Overview
- Articulates how psychologists can generate insights into emancipatory social change
- Evaluates populist movements that aim at social and psychological emancipation
- Posits that populism is inadequate to solve social and psychological problems and provides and alternative
Part of the book series: Critical Theory and Practice in Psychology and the Human Sciences (CTPPHS)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Developing a Psychological Theory for Scientifically Understanding and Enriching Psychology and Society
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Front Matter
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Keywords
- social emancipation
- cultural emancipation
- political emancipation
- democratic socialism
- multiculturalism
- human rights
- cultural politics
- Marx
- Vygotsky
- Liberation Psychology
- Cultural-historical psychology
- Historical Materialism
- Indigenous Psychology
- identity politics
- psychoanalysis
- cultural historical activity theory
- populism
- feminism
- socialism
- activism
About this book
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.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Carl Ratner is Director of the Institute for Cultural Research and Education, USA and a cultural psychologist working on political aspects of psychology and culture. He is active in the cooperative movement and his previous works include Politics of Cooperation & Co-Ops (2016) and Neoliberal Psychology (2019).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Psychology’s Contribution to Socio-Cultural, Political, and Individual Emancipation
Authors: Carl Ratner
Series Title: Critical Theory and Practice in Psychology and the Human Sciences
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28026-0
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and Psychology, Behavioral Science and Psychology (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-28025-3Published: 08 November 2019
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-28028-4Published: 08 November 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-28026-0Published: 29 October 2019
Series ISSN: 2946-3556
Series E-ISSN: 2946-3564
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XX, 344
Number of Illustrations: 32 b/w illustrations
Topics: Community and Environmental Psychology, Critical Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology, Cross Cultural Psychology, Political Sociology, Political Science