Psychologies of women and gender have developed - both institutionally and intellectually - within distinct social, cultural, historical, and political contexts. In many cases, feminism has played an important role in catalyzing disciplinary engagements with gender and culture as categories of analysis and sites of theorizing rather than solely as variables defining groups to be compared. The intersections of gender, feminism, history, and culture are explored with reference to psychology, first in the United States, and then across three other national contexts. This exploration reveals the similarities and tensions between and among the approaches to studying culture and the approaches to studying gender, that psychologists have employed. It also reveals the historically - and culturally - contingent nature of psychologies of women and gender, and, by extension, of gender itself.
“Extremely lively and super-smart, this Feminist Companion is indeed the friend you want to sit beside in every social psychology class.” Alexandra Rutherford, Professor, Historical, Theoretical and Critical Studies of Psychology, York University, Canada “Madeleine Pownall and Wendy Stainton Rogers’ book pings with the vibrancy and creativity of feminist critique. With this companion, they have made feminist inspiration, analysis, and activism easily accessible to everyone studying social psychology!” Virginia Braun, Professor of Psychology, The University of Auckland, New Zealand “The Feminist Companion was written for undergraduate readers, but it holds much wisdom for us all.” Jeanne Marecek, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, USA The Feminist Companion series includes books which act as your friends and mentors in book form, supporting you in your studies, especially when things get tough. This companion offers a feminist, critical, better-informed understanding of social psychology; what it knows, what it can deliver – and what it can’t. Ultimately, it will help you gain a deeper understanding of the data, analytic tools and theoretical frameworks that inform Social Psychology, as well as empowering you to develop the capacity and authority to challenge assumptions and become a critical and engaged social psychologist. Key features include: •Five Reasons Why You Need a Feminist Companion – a helpful summary of what readers can expect to gain from this book •Activity boxes, suggesting ways you can put the theory you are learning in to practice •See and Hear for Yourself boxes, signposting readers to where they can find real-world examples of the concepts covered •Summary sections that articulate the main points of each chapter and provide a useful revision aid •A glossary of key terms This book maps to the British Psychological Society (BPS) curriculum on social psychology as well as the Quality Assessment Agency’s (QAA) Subject Benchmark Statement for Psychology. Madeleine Pownall is a lecturer in Social Psychology, Research Methods, and Advanced Social Psychology at the University of Leeds, UK. She is Chair of the Psychology Postgraduate Affairs Group (PsyPAG) and an Associate Editor at The Psychologist. Wendy Stainton Rogers is Emeritus Professor at The Open University, UK, and a member of the Open University Press Editorial Advisory Board. Across her career she has written ten bestselling books, the majority of which are for Psychology students. She is renowned for her clear-sighted and accessible writing style, as well as for her innovative work in Critical Psychology.
Why do ordinary people turn to psychology in the hopes of making themselves healthier, wealthier, and happier? Governed by Affect offers a multi-sited history of psychology and its role in American public life. Focusing on a series of transformations since the 1970s, the book examines the rise of psychology as a health science and the discipline's growing entanglements with public policy inspired new theories of inattentive and unconscious affect, which have come to structure health care, education, the economy, and how we understand ourselves.
Psychology has a WEIRD problem. It is overly reliant on participants from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies. Over the last decade this problem has come to be widely acknowledged, yet there has been little progress toward making psychology more diverse. This Element proposes that the lack of progress can be explained by the fact that the original WEIRD critique was too narrow in scope. Rather than a single problem of a lack of diversity among research participants, there are at least four overlapping problems. Psychology is WEIRD not only in terms of who makes up its participant pool, but also in terms of its theoretical commitments, methodological assumptions, and institutional structures. Psychology as currently constituted is a fundamentally WEIRD enterprise. Coming to terms with this is necessary if we wish to make psychology relevant for all humanity. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Psychology's study of women has revealed some themes that span cultures and countries, yet women's lived experiences in different cultures can be dramatically different. This Element explores, from a psychological perspective, women's issues in cultural contexts. Beginning with the question of public and private identity (i.e., who 'counts' as a woman), it goes on to examine embodiment, sexuality, reproduction, family roles, economic participation and power, violence, leadership, and feminist activism. It concludes with a brief discussion of women's complicated relationship to culture: as both keepers and sometimes prisoners of cultural traditions - particularly in the context of migration to different cultures. Running through the Element are two general themes: the pervasiveness of a gender hierarchy that often privileges men over women, and the ways in which women's lived experience varies within cultures according to the intersection of gender with other categories that affect expectations, norms, power and privilege.
This Element traces the origins of an individual's philosophical orientation and the processes by which it was elaborated over the course of his life-journey. The author discusses how selected stories from his personal experience reflect the intimate culture of a particular social group of which he was a participant member at the time. The author's life-journey includes a tumultuous period of emerging adulthood in Singapore and Oxford. Moving to Zambia in 1965 aged 21, he conducted research, teaching and writing including sojourns in England and in Maryland USA. He discusses how his perspective in cultural psychology relates to his personal life as a migrant and as a parent, and to his views on how the world can best address the challenges of cooperative communication in the 2020s.
This Element explores multi-faceted linkages between feeding and relationship formation based on ethnographic case studies in Morocco, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, and Costa Rica. Research demonstrates that there are many culturally valued ways of feeding children, contradicting the idea of a single universally optimal feeding standard. It demonstrates further that in many parts of the world, feeding plays a central role in bonding and relationship formation, something largely overlooked in current developmental theories. Analysis shows that feeding contributes to relationship formation through what we call proximal, transactional, and distal dimensions. This Element argues that feeding practices can lead to qualitatively distinct forms of relationships. It has important theoretical and practical implications, calling for the expansion of attachment theory to include feeding and body-centered caregiving and significant changes to global interventions currently based on 'responsive feeding.' This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Over the past three decades, the population of international students throughout the world has steadily increased. Although university students choose to study in locations other than their home country for a variety of reasons, including professional development and disciplinary training, nearly all education abroad programs have intercultural learning as a central goal. In this Element, perspectives derived from cross-cultural psychological research are applied to an investigation of the effectiveness of study abroad as a mechanism for intercultural learning. Effectiveness is broadly defined and includes not only overall favorable program outcomes, such as gains in intercultural skills, knowledge, attitudes, and awareness, but also a recognition that study abroad experiences and outcomes may vary depending upon participants' diverse and intersectional identities. Best practices for facilitating intercultural learning through study abroad are identified and strategies are outlined for addressing the methodological challenges of research in this area.
Gender and Culture in Psychology introduces new approaches to the psychological study of gender that bring together feminist psychology, socio-cultural psychology, discursive psychology and critical psychology. It presents research and theory that embed human action in social, cultural and interpersonal contexts. The book provides conceptual tools for thinking about gender, social categorization, human meaning-making, and culture. It also describes a family of interpretative research methods that focus on rich talk and everyday life. It provides a close-in view of how interpretative research proceeds. The latter part of the book showcases innovative projects that investigate topics of concern to feminist scholars and activists: young teens' encounters with heterosexual norms; women and men negotiating household duties and childcare; sexual coercion and violence in heterosexual encounters; the cultural politics of women's weight and eating concerns; psychiatric labelling of psychological suffering; and feminism in psychotherapy.
