Transcript For Whom the Bell Tolls: The unknown future of Community

For Whom the Bell Tolls:
The future of Community Psychology
"Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.“
- Marquis De Sade
The Toolkit of CP
1. Predisposition to scrutinize established mores and
notions of right and wrong
2. Reluctance to take interpretations and research
results for granted
3. Tendency to keep irregularities in mind, like those
odds and ends that do not fit in an otherwise wellarranged framework
4. Proclivity to watch our likes and dislikes
5. Propensity to travel light; not loading oneself with too
many prefabricated notions or colored lenses that
may prevent you from being surprised
6. Enjoy being naive
Pop Quiz
• What community practices and norms are changing?
What should be changed?
• Who wants those changes (groups or individuals)?
• What specific modes of relating to people should be
the targets of change?
• Have our ways of doing and being within the
community changed? How and why?
• Can you tell how much of your criticism comes from
personal experience, prejudice or theoretical notions?
• What dominant social discourses prevent those
changes from occurring?
Food for Thought
• “The very definition of Community Psychology
has changed from one based on deficits to
one based on strengths, agency and
resilience.” (p520)
• Objectives have moved from “right to be
different” to access to services, to liberation
and well-being
What is Liberation?
• “Be a lamp unto yourself. Work out your liberation
with diligence.” - Buddha
• A psychology mindful of people’s virtues and assets in
pursuing change
• A systematic study of popular organizations as
instruments of liberation
• A new way to understand reality based upon the
vicissitudes of marginalized populations
• A new psychological praxis contributing to change
• A recovery of collective memory
• A way to conceive liberation as a historic and collective
process
Co-existence and Co-presence
• We want people to take more control over
their lives, yet we want them to take into
consideration other people’s needs for control
• “If everything seems under control, you're
just not going fast enough.” – Mario Andretti
Empowerment and Influence
• “Empowerment is based upon the ability of
community members to effectively use the
resources they have to acquire new ones and
to overcome oppressive conditions while they
change their own lives in the process.” (p524)
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the
courage to continue that counts.”
– Winston Churchill
The ‘Oughts of CP
• Local and Global Values:
– Holism must apply to the whole person, the whole community, and
the whole context
– Health must apply to physical and spiritual well-being
– Solidarity must reflect caring, support and compassion not only for
those close to us but also for those we may never get to know in far
away places
– Self-determination should be about personal decisions while
collectively determining what to do about our community and world
– Social justice ought to encompass both rights and duties towards
those close to us and far away from us
• Diversity Values:
– The right to be different in equality
– Accountability must be to oppressed groups and to the groups with
which we work
– Participation should reflect the fact that community research and
action are not isolated tasks but the joint labor of many people,
sometimes across continents
Politics of CP
“You may fool all the people some of the time, you can
even fool some of the people all of the time, but you
cannot fool all of the people all the time.”
– Abraham Lincoln
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De-ideologizing
Conscientizing
Problematizing
Participatory Democracy
• “An alternative mode of political behavior”
(p526)
The Speed of Change
“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always
someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are
always difficulties arising which tempt you to
believe that your critics are right. To map out a
course of action and follow it to an end requires
courage.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “The maximum speed of change at the macro level of legal,
political, and economic systems is faster than the maximum
speed of change at the micro level of everyday behavior.”
(Moghaddam, 2002, p.33)
• Change can happen quickly at the institutional level, but not be rooted in
society for quite some time.
The Habitus
• An undisputed, expected, and non-conscious behavior, in tune with
social norms, which helps the person to cope with unanticipated
circumstances in ways that reproduce and support the social
structure
1.
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A regular practice associated with a socially structured environment
A lasting behavior
A structured and structuring behavior following a stable and
established pattern
4. Carried out without either a consciously chosen direction or explicit
mastery of the operations needed to achieve its goals
5. Adjusts to collective regulations without specific instructions
6. Allows people to cope with unexpected situations
7. An implicit anticipation of the consequences of such situations
8. A socially coded and explicit response
9. Tends to reproduce objective social structures of which it is an effect
10. Lacks strategic intention of its own
But what about…
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Heredity?
Consciousness?
Unconsciousness?
Collective Unconsciousness?
Epi-genetics?
How does one effect change with issues that
may be eons old?
CP begins with the Individual
“What you leave behind is not what is
engraved in stone monuments, but what is
woven into the lives of others.” – Pericles
“The whole earth is the tomb of heroic men
[and women] and their story is not given
only on stone over their clay but abides
everywhere without visible symbol woven
into the stuff of other[s] lives.” – Pericles
“I don't wish to be everything to
everyone, but I would like to be
something to someone.”
- Javan