CRITICAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

The course introduces students to the critical social psychology and includes two major sections. The first is dedicated to the most important critical positions articulated in the context of 'crisis of social psychology. Specifically it considers:
• The epistemological / methodological critique (The positivistic orientation of social psychology is counter-posed to the historicity of social phenomena and the assumptions about the nature of knowledge presupposed by the experimental method are criticized)
• The political critique (This critique concerns the tendency of Social psychology to exclude from its subject issues related to ideology, power relations and social inequalities)
• The critique of individualism and of the type of subjectivity that emerges in the texts of social psychology
The second section considers the theoretical and research traditions that have been developed as a result of these critiques, focusing in particular on those approaches that are known to constitute the so called “discursive turn”. The second section concludes with a review of the current key debates and dilemmas of critical social psychology.