Introduction
When invited to sum up the nature of community
psychology, a group of our students described it as ‘a practice
for liberation with responsibilities’ (Duggan et al., 2000).
This is an interesting phrase, suggestive of important underlying
values, social analyses and community psychological practices.
We are going to suggest that the 21 st Century opens the possibility
for community psychology to contribute to a radical, responsible
and responsive practice for liberation. To date, community –
psychology has not lived up to its liberatory promise.
Prilleltensky and Nelson (1997) note that community psychology
literature (interesting that it is the literature, not the practice!)
“… has paid very little attention to issues such as
social action, advocacy and social change movements, poverty and
anti-poverty organisations, grass roots community organising,
human rights, sustainable community economic development and social
policy … (and) … much greater attention is paid to research
methodology than to our work’s political dimensions and dynamics”
Prilleltensky and Nelson (1997) p.178
It is the work’s political dimensions and dynamics we want
to highlight.
Liberatory practice cannot be achieved by community psychology
alone, and a crucial feature of our analysis will be that for
liberation, alliances within and outside the discipline must be
formed. Only then is there likely to be any chance of a challenge
to the prevailing ideological hegemony (Burton and Kagan, 1996),
or indeed for the realisation of the process of empowerment, embedded
in principle within community psychology (Rappaport, 1981). Only
then, too, will community psychology itself reflect features of,
and contribute to, wider social movements and be able to claim
some kind of a progressive impact (see, for example, Foweraker,
1995; Byrne, 1997; Stephen, 1997).
We will be suggesting a move towards a radical praxis (Freire
1972 a,b; Lather, 1986) wherein action, research (3) and theory
are inseparable and intertwined in complex ways, and immersed
in the lives of people who are marginalised, oppressed and dispossessed.
We will reiterate the need for a reflexive and historical practice
that learns from its past and that challenges not only the social
status quo, but also the status quo within psychology. Martín
Baró, The pre-eminent liberation psychologist of the last
century, summed the task up thus:
…a psychology of liberation requires a prior liberation of
psychology, and that liberation can only come from a praxis committed
to the sufferings and hopes of the people …” Martín
Baró, p.32
We will suggest a useful model for looking at radical community
psychological praxis is what we call a model of ‘pre-figurative
praxis’. Elsewhere we have used the model as a way of conceptualising
praxis as action research (Burton, 1983; Kagan and Burton, 2000).
Broadening the definition to refer to praxis more generally, prefigurative
praxis “… emphasises the relationship between action
research [… and practice…] and the creation of alternatives
to the existing social order. This combined process of social
reform and […reflection…] enables learning about both
the freedom of movement to create progressive social forms and
about the constraints the present order imposes. It also creates
disseminated ‘images of possibility’ for a different
way of ordering social life.” Kagan and Burton, 2000 p. 73
What we are suggesting is a framework for self-aware social change,
with an emphasis on value based, participatory work: one that
is pragmatic and reflexive, whilst not wedded to any particular
orthodoxy of method.
In developing the model, we will outline key aspects of the social
context at the turn of the Century; elements of a radical community
psychological praxis; strategies for intervention; and some of
the tensions of working within and against the discipline of psychology.
3 We do not generally find the distinction
between action and research a useful one. However, we are moving
towards the view that whilst not all action is research, all research
could and should be action.
