Community Psychology

Evaluating Fidelity in Home-Visiting Programs a Qualitative Analysis of 1058 Home Visit Case Notes from 105 Families

by Thomas Saïas

Public policy initiatives and their impact on communities: challenges for community psychology

by Mark Burton

The Microfoundations of Community: Small Groups As Bridges and Barriers to Participatory Democracy

by Gazi Islam

The place and function of power in community psychology: philosophical and practical issues

by Scotney Evans

Adrian T. Fisher, Christopher C. Sonn, Scot D. Evans

Article first published online: 9 JUL 2007

DOI: 10.1002/casp.934

Much of the training of psychologists in the western world follows a logical positivist, scientist-practitioner model... more Much of the training of psychologists in the western world follows a logical positivist, scientist-practitioner model based in scientific objectivity and removed from politics. In this paper, we explore issues around alternative understandings of the role and place of psychologists and psychological actions. In so doing, we discuss a number of issues of ontology, epistemology and pragmatics to demonstrate that the role and function of power in our society need to be addressed more directly and more politically in order for us to successfully achieve our roles as community psychologists

Trauma and Memory: The Impact of Apartheid-Era Forced Removals on Coloured Identity in Cape Town

by Henry Trotter

in Mohamed Adhikari (Ed.), Burdened by Race: Coloured Identities in Southern Africa (Cape Town: UCT Press, 2009), pp. 49-78

Communities often cohere around memories of historical suffering: yet coloured South Africans, a people whose diverse... more Communities often cohere around memories of historical suffering: yet coloured South Africans, a people whose diverse ancestry experienced enslavement, dispossession, genocidal extermination, and apartheid degradation, for the most part, they do not invest in remote historical traumas. Most coloured Capetonians instead focus upon a painful experience within living memory: the forced eviction of 150,000 coloured people from their homes and communities in the Cape Peninsula between 1957 and 1985 under the Group Areas Act. It is this experience that gives coloured identity vital resonance, especially amongst working class people, many of whom have yet to overcome the losses of that trauma.

Based on over one hundred life history interviews with coloured and African forced removees, this article examines the impact of Group Areas evictions on contemporary coloured identity. It suggests that, in the wake of mass social trauma, coloured removees coped with their pain by reminiscing with each other about the "good old days" in the destroyed communities. Their removal to racially defined townships ensured that they mainly shared their memories with other coloured people, and much less with African or Indian removees.

Apartheid social engineering to a large extent thus determined the spatial limits within which coloured memories circulated, creating a reflexive, mutually reinforcing pattern of narrative traffic. Over the past four decades, the constant circulation of these nostalgic stories has developed a "narrative community" amongst coloured people in the townships. This experience of popular sharing and support in the context of loss today gives coloured identity in Cape Town a dimension that would be lacking if it were only mobilized for political or economic purposes.

Desorden social, integración social y bienestar subjetivo en inmigrantes latinoamericanos en España [Social disorder, social integration, and subjective well-being among Latin-American immigrants in Spain]

by Enrique Gracia

Anales de Psicología, 28, 505-514, 2012

La construcción biográfica del liderazgo comunitario en sectores populares: un estudio piloto orientado a la exploración del capital social en Santiago de Chile

by Adolfo Perinat

2011. In collaboration with María Isabel Reyes Espejo. Revista Castalia, 13(19), 63-89.

El reconocimiento de los procesos de liderazgo, como elementos que informan y conforman el capital social de las... more El reconocimiento de los procesos de liderazgo, como elementos que informan y conforman el capital social de las comunidades, ha resultado en propuestas que revelan el potencial heurístico de los métodos biográficos para aproximarse a las cualidades que adquiere este recurso en su realidad cotidiana. En este contexto, realizamos un estudio piloto que indaga en la trayectoria biográfica de dos líderes que han desarrollado su trabajo en Cerro Navia, un sector popular de la ciudad de Santiago de Chile. Los/as describimos como mediadores que han desarrollado destrezas para el manejo de posiciones ambivalentes, llegando a convertirse en “nexos” que articulan los beneficios de la comunidad con los personales. Observamos que el capital social en las comunidades indirectamente investigadas está fuertemente influidos por el devenir histórico, las luchas políticas y la cultura de nuestro país. Concluimos así que el papel de los/as líderes se materializa en un capital social acumulado (anclado en valores de solidaridad, compañerismo y colaboración) que le es devuelto a la comunidad (en las formas de voz, presencia y poder) para que esta se articule.

