Psychology's Contribution to Socio-Cultural, Political, and Individual Emancipation

Carl Ratner

• Editorial: Palgrave Macmillan
• Año: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783030280260
• Categoría: Psicología
• Categoría: Psicología social

This book articulates how psychologists can use their theory, research, and intervention to generate insights into emancipatory social change that is necessary to solve social and psychological problems. These include racism, sexism, civil rights, poverty, militarism, education, and politics.

Psychology was not developed to directly address social issues. It must therefore be reconceptualised to fulfil this aim. In this book Carl Ratner makes use of Vygotsky's psychological approach known as 'cultural-historical psychology', supplemented by Martin-Baro's Liberation Psychology and the work of Bourdieu and Foucault to develop an emancipatory psychological theory. This approach is then utilized to lay out a specific program of social and psychological emancipation. This reconstructed psychological theory is also used to evaluate populist movements that aim at social and psychological emancipation. Ratner posits that populism is inadequate to solve social and psychological problems because it misunderstands the nature of society and what it takes to improve society and psychology. This is demonstrated through wide-ranging examples including populist feminism, populist socialism, and populist distortions of liberation psychology and cultural-historical psychology.

This lively critique opens a pathway for academic across the social sciences concerned with how their disciplines can be oriented toward understanding and solving social-psychological problems, and will appeal to wide readership including policy makers, and social activists.

Section IDeveloping a Psychological Theory for Scientifically Understanding and Enriching Psychology and Society

© The Author(s) 2019

C. RatnerPsychology’s Contribution to Socio-Cultural, Political, and Individual EmancipationCritical Theory and Practice in Psychology and the Human Scienceshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28026-0_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Defining Emancipation That Forms the Parameters of Emancipatory, Scientific Psychology

Carl Ratner¹

(1)

Institute for Cultural Research and Education, Trinidad, CA, USA

Carl Ratner

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

EmancipationPsychological scienceMarxVygotsky

End Abstract

An emancipatory Psychology requires conceptualization of emancipation. While the content of emancipation is a matter of dispute in today’s climate of political, social, and moral polarization, I believe agreement is possible on which elements (or structures or conditions) of society must be transformed in order to achieve emancipation, however we define it.

We may begin with articulating what emancipation requires in an obviously oppressive social system such as slavery. Which social elements, structures, or conditions of slave society must be transformed in order to achieve emancipation of slaves from slavery? A Platonic questioning will help us to arrive at an agreeable, adequate conclusion: If slave owners reduce the daily labor by an hour, does this constitute emancipation? If slave owners provide more food, does this constitute emancipation? If slave owners provide education to the slaves, does this constitute emancipation? If slave owners provide pain killers to the slaves, does this constitute emancipation? If slaves practice cognitive techniques such as meditation, would that emancipate them? If they prayed to have a better life after death, would this emancipate them from slavery? If they learned to respect and empathize with their masters, would this emancipate them? If slaves learned to perceive and interpret their world differently, through different meanings, would that emancipate them from slavery? If slaves communicated openly and expressed emotions to their fellow slaves, would this emancipate them? If they formed close relations with their families, would this emancipate them from slavery? If dark-skinned slaves became friendly with light-skinned slaves, would this emancipate them? If female slaves were treated the same as male slaves and given the same benefits, would that emancipate them from slavery? If homosexual slaves were treated equally with heterosexual slaves would that emancipate them?

Clearly none of these is sufficient. Why? Because they do not abolish the social relations of slavery. The people remain slaves throughout these proposed reforms. They are simply comfortable slaves. (It is arguable that comforting reforms actually strengthen slavery because they generate some acceptance from slaves—and outsiders—which reduces resistance to slavery.)

Emancipation from slavery requires eradicating the social relation of slavery, and the social structure, and social institutions, and politics and power of slavery. The political economy of slavery must be abolished so that there is no such thing as slavery; there are no slaves and slave owners. The socioeconomic roles of slaves and owners are abolished. Nobody can own another person. Marx expressed this aptly: “An oppressed class is the vital condition for every society founded on the antagonism of classes. The emancipation of the oppressed class thus implies necessarily the creation of a new society.”

