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In view of the rise of racist rhetoric in Australian public life in recent years, this paper reviews psychological research on racism and prejudice as they are expressed at every level of society from government policy to the intrapersonal sphere. It draws on evidence arising from social, developmental, clinical, and community psychology. The mental health system is used as an exemplar to analyse the operation of institutionalised racism, and some observations are made about the past, present, and potential future roles of psychological research and practice in relation to race and racism. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations about ways to reduce racism and prejudice at all levels of society.

This article examines recent education policy (White Paper 6 on building an inclusive education and training system in South Africa, Department of Education 2001) for the purposes of identifying whether and how this policy reflects a community psychology approach to understanding and responding to psychosocial challenges in education. The authors then critically discuss the relevance and value of this approach in practice. The discussion concludes with case narratives by two of the authors, of how this approach has been developed within two specific district education support structures in two South African provinces. It considers what the benefits and challenges are that relate to the practices of psychologists in educational settings.

The purpose of the paper is to offer a detailed explication of collectively enacted analytical and sense-making practices in participatory research. The co-production of knowledge is central to the methodological integrity of participatory research, but capturing the shared and collaborative processes through which meaning is made; particularly the analytical practices, can be difficult to untangle. A participatory project that employed memory work techniques is presented to illustrate and examine these dynamic processes ‘in action’. Three issues that merit careful consideration in enacting collective analytical practices are identified and discussed; firstly the negotiation of tension between forms of organic and more structured forms of analytical exploration, secondly reflexive engagement with power relationships and diversity in making sense of data, and finally addressing the utility of the analysis as an important aspect of participatory work. The paper contributes to an ongoing conversation...

This paper provides an overview of the social and cultural context for the emergence and development of psychology in India and also more specifically of the development of clinical psychology. It details the range of universities offering psychology programmes and the various bodies involved in supporting the development of the psychology. The paper also describes the development of clinical psychology in India and the variety of roles undertaken by clinical psychologists. Finally, it raises a number of issues facing the development of Indian psychology into the future.

Community gardens are enjoying a renaissance, thought to be due to people's desire to reconnect with food, nature and community. This paper presents results from an exploratory investigation of two community gardens in Nottingham, supported by regional and national contextual analysis. It examines the nature and construction of “community” in community gardens and how they benefit their local communities. Results from case-study work show how community gardens help to build cohesion and vitality in a community, contributing to the generation of bonding, bridging and linking social capital. The composition of these capitals varies between the case-study gardens, dependent on the type of community formed. Two categories of community garden are identified in the paper: “place-based” and “interest-based”. The former are more territorially embedded in the local community, while the latter may span across diverse communities, with the social capital generated remaining within an “interest community”. These cate...

What happens when people find themselves left out of communities? Who is missing and why does it matter? What can one do to narrow the gap? What is community? How has community been represented in theory? The quality of life of a population is an important concern in so many areas, and a significant part of our standard of living is measured by many social and economic factors. This paper will conceptualise ideas and theories of association and associated life, social capital, and civic community. The notion of community development and social constructions are most certainly crucial in the representation and debates surrounding this phenomenon. This paper will engage with the notions, discourses and thinking that encapsulate all aspects of community development.

Leadership is the driving force behind development and the channel through which the characteristics to improve community capacity flow. Community agents are the mechanisms through which community actions are performed and through which development subsequently occurs. This paper discusses the role of community agents and their importance in both utilising and fostering community capacity to proceed with community improvements. The case of Himeshima, a small island of Japan, highlights the individuals, key institutions, and networks that guided the community from development through rural revitalisation. This paper demonstrates the importance of community agents and that community leadership is an outcome of community capacity development. Community leadership enables members of the community to take initiative according to their shared vision to facilitate the achievement of community objectives. This work contributes to the discussion on rural development, community capacity building, and leadership progression.

This paper describes the history, composition, and community intervention activities of the Community Crisis Response Team (CCRT) of the Victims of Violence Program and the community empowerment model of intervention that guides its work. The paper uses a single case study to illustrate the nature of community-wide trauma, the core attributes of ecologically informed and effective community intervention, and the intervention design, implementation, and evaluation processes that are embedded in the community empowerment model. The paper includes a description of the CCRT's approach to the conduct of traumatic stress debriefings and a discussion of the practical and theoretical implications of the CCRT.

