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Although research has demonstrated the ecological, public health and food security benefits of community gardens, few studies have considered community gardens in relation to a broader social solidarity economy (SSE), that is, inter-community networks wherein people develop commitments to building just and equitable economic alternatives. In employing a thematic analysis on triangulated data (collected via an interview, participant observation, and a participatory film), the present case study explores how a community gardener from a low-income South African community engages with his community's SSE. We analyse how this community garden fostered solidarity and established alternative micro-economic practices. We also consider the challenges facing community gardens when connecting with the SSE. By way of conclusion, we emphasise the importance of taking a critical, broad-based view of the SSE within research, and how case studies can assist us in understanding the various influences that SSE initiatives can have within and across communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The materialist conception of art understands art in relation to the material conditions within and by which art is produced and consumed. For cultural psychology, the materialist conception of art has been useful for developing insights into how individual perceptions are shaped, and are shaped by, culture as a collectively produced and historically embedded site of meaning-making. However, in much of cultural psychology, the relationship between progressive politics and the materialist conception of art remains under-appreciated. In this article, I consider how cultural psychologists might strengthen this relation through artistic shock, that is, a subjective, perceptual, and/or historiographical rupture brought about through the experience of art. In particular, I outline how Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin theorised and practiced artistic shock, and examine what the work of these thinkers could mean for cultural psychologists working with political collectives to grapple with psychopolitical questions related to subjectivity, contradiction, and memory. I conclude by reflecting on how future work that seeks to politicise cultural psychology might engage with the materialist conception of art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term Anthropocene (Age of Human) implies that the reduction of carbon emissions is a matter of changing human behaviour. This risks depoliticising the climate emergency. Everyone is not equally responsible for climate change, and the consequences of climate change are not distributed equally. Climate change is overwhelmingly the result of extractive and exploitative capitalist production. It is thus more useful to understand the climate crisis in terms of the Capitalocene (Age of Capital), with climate justice being a terrain of anti-capitalist struggle. Mainstream responses to climate change have largely neglected the Capitalocene, focusing instead on consumer behaviour. This individualistic approach has been taken up by several ecologically oriented psychological professions, where the emphasis has been on 'responsible consumer behaviour' and/or the psychological effects of climate uncertainty. There is, however, a growing critical tradition within the psychological professions that seeks to advance climate justice by taking seriously the capitalist political economy. Indeed, psychological practitioners are equipped with skills that may be useful for activists involved in psychopolitical efforts to consolidate climate justice movements and build political power. We posit three key areas for psychological practitioners working for climate justice movements: solidarity-making, affective mediation, and resource mobilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout its history, capitalism has undertaken its extractive, imperial, and expropriative operations under the sign of democracy. Psychology has played a part in the ideological consolidation of capitalist democracy, adapting people to this system while also legitimising it. However, what of radical democracy as an always-contested grassroots organisational form that stands in opposition to both capitalism and the capitalist co-optation of democracy? Radical democracy of this sort remains a psychologically fraught function of anticapitalist resistance, one that has the potential to produce fracturing among comrades building such democracy. In this article, I consider how critical psychologists can work with those undertaking the difficult work of building radical democracy into political and quotidian life. I consider what critical psychology praxis could mean for those practicing radical democracy and how critical psychology might reconstitute itself through radically democratic formations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their responses, Alexandra Woods and Garth Stevens take care to unpack my sometimes-clumsy efforts at finding the conceptual language for unconsciousness-raising. Similarly, both responses offer an immanent critique of how I put this language into practice. As such, their responses compelled me to reappraise many of my original propositions. For this, I am deeply indebted to both scholars. I begin this reply by offering my appreciation to Woods and Stevens for drawing attention to how my essay – despite proclaiming to do otherwise – differentiates unconsciousness-raising from consciousness-raising. Each of their responses offers useful ways by which to consider unconsciousness-raising and consciousness-raising as inextricably entangled, or part of a single, dialectical process. I then consider some of Stevens' helpful remarks on lack and its relationship to organizational formations and solidarity, after which I engage with Woods' illuminating critiques of my reflexive practice and my assessment of this practice. I conclude by reiterating my gratitude to Woods and Stevens for taking the time to offer such generative, fruitful commentaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]