This is the first element of emancipation. The second element is constructing an alternative social system that consists of fulfilling, harmonious, democratic, cooperative, supportive social relations throughout its institutions, transactions, and ownership and distribution of resources and products.

The emancipatory future alternative can only be brought about if the oppressive, existing system of relationships is thoroughly dismantled. Emancipation from slavery cannot occur within a functioning slave system of slave owners, slaves, institutions, traditional rights, privileges, obligations, and power.

Micro levels of society, such as interpersonal relations or subjective thoughts and meanings, do not transform macro cultural factors of slavery. Slaves and slave owners can hope, wish, talk, pray, sing, respect, and love as much as they want, but these do not eradicate the objective social structures and powers—for example, to own another person—that constrain slaves to be slaves.

This can be depicted in Fig. 1.1.

Fig. 1.1

The necessity of macro cultural transformation to solve malignant macro cultural problems

Figure 1.1 illustrates that prevalent, malignant cultural factors require macro cultural transformation to eliminate cultural-psychological malignancy. Micro cultural reforms can only solve cultural problems when they are moderate in severity and prevalence. Because social and psychological emancipation requires radical social transformation, reforms such as pedagogical or psychological intervention can only achieve limited success. Our example of reforms to slavery exemplifies this. In oppressive societies, reforms make the oppressive system palatable. More perniciously, reforms distract from radical change; they are touted as real change when they actually support the status quo. I shall explain how civil rights fits this mold.

Specialized pedagogy for disadvantaged youth exemplifies this problem. It is touted as a means for overcoming impoverished social and material conditions. However, it can never overcome these conditions. And it is not intended, by the powers that be, to overcome conditions. Social-economic-political power in class societies depends upon oppression. It only accepts reforms that elevate a few individuals while consigning the majority to continued subaltern status. This is true of specialized pedagogy for disadvantaged students. The very existence of specialized pedagogy for literacy, language, and mathematics indicates the inadequacy of the normal social environment to support such competencies. Healthy, fulfilling environments would support these competencies, as they have done in many historical periods. For example, people have been learning language, literacy, and math for millennia without special techniques because the social environment supported these. It is only where the social environment is impoverished that artificial, specialized techniques for literacy and language are developed to substitute for broad support. However, these interventions can never overcome the impoverished environment—especially because that environment benefits from impoverished individuals who are adjusted to it and lack the skills for resisting it. This is why specialized pedagogical techniques to assist disadvantaged students rarely succeed in elevating their competencies to a high level that is necessary to succeed in high-level tasks and institutions.

All societies in the world today are oppressive in various ways (which does not mean they are totally oppressive or equally oppressive). Marx, in a letter to Annenkov, December 28, 1846, said, “Being an economic category, slavery has existed in all nations since the beginning of the world. All that modern nations have achieved is to disguise slavery at home and import it openly into the New World.” Emancipation requires (1) comprehending the political economy, forms of ownership and control, class structure, institutions, artifacts, concepts, and ideology that oppress people and (2) transforming/reorganizing these sources of oppression in radical ways into a new social system that becomes the source of social and psychological fulfillment.

In other words, emancipation requires scientific knowledge about the sources of oppression and viable alternatives to them, as well as political action that implements this knowledge in destructive acts and constructive acts, respectively.

Because the first element of emancipation—comprehending and dismantling the existing oppressive system—is prerequisite to the second element of comprehending and reconstructing an emancipatory alternative, this book shall utilize its limited space to concentrate on the first element. This focus is justified by the fact that many activists fall into false, incomplete critiques of the system that are powerless to comprehend it and dismantle it. As long as activists are stuck in this problem, they are incapable of providing the groundwork for transforming the system. Indeed, the transformation is only viable if it grows out of a radical critique of the status quo that reveals precisely what must be transformed and the direction that this can take. Future liberation is a dialectical outgrowth of the oppressive present. I shall indicate some ideas about an emancipatory alternative that emerge from my critique of the existing system.