This paper examines the theoretical linkage between social capital and sense of community through research studies within four contextual areas. Social capital (SC) can be conceptualized as all the interactions between individuals in a community, and has been examined in various groups and communities. Sense of community (SoC) is a psychological construct that we argue is a correlate of social capital. Sense of community reflects the feelings of attachment and belonging that an individual has towards a community. Through qualitative and quantitative research carried out across the lifespan in four communities in Western Australia (i.e., Perth community, adolescent Jewish community, urban and rural communities, and primary school community), this paper utilizes SoC as a framework for investigating ways in which SC may be realized in communities. The significance of this paper highlights the practical application of increasing SC within communities through targeting SoC within individuals.

The paper reflects on the life experiences that influenced both my involvement in folk music and my career as a community psychologist. In particular, the role of chance, supportive adults and social settings, travel, and encounters with diversity served to turn the ongoing experience of personal and professional marginality into a resource for me over time. The paper's title reflects my understanding of how my ecological perspective, developed over the years in community psychology, is rooted in critical life events and happenstance occurrences. This reflection has helped clarify the visceral connection between the ecological contexts of my personal/professional experiences and Jim Kelly's initial presentation of the ecological metaphor for the field.

In the global era, with the retrenchment of welfare states, people have to turn to their community, a major component of civil society, for support. In this paper, a fluid concept of community is proposed in response to the fragmentation and diversity caused by globalization in the local community. It is argued that to bridge different interests in the community, settlement houses, as a third sector organization in the community, is an effective community-building mechanism. This paper provides a brief history of the success of the settlement house in building solidarity and generating social capital in the local community. The author identifies implications for the role of the social work profession in revitalizing the settlement house as a community-building approach.

In consideration of internal and external threats to thespecialty of clinical psychology, this paper examines what constitutes a unique professional identity, discusses the extent to which clinical psychology currently meets these criteria, and suggests processes by which clinical psychology can develop a stronger identity. It is argued that these issues of identity are not specific to clinical psychology, but apply to the profession of psychology in general. The paper concludes with a recommendation for a reduction in the number of APS colleges while retaining specific interests through a divisional structure.

This paper [1] examines communitarian argument on schools, families and youth culture in Amitai Etzioni's influential book, The Spirit of Community. The paper concludes that in lieu of detailed policy argument Etzioni's readers are presented with appeals to ‘changes of heart’ and a circular (and inconclusive) account of the supposed role of various social institutions in inculcating ‘appropriate moral values’. The paper also discusses Ray Pahl's critique of communitarianism and his account of identity, individuality and diversity in what he refers to as the ‘friendly society’. [1] Sections of this article will appear as part of chapter 1 in Demaine & Entwistle (1996), and some sections were included as part of a paper entitled ‘The politics of identity and the identity of sociology’ presented to the International Sociology of Education Conference on ‘Pedagogy, Identity and the Politics of Difference’ at Sheffield, United Kingdom, 3‐5 January 1996.

This paper first presents a brief philosophical and theoretical critique of community development's transformation into economic development. The history of community development parallels sociology's community/society dichotomy of human associations. The acceptance of societal domination at the expense of community explains the movement away from community in favor of the larger society. This paper rejects the notion of the existence of the community/society typology and rather views both types of human associations as fundamental to rural life. Using these theoretical points, the paper uses a case study to introduce a successful rural revitalization process termed “community encouragement.” Using community input, a broad based local economic development team, and the resources of a regional university, the process integrates a community's traditional values with progressive revitalization plans.

Psychology, as a diverse social practice, must take a stance regarding the colonial world-system that legitimises the hegemonic production of knowledge. Decolonising community psychology requires the transformation of its practices to face cultural and institutional systems that reproduce inequality in colonial contexts as well as the validating of indigenous knowledge. Reflecting on an intervention in response to the devastation of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, this paper highlights the importance of a community psychological practice that promotes the search for self-determination and autonomous organising or autogestion. Following the notion that community psychologists should be social change agents whose professional activity constitutes a political act, our proposal is to stress decoloniality as a pedagogical practice, incorporating its principles to everyday interactions with diverse people, groups, organisations and communities. Self-determination refers to the ability for people, groups, neighbourhoods and communities to recognise the demands of their contexts and respond in ways that potentiate control over their own lives simultaneously with the search and action for collective well-being. Autonomous organising aims at individual and collective empowerment, to demand from official institutions and agents what their rights are, when they need it, by organising contestant responses to the systematic injustices and the abandonment of colonial instances.

