Dear Paul, Elaine and other list members,

Thanks both for your engagement with the important issues, your commitment to participatory decision making and your respectful tone. 

I appreciate Paul's arguments. I agree that if the CP collective is to be radical in constitution and process, always putting emancipatory social change first and the promotion of the interests of professionals last,  it would be inappropriate for decisions about the collective to be made by people committed to a BPS Section, in the BPS offices in London at a time and in a place chosen for the convenience of the a member of the elite BPS executive.

However I appreciate Elaine's efforts to facilitate serious pre-Section debate about how to promote progressive development of community psychology in the UK. I think the morning is an opportunity for enormously important debate, objective setting, strategic and tactical decision making in relation to the Section (NOT in relation to the collective)

Despite strong personal reservations about a BPS Section, I worked with others on the working party to set up a BPS CP Section because a plenary meeting at the Exeter UK CP conference made a collective decision and tasked a sub group to progress that decision. On the one hand, like many others on this list I regard the BPS as a problematic bureaucracy dedicated to promoting the interests of a middle class cadre, legitimising them in terms of a crude set of problematic disciplinary knowledges and practices and equipping them with psy weapons with which to wage the war without bullets, as Cathy McCormack calls it, against the very people whose interests many of us are trying to promote. On the other hand, in the past the BPS has made resources available to me to bring to the UK overseas community psychologists including George Albee, Isaac Prilleltensky, Julian Rappaport and Maritza Montero, provided resources to fund a London conference which gave a platform for the voices of community activist, Cathy McCormack, community artivists like Elaine Swift and the radical Turkish psychologist Serdar Degirmencioglu who have helped us develop our positions. The BPS also has the potential to steer the syllabus and training rituals which construct UK psychologists in progressive ways. I believe the qualitative section has an appreciable effect in terms of making space for consideration of non-positivist methods undergraduate training. I think a CP Section lobbying for CP in the undergraduate syllabus, calling for CP representation at BPS Conferences, establishing a BPS CP journal, impacting radically on conservative BPS committees etc would be worth having. However I know a CP Section will be problematic and there will be processes continually recuperating it into the mainstream and the CP Section will be exactly the sort of problematic organisation the CP Collective or other forum for voices speaking with the oppressed would need to remorselessly hold to account.

So to summarise:

I would prefer those committed to the development of a BPS Section who can attend the London meeting (i.e. are not prevented by barriers of distance, expense, previous commitment etc)  to discuss how to take the Section forward in the least problematic ways.

I would prefer those committed to the development of a CP collective to do that separately and independently of the CP Section 

If membership of the Collective was open only to people who had not got incompatible affiliations e.g. to a BPS CP  Section, which would of course be for the collective membership not this list to decide, I would need to think carefully but at the moment I would opt for the collective. However I think it is possible to work within the BPS to try to accomplish some goals and outside it to accomplish others and would prefer to be able to belong to and work within both.

David 

________________________________________
From: The UK Community Psychology Discussion List [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paul Duckett [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 14 September 2010 03:25
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Agenda for morning meeting on 8th October?

> Thanks Elaine for nudging the list into action on this.
> I fear the opportunity for a meaningful CP collective to form may have
> been stymied by the recent rush to get the BPS section inaugerated. If
> we seek to set the collective up the morning before the BPS section
> and with the intent of it being associated with the BPS section it
> could become ridden with problems that migth be desparately difficult
> to fix. I see three problems, to start with:
>
> 1) BPS members can attend both the morning session (CP collective) and
> the afternoon session (BPS setion) but non-BPS collective members can
> only attend the former. This will give a two tiered membership of the
> collective (section members and non section members).
> 2) the collective has been made impotent from the start (in relation
> to influencing the section). E.g., we have already seen on this list
> how a veto has been threatened to block any non-BPS CP list member
> influencing the BPS section. Whether or not the veto is used, it is
> there.
> 3) the collective might be drawn into the same rushed process that the
> section was drawn into and becomes, at the start, driven to meet the
> convenience of the BPS (meeting to be held at BPS venue in london
> which makes it harder for non-London based CP-ers to attend).
>
> I would like to see a collective established but my preference is for
> the collective to develop independently of the BPS section, perhaps
> even to the extent of collective members initially being for non-BPS
> members only (or at least non-BPS CP section members). This might
> allow the collective to become strong enough to find ways of resisting
> the conservative, mainstream voices that have already crept into the
> lsit from the direction of the BPS). A collective that intiailly
> barred BPS members might also be a way to create a counterbalance to
> the exclusion of non-BPS members of the collective from the BPS
> section. If and when a collective develops that achieves equivalent or
> more powers than the BPS section then I think we might then look to
> see in what ways we would and would not want the collective to
> influence the section and in what ways BPS section members may or may
> not be included in the collective.
>
> I would be happy to be involved in creating a non-BPS CP collective
> which does not aim first and foremost to promote the professional
> interests of Community Psychologists to counter a BPS CP section that
> does (for now at least) aim first and foremost to promote the
> professional interests of Community Psychologists.
>
> p
>
> Elaine Douglas wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> As you may know we have a meeting planned for the morning of 8th
>> October 2010 in London.  This is not the inaugral meeting of the BPS
>> CP Section.  The morning meeting takes place in the BPS offices in
>> London in advance of the Inaugral Meeting.  As far as I am aware
>> there is no agenda for this meeting at the moment, nor to my
>> knowledge a clear idea of what we would like to achieve.  Therefore,
>> I ask the following:-
>>
>> What would you like this meeting to achieve/initiate?
>>
>> What do you think should be discussed?
>>
>> Personally, I would like to discuss the suggestion of a CP
>> Cooperative, to identify who has the time and energy to drive the
>> suggestion forward, even if this is initially to identify what
>> appetite there is for the organisation, to pull together the work
>> that has already been done in this vein (ie, draft constitution),
>> how it may operate etc.
>> Over to you....... and please contribute even (perhaps especially!)
>> if you don't think you can attend.
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Elaine
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ___________________________________ The Community Psychology List has
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>
>

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The Community Psychology List has a new website/blog at:
http://www.communitypsychology.co.uk/
There is a threaded discussion forum:
http://www.communitypsychology.co.uk/cgi-bin/discus/discus.cgi
There is a twitter feed:
http://twitter.com/CommPsychUK
To post on the website blog, forum or twitter feed, contact Grant or David at the email addresses below.
David Fryer ([log in to unmask]) or Grant Jeffrey ([log in to unmask])
To unsubscribe or to change your details on this COMMUNITYPSYCHUK list, visit the website:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=COMMUNITYPSYCHUK