Hello
all.
Thanks
Mark for sending this out again, and encouraging us all to get involved in some
discussion.
I was
at the Birmingham meeting and, for me, it felt like a good start to a process of
developing some kind of action together as a network. I thought the day felt
really productive, and in particular, it seemed that we were able to bring together different perspectives
and ideas, and to have a respectful and constructive set of conversations about
these big questions.
I am
still a little uncertain about how much this kind of activity is percieved as
worthwhile by people who didn't attend the Birmingham meeting, and even maybe by
some of us who did. I am not 100% certain that the approach we have
taken is the best way of working collectively towards change. But I don't have
any better suggestions for now, and this seems better than doing nothing. At least talking about it
seems like a good starting point, and I would welcome some engagement in
thinking together about what we're doing, and other alternatives, as well
as the content.
At
Birmingham, one of the things we discussed - when we were working in small
groups - was the range of factors that influence us as psychologists, in relation to
whether and how to undertake more collective and political action. Amongst the
ideas that we discussed was the notion of objectivity (as it pertains to
'science') that is so embedded in much of our training. We talked
about the more recent development of a critical perspective on this stance,
particularly within qualitative research and clinical psychology. Within these
branches of psychology (and many others, no doubt), there is an increasing
emphasis on reflexivity and recognition of (what I would consider to be)
the inevitable subjectivity that we bring to our work. I wonder whether this long-held
emphasis on objectivity and the traditional de-contextualisation of
psychological knowledge is one of the things that can generate feelings of
uncertainty around taking a wider, more political stance, and taking action in
relation to it.
We
also talked in Birmingham about the way that psychologists may feel less
powerful than they are percieved to be by some (but not
all) non-psychologists. I think some of us also sometimes
feel like we don't know what to do, beyond the narrow range of what we've been
trained to do. I would connect this in some way to the emphasis on the
scientific method that has held sway for many years within psychology - which
seems to function as a means of legitimating and asserting the power
of what we (think we) know. Without that, do we know what we have to offer?
And without the objective science, is what we have to offer considered relevant
to anyone else? Particularly - is it considered to be relevant to those who
we percieve to be more powerful than ourselves? So, if the objective stance of
the scientist has been used for a long time to (try to) legitimate our
positions, is it not very difficult to do something that seems contradictory
with this position?
Or maybe there are lots of other reasons why it may be difficult to get
some discussion going on the list? It's hard to know...
Maybe it's also the lack of time in our
every-day work to dedicate to thinking about it, and doing something different.
Even
if this discussion doesn't get going on the list, hopefully the conference at
York will give us the necessary space away from the every-day pressures of
work, and enable us to take this up again.
Wendy
Does community psychology have any relevance to the big
questions of war, imperialism and dispossession, climate change? Does it
have any thing to say about the pressing problems of society in this country
for that matter? Or is it a limited set of practices that do little more
than distract us from real and pressing action priorities?
The attached
document tries to explore some of this. it is the result of a UK
community psychology network event held in Birmingham earlier this year,
organised by Carl Harris. The document says something about how the
workshop was conducted and presents the results form the group
discussions. It also presents as an Appendix the paper that the group
used as background.
As Carl put it in his original email to the
list:
We are now handing this information over to the list as a whole, so that the statements can be used by list members (eg in communications with individuals and organisations, such as MPs, the BPS and the media). After the original version was circulated to the list there was little discussion, and as we had tried to be provocative this surprised us. the group has agreed to resubmit the document with, we hope, a clearer signpost to what it is about. Some members of the group will be conducting a workshop on this theme at the September CP fiesta in York - this and any further discussion will act as background material for the event. We are very aware that the papers presented in the document are best seen as work in progress - so constructive commentary and and comradely criticism is most welcome!! From Mark Burton Manchester UK www.compsy.org.uk