This paper explores how two distinct scholarly disciplines both concerned with place-based human behavior have independently developed an ecological framework: urban sociology’s human ecology, and ...

We welcome Forshaw’s reply to our paper because it opens up debate about psychology and its relationship with the development of an emancipatory disability studies. In our paper we aimed to: (1) raise possibilities for disability studies researchers’ engagement with psychology (rather than psychology colonizing disability studies); (2) trace some of the epistemological journeys we underwent in carrying out disability research and community psychology research; (3) consider these possibilities and journeys in relation to previous literature on emancipatory disability research. Forshaw’s reply appears to ignore aims (2) and (3) and instead focuses on the ways in which we (mis)represent psychology. He suggests that we: present an inaccurate account of qualitative research in contemporary psychology; make a divisive argument for a ‘breakaway group’ of community psychologists; epistemologically contradict ourselves because of our concern with ‘reality’ and social constructionism; argue for only adopting partic...

Childbirth has been positioned as a life changing event that has profound long-term psychological effects upon women. This paper adopts a community psychology approach to explore the role that the ...

’Opting In or Acting Out‘ This preface is written to provide a framework for the two articles delivered at the Annual ‘Challenge and Change’ Conference held at NELP July 1988. The title of the Conference ‘Opting In or Acting Out’ was decided on in 1987 and even then we little realised the full portent of its message. By the time of the Conference some Practical EPs had begun to realise the implications of the 1988 Act (especially those connected to our Professional Bodies). Many Principals and most EPs had not though even begun to consider what the future of their Service might be. Derek Lucas's paper was published in the January issue of the Journal. Lea Pearson's paper was the second of a trilogy. The third key speaker was Dr. Judith Haynes who runs a private child psychological service in London. Unfortunately she has been unable to provide a paper for publication. Three interwoven themes were prevalent through the day. Firstly, the old chestnut, who are SPSs clients; education departments, schools, pa...

This paper analyzes the challenges facing community development in the decade of the 1980s. It considers the concept and methodology of community development, traces its roots and explores its potential. It recognizes the continued use of the rhetoric of community development but its frequent denial in practice. The paper examines both the threatening aspects of the community development concept and the difficulty of initiating and sustaining actual community development in neighborhood situations; it concludes that community development has the possibility of being most effective in this current period of widespread social and economic crisis with its high distrust of and disenchantment with government and large‐scale corporate entities. Community development is heralded as an instrument through which people at the level of the local community can begin to forge new, more useful institutions to invigorate our society and help it survive.

There is a powerful body of theory and literature in the social and behavioral sciences that argues our organized communities evolve in ways well out of our control as humans and that we both individually and collectively have little capacity to actually create systems according to our blueprints. If this is correct, it could help explain why we seem so unable to generate the type of psychological sense of community we describe as essential for healthy contemporary living. In this paper I argue we need a whole other way of thinking about the role we might play as co-actors in the evolutionary processes of human systems, a role community psychology has described as participant-conceptualization. I focus on the fact that in human systems, the meanings, both individual and shared, that we attach to experience are all important. This paper discusses how meaning is generated, with a primary emphasis on the role of framing and argues that only as we develop capacities in our organized systems to “self-...

Health psychology is the study of psychological and behavioural processes in health, illness and health care. Health psychology emerged in Ireland with the establishment of the Psychological Society of Ireland (PSI) Health Psychology Special Interest Group in the mid-1980s, which in 2003 became the Division of Health Psychology (DHP). The DHP has grown quickly and has established itself as an active and engaged PSI Division. This paper outlines the history of health psychology in Ireland. Current opportunities and challenges for both the discipline and profession of Health Psychology are considered, and future directions are highlighted.

The Division of Teachers and Researchers in Psychology (DTRiP) was established in 2007 in order to represent the views of psychology teachers and researchers within the Psychological Society of Ireland (PSI) and to continue the work of the Teachers of Psychology Interest Group (TPG), which was active within the PSI in the 1980s. The activities of the Division reflect the objectives set out in the Division rules: to promote best practice in teaching and research in psychology; to provide a forum for the sharing of psychological knowledge and expertise; to promote and maintain high ethical and professional standards; to promote and encourage scientific research as it applies to teaching and learning and to promote the use of scientific methods in research; and to liaise with relevant bodies in the promotion of the Division goals. In the current paper, we outline some of the ways in which the Division has contributed to the Society’s functions since its foundation, and we consider issues of relevance to the future development of the Division.

