Description
Book SynopsisThis fascinating book makes an important contribution to the history of the social sciences. It tells the largely hidden story of how social psychology became an international social science, vividly documenting the micro-politics of a virtually forgotten committee, the Committee on Transnational Social Psychology.
Trade Review"It has been a great pleasure to read this book – its thorough scholarship and entertaining writing style make it into a masterpiece. As a concise history of recent social psychology worldwide (1960s-1970s), it is a unique treatise on the institutional moves and personal relationships of leading social psychologists on both sides of the Atlantic. This sophisticated case study adds a crucial voice to historical and sociological scholarship. It will be particularly useful at graduate and postgraduate levels – in courses on history of psychology in general, and in special seminars on history of social psychology. This book covers the material precisely as I would like, and will be ideal for use in my seminars as core reading."
Joan Valsiner, Professor of Psychology, Clark University, USA, and Editor, Culture & Psychology
"This is a richly documented and vivid account of key events in the formation of an academic discipline. It shows how individuals make history, albeit not in conditions of their own making, by seeking an alternative path for the globalization of knowledge. The book traces the apparent failure of the project of rescuing a social psychology of human beings from the global diffusion of a local USA model (individualists, prescriptive, ethnocentric). Ironically, this "invisible college" was initiated by a visionary group of US scholars mobilizing allies in Europe, Latin America, and Asia under adverse Cold-War conditions. This is an encouraging book. The project of a universally relevant social psychology will continue to inspire the quest for genuine human understanding."
Martin W. Bauer, Director MSc Social and Public Communication, Institute of Social Psychology & Methodology Institute, London School of Economics
"This fascinating and important book makes out a carefully documented and persuasive case that one virtually forgotten committee, more than any other body, was responsible for shaping the international social psychology we know today. The book will be an essential source for future research on and understanding of the history of social psychology and anyone with an interest in that history really should read it."
Colin Fraser, Department of Social Developmental Psychology, University of Cambridge
Table of ContentsList of Figures and Tables.
Preface.
Acknowledgements.
List of Abbreviations..
I: The Quest for a Social Psychology of Human Beings.
1. The Birth of a New Science.
2. Two Sources of Modern Social Psychology..
II. The West European Experiment.
3. The West European Experiment.
3. Americans and Europeans.
4. The Transnational Committee: from New York to Rome.
5. The European Map of Social Psychology in the Mid-1960s.
6. The Second Milestone for European Social Psychology.
7. The Louvain Summer School.
8. The Ford Foundation and Fundraising for Europe..
III. The east European Experiment.
9. The First Encounter of a Small Science with Big History.
10. A Strange Animal..
IV. The Latin American Experiment.
11. Latin American Odyssey.
12. A Second Encounter with History.
13. An 'Invisible College.'.
V. Crossing the Atlantic.
14. A Crisis Delayed.
15. Crossing the Atlantic.
16. Pilgrims' Progress.
17. Rays and Shadows above the Transnational Committee.
Appendix.
Notes.
References.
Index.
