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Positive psychology: anthropological perspectives
Society of Psychological Anthropology Biennial (in association with the Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group)
San Diego, California, April 4-7 2013
Panel Convenor: Dr Nick Long, London School of Economics (email: [log in to unmask])
Concept Statement
In recent years, growing numbers of researchers in psychology and related disciplines have embraced the challenge of developing a ‘positive psychology’. Though wide-ranging, this enterprise can be summarised as an attempt to understand and/or explain how and why people find happiness and fulfilment in their lives, and to develop interventions that can build ‘thriving’ and/or ‘resilient’ individuals, families and communities, make normal life more fulfilling, and/or nurture genius and talent.
How should anthropologists engage with such a project? Many might, quite reasonably, be inclined towards a critical stance – interpreting researchers’ efforts to understand and then propagate a ‘positive mindset’ as simply one of many forms of governmentality to characterise the age of autonomous individualism and neoliberalism. Yet, despite this, the question of what allows people to ‘thrive’ is not a redundant one. Indeed, it could be seen as an enquiry into one of the most fundamental aspect of what it means to be human. Moreover, if one of the weaknesses of much ‘positive psychology’ to date has been its embeddedness in certain normative ideologies of the individual and what constitutes ‘well-being’, then anthropologists’ interests in alternative ways of understanding human flourishing, and the often fractious psychological and social realities generated when ideologies of the good life are enacted on the ground puts us in an excellent position to not only critique existing approaches, but to contribute to developing better ones.
This panel thus seeks to develop a dialogue with ‘positive psychology’ in a spirit of constructive engagement. It welcomes papers that a) explore the value of ideas from ‘positive psychology’ for understanding ethnographic materials, b) develop ethnographically-grounded and/or anthropologically inflected theories of ‘positive psychology’, or c) seek to critique and/or refine existing theories of ‘positive psychology’ based on ethnographic observation of what happens when such ideas are put into practice.
Please send abstracts (max 250 words), queries, or expressions of interest to Dr Nick Long at [log in to unmask]
The deadline for abstracts is Sunday 2nd December.
For more detail on the conference, see http://www.aaanet.org/sections/spa/?page_id=808
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Dr Nick Long,
Department of Anthropology,
6th Floor, Old Building,
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street,
London
WC2A 2AE
UK
Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://lse.ac.uk/emailDisclaimer
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