Twelve students in a developmental psychology service-learning course engaged in a service-learning project with two groups of elders in an urban setting. Nine members of the class provided quantitative and qualitative feedback on this experiential learning experience. Survey results indicated that students believed the project increased their interest in the content area and that the project was a valuable aspect of the course. Based on student reflection papers in the course, students could identify specific ways the project helped them to learn course content. Finally, two interviewed students commented on how the project helped dismantle ageist preconceptions they held prior to completing the course. The project illustrates the advantages of experiential teaching in promoting interactions and understanding between diverse age groups. Three recommendations for implementing experiential teaching in community psychology and service-learning courses are presented.

The ‘affective turn’ is a contemporary movement within the humanities, social science, and psychology to investigate affect, emotion, and feeling as hybrid phenomena jointly constituted from both biological and social influences. Health and illness are themselves jointly constituted in this way, and many of the topics, concerns, and methods of health psychology are strongly permeated by affective phenomena. Qualitative research in health psychology might therefore benefit by engaging with this work. This paper describes some features of the affective turn and suggests theories, terminology, and methods that might be useful.

Vocational psychology and the practice of career development are important dimensions of the psychology discipline and profession. This paper contains an overview of Australian career development practice in light of recent trends, particularly the formalisation of career development practice among professions other than psychologists. Given the advent of professional standards for Australian career development practitioners, a review of postgraduate degrees in organisational, developmental and educational, and counselling psychology was conducted to determine their correspondence with the competencies presented in the Standards. The review found significant consistency with generic competencies. Degrees in organisational psychology provided the broadest correspondence, while degrees in counselling, developmental and educational psychology had lower levels of correspondence on specific competencies. The implications of the review are discussed in light of the evolution of the career development industry and psychologists' standing in this field. © The Australian Psychological Society Ltd.

Within the UK and in many parts of the world, official accounts of what it is to make sense of religion are framed within a rhetorics of neutrality in which such study is premised upon the possibility of dispassionate engagement and analysis. This paper, which is largely theoretical in scope, explores both the affordances and the costs of such an approach which has become ‘black boxed’ on account of the work that it achieves. A series of new orientations within the academy that are broadly associated with post‐structuralist philosophies, feminist and post‐colonial studies, together with insights into science and technology studies, question the plausibility of these claims for neutrality whilst in turn raising a series of new questions and priorities. It therefore becomes necessary to rethink and reframe what it is to make sense of religious and cultural difference after neutrality. The gathering and coordination of new planes of sense‐making that are responsive to an emergent series of epistemological, o...

The term scenario is used to talk about a projected outline of political events and future developments. The objective of building scenarios is to deal with critical events, uncertain conditions, and create useful pro-actions. This paper attempts to outline the utility of scenario planning as a method for developing alternative visions of the future in community contexts. It describes its theoretical basis, uses, and steps. A case example is used to illustrate the application of the framework and its possible practical benefits in community psychology practice. To test this methodology with politicians, they have been asked to examine the resources and problems present in the areas administered by them and invited to imagine possible future scenarios and projects which might improve the quality of life of residents.

Considerable advances have been made through parenting and school-based interventions in preventing or reducing misbehavior. However, the majority of parents who might benefit from these services are unable to access them. In this paper we propose that a promising solution is to adopt a public health approach that provides a well-coordinated continuum of care with multiple levels of service sufficient to meet parent and student needs. We argue that this public health approach, which parallels the Response to Intervention (RTI) approach frequently seen in United States schools, can best be achieved by melding multi-level parenting programs with multi-level school-wide interventions. To illuminate some of the potential benefits and challenges of this public health approach which bridges gaps between school, clinical, and community psychology, we describe the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program and propose some adaptations needed to develop an effective interface between Triple P and schools.

This paper presents a Bachelor of Psychology (B.Psych.) programme as offered in Botswana since 2004. The B.Psych. programme is a relatively new approach and aims to bridge the gap between the country's need for psychological services and its lack of psychologists. The B.Psych. programme teaches students psychological skills and competencies already at the undergraduate level. Practical training and a six months internship are essential parts of the B.Psych. programme, which makes the degree different from atypical B.A. or B.Sc. degree in psychology. Graduates have basic competencies to provide psychological services to the community with supervision.