1.1 Social-Psychological Emancipation and Macro Cultural-Psychological Science

The problematic of this book is to explain how psychological phenomena and the academic discipline that studies them—which I designate as Psychology—can contribute to social-political emancipation. In other words, how can psychology and Psychology contribute to (1) comprehending the macro cultural sources of oppression that are rooted in the political economy (such as the political economy of slavery), (2) critiquing these fundamental, central sources of oppression, and (3) transforming them into political-economic, macro cultural sources of fulfillment?

This question is problematical because emancipation is a macro, social-level phenomenon that analyzes, critiques, and transforms macro cultural formations, while Psychology studies psychological phenomena on the micro level of individuals’ minds (psyches) and bodies and interpersonal interactions. The problematic is how the latter can contribute to understanding and transforming the former. How can the macro and micro levels be made relevant to each other?

This is a knotty problem that requires a sophisticated, radical solution. It is not solved by adding a few cultural variables to psychological phenomena and to the discipline of Psychology. The problem is that mainstream Psychology does not simply overlook culture, it actively obscures it. Consequently, Psychology is not patiently waiting to learn cultural aspects of psychology; it makes it difficult to learn these aspects. Psychology has accomplished this by drawing culture down to psychology which is conceived as micro-level bio-psychology or personal psychology that can be understood by principles of existing academic Psychology. This “psychologizing” of culture means that culture is improved via psychological principles and psychological processes that govern psychological phenomena. However, mainstream Psychology has few insights into culture after it has reduced culture to non-cultural factors and processes.

This problematic of mainstream Psychology for contributing to cultural understanding and improvement is illustrated by Psychology’s conception of mental illness. Where mental illness is actually a by-product of social oppression, Psychology reduces oppression to “stressors,” which are then conceived as triggering biological or personal vulnerabilities, and then generating biological or personal coping mechanisms to “stress.” Psychological forms of intervention are then utilized to mitigate the reactions to “stress.” This conversion of concrete issues to an abstract circuit of stressors and stress, that is the focus of treatment, effectively precludes mental illness from adding to our understanding of society or improving society. It also generates minimal psychological improvement because it has neither comprehended nor challenged the ultimate basis of mental illness in social oppression. This is the serious cultural problematic of mainstream Psychology. It is what we shall solve. We depict this problematic in Fig. 1.2.

Fig. 1.2

Psychologizing psychological phenomena and society

It is important to emphasize that conventional Psychology does not only psychologize culture; it psychologizes psychological phenomena as well. This means that the field of Psychology construes its subject matter as micro-level phenomena that primarily originate in intra-individual mechanisms, as well as operate by intra-individual mechanisms, and serve individual needs and interests. This statement means that the discipline of Psychology imposes a certain way of thinking about psychology that is not natural or universal. Psychology’s approach to psychology is theory driven, that is, ideologically driven. This is what it means to say that Psychology psychologizes psychology.

Correcting these errors in mainstream Psychology obviously requires a major reconceptualization. We must reconceptualize psychology as formed by macro cultural factors. Then, psychological phenomena reflect their formative cultural factors; they are expressions of them and windows into them. Psychological science would then apprehend social problems in and through psychological phenomena. In this way, psychological phenomena are uplifted to the cultural level; psychology is “culturized.” More precisely, the original, intrinsic, cultural character of psychology is recovered (recuperar) from its psychologization by mainstream Psychology.

After psychology has been recovered and “reculturized,” it can indicate how social factors and systems should be improved so as to generate fulfilling psychological phenomena. Psychological phenomena and Psychology would thereby complement the social critiques that are made by other disciplines—for example, health critique, educational critique, economic critique, news critique, cultural critique, and so on. Psychology will also be improved by these cultural critiques and the social improvements they generate. This is schematically represented in Fig. 1.3.

Fig. 1.3

Culturizing psychology and society

This analysis of psychology and society is the theme of this book. This ana...

Índice

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Section I. Developing a Psychological Theory for Scientifically Understanding and Enriching Psychology and Society
• Section II