The identification of the processes of leadership as elements that inform about social capital of communities has resulted in proposals that show the heuristic potential of biographical methods to approximate the qualities that acquires this resource in its daily life. In this context, we conducted a pilot study about the biographical trajectory of two leaders who have developed their work in Cerro Navia, a popular sector of the city of Santiago de Chile. Describing them as mediators who have developed skills for handling ambivalent positions, leaders constitute links that articulate the benefits of community with their personal interests. We note that the social capital in the communities investigated is strongly influenced by the historical, political struggles and culture of our country. We conclude that the role of leaders takes the form of accumulated social capital (rooted in the values of solidarity, partnership and collaboration) that is returned to the community (in the forms of voice, presence and power) for its articulation.

ETHNOMUSICKING: A VALUED MUSIC OCCUPATION OR AUDACIOUS ANTICS IN THE PURGA MUSIC MUSEUM

by Sandra Kirkwood

This paper appears was delivered at the Cultural Diversity in Music Education Conference held at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music on 11 January, 2010. It appears in the Conference Proceedings -- peer reviewed and accepted for publication 31 October, 2009.

Music history research of Indigenous and Scottish groups in Ipswich, Australia, reveals that people have had varying... more Music history research of Indigenous and Scottish groups in Ipswich, Australia, reveals that people have had varying levels of access and engagement in music making that is related to their music heritage and culture. There is no suitable terminology to describe this active cultural engagement, so I propose the term ‘ethnomusicking.’ In this paper I will outline my concept of ethnomusicking and discuss examples from participatory action research. The aim is to critically analyse the social significance of ethnomusicking and the role of the music museum curator in facilitating community-based education – particularly the design of programs for reconciliation and healing.

Identification and PSOC

by Terri Mannarini

Power and Conflict in Adaptive Management: Analyzing the Discourse of Riparian Management on Public Lands

by Jennifer Arnold

Adaptive collaborative management emphasizes stakeholder engagement as a crucial component of resilient... more Adaptive collaborative management emphasizes stakeholder engagement as a crucial component of resilient social-ecological systems. Collaboration among diverse stakeholders is expected to enhance learning, build social legitimacy for decision making, and establish relationships that support learning and adaptation in the long term. However, simply bringing together diverse stakeholders does not guarantee productive engagement. Using critical discourse analysis, we examined how diverse stakeholders negotiated knowledge and power in a workshop designed to inform adaptive management of riparian livestock grazing on a National Forest in the southwestern USA. Publicly recognized as a successful component of a larger collaborative effort, we found that the workshop effectively brought together diverse participants, yet still restricted dialogue in important ways. Notably, workshop facilitators took on the additional roles of riparian experts and instructors. As they guided workshop participants toward a consensus view of riparian conditions and management recommendations, they used their status as riparian experts to emphasize commonalities with stakeholders supportive of riparian grazing and accentuate differences with stakeholders skeptical of riparian grazing, including some Forest Service staff with power to influence management decisions. Ultimately, the management plan published one year later did not fully adopt the consensus view from the workshop, but rather included and acknowledged a broader diversity of stakeholder perspectives. Our findings suggest that leaders and facilitators of adaptive collaborative management can more effectively manage for productive stakeholder engagement and, thus, socialecological
resilience if they are more tentative in their convictions, more critical of the role of expert knowledge, and more
attentive to the knowledge, interests, and power of diverse stakeholders.

Intervenção Comunitária com Grupo de Adolescentes: Relato de Experiência do Projeto EBA

by Mariana Gonçalves-Boeckel

Environmental Reconstruction in Microsociological Theory for Microsociological Reconstruction in Environmental Sociology

by Brad Brewster

PhD Dissertation. Completed in 2011. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Done under the supervision of Michael Mayerfeld Bell.