The purpose of this paper was to integrate literature on positive psychology and adolescent well-being to provide a cohesive platform for future research and discussion. It is aimed at researchers, and mental health and educational professionals who are interested in the empirical evidence behind using positive psychology interventions with adolescents. The positive psychology concepts reviewed are: the authentic happiness theory, flow, hope, coaching, gratitude, kindness, and strengths-based interventions. Although positive psychology is only in its infancy, and more research in adolescent populations is needed, support for positive psychology interventions in fostering adolescent mental health is steadily accumulating.

Psychology has been closely involved with educational research, policy and practice since its emergence as a scientific discipline in the late 19th century but it has occupied a less certain place in recent years. This paper describes aspects of the organisational framework of psychology as a discipline and draws upon Research Assessment Exercise data to gain a picture of the research capacity of the psychology of education. The division of research in universities between psychology departments and education departments is identified and its relevance to the ‘demographic crisis’ in educational research considered. Three areas of recent applications of cognitive psychology are reviewed and promising intervention studies are outlined. The implications of demographic trends in educational research together with indications of the limited capacity of the psychology of education pose threats to the potential to develop original education‐based psychological research and to overcome limitations of much existin...

Calls for greater community participation health-related research are increasingly made and, it seems, heeded–albeit to varying degrees. We report here, from the perspective of external evaluators, on practical efforts by the leaders of two community-based health action research projects to enhance such participation still further by employing a small number of local people as lay action researchers within their own community. ‘Action research’ in this context was conceived as an approach by which comparatively small projects, based on partnerships between academics, communities and public sector organisations, could address local issues of health and well-being. The purpose of the paper is to examine project leaders’ initial assumptions and expectations of the lay action research role and to compare these with the actual experience of those researchers. On this basis we consider the value to organisations and communities of the lay action research role for community health development and point out some ...

Asking communities to participate in heath intervention is an increasingly popular strategy in public health and health promotion. The Community Health Educator Model, developed through a series of Participatory Action Research (PAR) projects in cancer screening in the UK during the 1990s, is a participatory health intervention model that emphasises community engagement. Although the model has been adopted by many health districts in the UK, little is known about the effectiveness of its appropriation; crucially, how researchers/practitioners engage with communities has seldom been reported. This paper presents the author's reflection on her experience in developing a set of community organising tools to respond to the diversity found in communities in practice. It suggests that engagement can be enhanced if the contingent and constructed nature of the concepts of ‘ethnicity’ and ‘community’ in the real world can be better understood. Researchers and practitioners need to cultivate a tolerance to differen...

In this paper we explore the impact of emotional dynamics in the field of community psychology and the value of psychodynamic concepts in making sense of this. Emotional processes have often not been very well acknowledged or conceptualized in writing in the area of community psychology practice. This neglect is understandable given the individualizing, pathologizing and medicalizing assumptions underlying many psychological theories of emotion. Psychodynamic ideas may, however, make a useful contribution to understanding central concerns in community psychology in so far as they are able to shed light on emotional processes in groups, the political determinants of emotional response and the emotional dynamics of power, which are all central to the thinking of community psychologists. Using examples drawn from a long-term programme of consultation to community-based services in South Africa, we explore the potential of psychoanalytic understandings of emotional processes in illuminating some of the comple...

Theoretical investigation has a contested focus on conceptual, philosophical and non-empirical issues in psychology that is rarely examined empirically. This paper explores the status of theoretical psychology as scholarly research and its location in the curricula of Australian and New Zealand psychology departments. Nine self-identified theoretical psychologists and 2 psychological society representatives were interviewed. Participant responses and an examination of department websites indicated that theoretical psychology and advanced theoretical units are offered mainly in third year and honours levels. Thematic analysis of the interviews revealed contrasting views of theoretical psychology as a subdiscipline or distributed throughout the curriculum, challenges to theoretical psychology as teaching and research activities, and a need for debate about the place of theoretical teaching and research in the discipline. The study recommends further empirical investigations to evaluate the presumed...

