a modern city with a past littered with collective struggles. Bauman (2007a) draws attention to the importance of place, an importance that underpins our experiences:

It is around places that human experience tends to be formed and gleaned, that life-sharing is attempted to be managed, that life meanings are conceived, absorbed and negotiated. And it is in places that human urges and desires are gestated and incubated, that they live in the hope of fulfilment, run the risk of frustration – and are indeed, more often than not, frustrated and strangled.

(Bauman, 2007a, p. 81)

Why Manchester?

Manchester is in the North West of England. As a site for manufacturing and heavy engineering works, Manchester was at the heart of the industrial revolution and local people became catalysts for free trade in the nineteenth century. It is the place where Engels lived and wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 and where Elizabeth Gaskell wrote Mary Barton, Cranford and North and South between 1848 and 1854. It is the home of the modern Co-operative Movement (which emerged in Rochdale just north of Manchester in 1844). In 1868 the first Trades Union Congress was held in Manchester’s Mechanics’ Institute. During the latter half of the nineteenth and first part of the twentieth centuries, the campaign for women’s franchise was led by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters, who were born and lived in Manchester. Manufacturing industry was supported by the world’s first passenger train line, between Manchester and Liverpool; in 1761 the first artificially cut waterway, the Bridgewater Canal, had been built to carry coal into the city...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Part 1 Think!
• Part 1: Critical disruption of Think!
• Part 1: Further resources
• Part 2 Act!
• Part 2: Critical disruption of Act!
• Part 2: Further resources
• Part 3 Reflect!
• Part 3: Critical disruption of Reflect!
• Part 3: Further resources
• 14 Critical disruption: does critical community psychology have an adequate praxis?
• References
• Index