I survey a collection of pedagogical resources in environmental sociology, including syllabi, textbooks, readers, and... more I survey a collection of pedagogical resources in environmental sociology, including syllabi, textbooks, readers, and handbooks, to show that what’s being taught and perpetuated as environmental sociology, via field-defining theories, is actually environmental macrosociology, leaving out the micro. I argue that pedagogical and theoretical problems follow from such one-sidedness. To correct for this imbalance, I turn to social psychological philosopher George Herbert Mead and microsociological theorist of everyday life Erving Goffman, reconstructing their theories in environmental terms. I show that, contrary to how Mead is often taught in sociology courses as well as how he is often portrayed in environmental sociology, Mead’s broad intellectual interests extended beyond social psychology to the natural world. In doing so, an “environmental Mead” is developed from his socio-environmental thought for a community psychology in environmental sociology. Then, beginning with a partly critical discussion of his view of animals, I move into discussions of how Mead's anti-dualistic philosophy creatively combined social and natural in various ways when it came to his view of objects, of mind, and of nature. Unlike Mead, Goffman was singularly and narrowly interested in everyday social interaction. The problem, then, was how to modify Goffman to environmental uses without losing the distinctive character of Goffman’s work. I address this by formulating a pragmatic construct for exporting Goffman to domains he himself had never been. Along the lines of this construct, then, an “environmental Goffman” is developed from his frame analysis for an environmental sociology of everyday life. I, then, explore applications of Mead and Goffman to fields in environmental studies or closely related to environmental sociology, namely, exploring Goffman’s dramaturgical, ritual, and interaction analysis in terms of community sociology and Mead’s holistic thought by comparison to ecosystem ecology. As a next logical step from the socially contextual, embedded approaches of the self in the community in Mead’s thought and of the self in the social situation in Goffman’s thought, I move up to the next level of analysis, the small group itself, to bring group dynamics into the environmental and conservation social sciences.

Reclaiming The Sacred: A Festival Experience as a Response to Globalisation

by Karin Mackay

published in Journal for the Study of Religion, vol 24, No 2, 2011

Pressures of globalisation such as the focus on the growth of productive economies, consumerism, and long work-hours... more Pressures of globalisation such as the focus on the growth of productive economies, consumerism, and long work-hours have fragmented cultural beliefs and practices worldwide. Devaluation of deeply held soulful, creative, and nature-based practices in the dominant neoliberal capitalist discourse has challenged the way cultural and spiritual wellbeing are lived. Instead of being completely subsumed into the neoliberal global discourse, local responses incorporating global themes are emerging in the form of the “neo-tribal” festival experience. Although festivals have primarily been seen as places of consumption, this misunderstands the drive to participate in a festival experience. This article investigates a women’s arts and ecology festival held in The Blue Mountains, Australia, where members of the local community celebrate the return of spring. Findings suggest that this festival was a site for reclaiming a localized sense of connectedness, where participants reclaimed what was sacred to them. I will argue that consumerism is secondary to the desire for a sacred synergy of connectedness at this festival where critical creative action challenges the neoliberal and patriarchal discourses in the negotiation of global culture.

Hard to Reach Communities: Living in the UK, and Issues Facing British Muslims of Kashmiri Heritage Born & Bred in the UK

by Owais Rajput

In my presentation I will focus on British Muslim Communities living in UK; my main focus will be on the British local... more In my presentation I will focus on British Muslim Communities living in UK; my main focus will be on the British local community with Kashmiri heritage, as most of the time they are labelled in the media as “Home Grown Radicalised” Muslims, even if they are the fourth & fifth generation born & bred in UK.

I will also focus on Processes to Radicalisation in UK, in local communities, again particularly in the Kashmiri community.

I will also focus on design and delivery processes so far used by authorities in de-radicalisation processes and the results so far, and why we need to change those design and delivery processes, especially when we focus on the British Diaspora with Kashmiri heritage, the fourth & fifth generation born & bred in the UK.

The role of individuals in community change within the Findhorn intentional community

by Peter Forster

Co-authored with Marijke Wilhelmus.

Forster, P. M. and Wilhelmus, M. (2005). The role of individuals in community change within the Findhorn intentional community. Contemporary Justice Review, 8, 367-379

The processes whereby intentional communities change are many and complex, but change they must if they are to survive... more The processes whereby intentional communities change are many and complex, but change they must if they are to survive the challenges they will inevitably meet. Most communities do not survive the challenges they meet in their first two years. The Findhorn Community in north east Scotland has survived and grown in the more than 40 years since it began. This paper provides a description by two former, long-standing members of that community of the main changes the community has gone through that have enabled the community to respond to change and continue to grow. It describes the role played in those changes by key individuals and contends that, without them, the community would probably have stagnated and gone the way of the many communities that were not able to respond to the challenges they faced. The authors use these case studies to show how a handful of practical visionaries have ensured the long-term future of the community.

A history of community psychology in South Africa

by Jeffery Yen

Community Psychology Inititiatives in Greece

by Athanasios Marvakis

Community Psychology

by Scotney Evans

2007. In D. C. Willig, & Stainton-Rogers, D. W. (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology (1st ed.). Thousand Oaks, Ca: Sage Publications.

Authorship: Carrie E. Hanlin, Kimberly Bess, Patricia Conway, Scotney D. Evans, Diana McCown, Isaac Prilleltensky

Persisting or withdrawing

by Terri Mannarini

Community psychology in Britain

by Mark Burton