Goodley & Lawthom discussed the role of a community psychology approach in conducting emancipatory disability research. While their aims are entirely laudable, they portrayed mainstream psychology as ‘pathologising, voyeuristic, individualising, [and] impairment‐obsessed’. This paper presents a reply to Goodley and Lawthom’s somewhat outdated arguments for the dismissal of mainstream psychology and argues that the focus on a single ‘best’ method of researching disability does not serve the best interests of disabled people within society. It is argued that to create a ‘new’ psychology distinct from the ‘mainstream’ is unnecessary, undesirable and counter‐productive. Mainstream psychology has much to offer disabled people and to dismiss it is to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Although the formal history of community psychology in both Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand has clear links with its history elsewhere, particularly in the United States, the subdiscipline has developed localised foci and forms of practice reflecting the cultural, political and historical underpinnings of these two countries. The climates within which community psychology emerged in the 1970s were distinctly local, resonating with debates around decolonisation and political realignment within the Asia Pacific region. The purpose of the present paper is to explore the separate developments of community psychology in Australia and New Zealand, and identify some shared concerns and achievements. At the core of community psychology in both countries are the emphasis on contextualised understandings of human behaviour and the primacy of social justice. In the future it seems likely that community psychology will develop close links with other emerging social science disciplines that espouse similar values and world views, and that community psychologists will consolidate networks with colleagues in Africa and the Asia Pacific, enabling a wider exchange of ideas and an expansion in the shared understandings of what characterises community psychology in the southern hemisphere.

The need to provide mental health services in disadvantaged communities remains a priority in South Africa. This paper illustrates how in consultation and partnership with the peri-urban community of Jamestown, a counselling psychology internship was established to provide a range of mental health services at a primary health clinic. We describe how the internship also became an important catalyst for other community interventions. We also illustrate how values of community psychology informed the establishment and foci of the internship. Tensions encountered in reconciling community needs and professional training requirements discussed include the lack of resources at the primary health care level, the bio-medical bias of the primary health setting, and addressing the needs articulated by the community for more direct interventions.

Community psychology in Cameroon is a budding discipline even its practice, given the scarcity of professionals with specialised training. However, this paper highlights public and private community-oriented projects that resonate with the principles of community psychology. The demands are high with the impact of globalisation, corruption, poverty and HIV/AIDS. Yet it is evident that professional responses to these demands will be slow because even the teaching, research and use of the main discipline of psychology face major problems, blocking its expansion and use. There is the need for strong academic and professional leadership that is usually blocked by tribalism, weakness in the pedagogy of programmes and underdevelopment and unawareness of social problems including the absence of structures for strengthening institutional capacity. These explain why only rudimentary psychological services exist for Cameroonians. There is therefore an urgent need for the rapid formalisation of community psychology ...

This paper addresses the integration of community psychology and psychoanalytic theory through an exploration of transference-countertransference interactions and enactments that occurred in the context of a community intervention. The author, a team member during a four-year community revitalization intervention in South Central Los Angeles, calls this approach community analysis and offers a way to conceptualize the transference-countertransference themes that developed there in the interactive patterns between community residents and the intervention staff. Examples are given to illustrate how the interactive patterns represented deeply entrenched transference dilemmas that residents enacted with external power sources, including the intervention team, and how this understanding provided necessary leverage for growth and change in the community.

This paper describes how a research team at DePaul University is applying recent advances in technology to facilitate the implementation of a large-scale, community research project. The application of technology by members of the social sciences has often focused on advances in computational technologies to provide faster and more sophisticated ways to analyze data. However, there is less documentation of how technology can provide opportunities to improve the way scientists conduct community research. Social and community interventions can profit from technological innovations to alleviate difficulties in collecting, processing, managing, archiving, and sharing data. If researchers within the field of community psychology become more knowledgeable and competent in the use of technology, larger and more complex projects can be implemented in an efficient and effective manner.

This paper suggests a systems theoretical re-reading of popular communication and the Popular in the political system. Luhmann's anti-humanist notion of communication helps to reframe the discussion of the Popular: it is not defined by an en- or decoding instance, but by a particular mode of 'connectivity'. Drawing from heterogeneous material (Mars Attacks!, crowd psychology, theory of democracy), it is argued that the problem of the Popular arises when a functional system has to represent something that transgresses the system's universality. That which the system has to exclude to become a system re-emerges as 'grotesque hybrid', thus pointing at a universality that is, on the one hand, an opportunity for a further universalization and, on the other, a threat to the very universality of the system. The 'Popular' thus acquires a hybrid position by articulating these two dimensions

Social marketing is a strategy that uses marketing approaches developed within the business arena to design, implement, and evaluate socially beneficial programs. This approach can be an effective social change strategy for groups working in the profession of community development. This paper describes two community-based projects that employed social marketing to design and implement interventions to promote health in Arkansas and Florida. We describe the stages of the research, as well as the limitations and strengths of this approach.

This paper presents a model for teaching social work research courses that features collaboration between social service agencies and M.S.W. students on community-based research projects. The model encourages student interest and skill development through experiential learning, empowerment in decision-making, group interaction, and application of research principles and techniques. It also fosters community development and linkages between community agencies and universities by responding to agency research needs, and has the longer-term goal of contributing to the research skill base in communities. The processes for implementing the model are discussed, including the roles of instructors, students, and agency staff. Examples of completed research projects also are described. Student evaluations of the model are presented, as are the implications of the model for the development of community-based research.

Although general support for the death penalty is decreasing, a segment of the pro-death penalty population continues to support capital punishment with great vehemence. Extreme support for the death penalty is expressed through angry, confrontational, and sometimes threatening verbal attacks against condemned prisoners and opponents of capital punishment. Expressions of this support are especially strong around the time of highly publicized executions. This paper explores extreme support for capital punishment in the months before and after Tennessee's first execution in 40 years, using data gathered from newspaper reports, letters to the editor, interviews with death penalty opponents, and the authors' own experiences. Linking Bowers and Pierce's brutalization theory with community psychology theory, we explore ways in which highly publicized executions seem to unleash of hatred and violent intention among a number of death penalty supporters and how this behavior may illuminate research of increases in...

This paper considers the current concept of community and provides a brief overview of the historical context of British community work with reference to “top-down” and “bottomup” approaches. The top-down approach has roots in Victorian benevolent paternalism, while the bottom-up approach is associated with radical neighborhood action. Community development is considered in the context of current British government initiatives aimed at addressing social exclusion1 and health improvement targets. The strategic objectives for these include empowering local communities, developing effective partnerships, working as multi-agencies, and becoming learning organizations. A case study is presented, the ACHIEVE project, a community-based health improvement project in Bournemouth, UK. The conclusion draws attention to the manner in which community development is embodied in the government's attempt to engage in social engineering in economically disadvantaged communities.

This paper advances the hypothesis that for a child to feel safe and to learn at school certain psychological conditions must be met. These conditions are described using concepts derived from psychoanalytic research and include; a background of SAFETY and a feeling of WELL BEING derived from a healthy ego with perceptual skills appropriate to the task, a HOLDING environment of adults who can respond appropriately to the child's developmental needs, an environment that provides CONTAINMENT and helps children process negativity in relationships, processes that help children regulate affect, value relationships, and leam to mentalise, in a SECURE ATTACHMENT experience, and finally, supports that encourage children to function as responsible members of a community organized as an OPEN SOCIAL SYSTEM.

In this paper, we describe our research review, commissioned by 'the Gift of Thomas Pocklington', into the opinions of visually impaired people on visual impairment research. We interviewed 37 visually impaired people across Central Region, Scotland. Our findings suggest areas of need for visual impairment research, both concerning what is researched and how it is researched. We make recommendations for future research addressing both resource and methodological issues. We suggest increasing resources for recruiting participants and multimedia dissemination (e.g. audio tape, Braille, Moon). Methods may need to be refined to address difficulties in recruiting participants, and to capture the diversity of strengths and needs of visually impaired people. We make three core recommendations that identify the need for research to: respect people's individuality; be practical and action orientated, and contribute to an empowering and emancipatory research agenda. We conclude by reflecting on our role as community psychologists through examining the ideological position we adopted in this study.

Summary This paper presents a new approach to the conceptualization and assessment of well-being in forest-dependent communities. Studies of well-being in agrarian communities, boomtowns (communities undergoing rapid growth), and forest-dependent communities are examined to highlight common themes in natural resource-dependent community studies. Social indicators are discussed and a summary of weaknesses presented. The county, a commonly used unit of analysis, is rejected in favor of a more socially relevant unit. This new approach to well-being in forest communities begins with definitions of the terms community and forest dependence. The work of Amartya Sen, whose conceptualization of well-being focuses on the real opportunities people have and their achievements in light of their opportunities, forms the foundation of the new approach proposed here. Sen's conceptualization is broadened by focusing on the community and acknowledging the importance of a sense of place. Methodologically, this new approach...