Search results for ""Author Paul Stenner""

For many years, for many people social psychology has been deemed a discipline in crisis. This new book proposes a way out of the crisis by letting go of the idea that psychology needs new foundations or a new identity, whether biological, discursive or cognitive. The psychological is not narrowly confined to any one aspect of human experience; it is quite literally everywhere. The book proposes a strong process-oriented approach to the psychological, which studies events or occasions. Aspects of experience such as communication or embodiment are treated as thoroughly mediated - the product of multiple intersecting relationships between the biological, the psychic and the social. The outcome is an image of a mobile, reflexively founded discipline which follows the psychological wherever it takes us, from the depths of embodiment to the complexities of modern global politics.

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This is a major textbook in social psychology which deliberately adopts a critical, unconventional approach. Until recently social psychology seemed to have escaped relatively lightly from the climate of critical questioning which has characterized other areas of the social sciences. But this has changed: it is now possible to identify a clear forum of challenge, which could be described as "critical social psychology." Social Psychology draws upon and consolidates this new current of thinking, while at the same time providing a wide-ranging and critical introduction to the field. It introduces students to the concepts, methods and debates in social psychology, but does so in a way that is questioning rather than dogmatic. The overall argument of the book is that social psychology has not uncovered the origins of social behaviour and experience but has "brought them into being" by virtue of the theories and narratives constructed by it. Social Psychology is a textbook with a difference, introducing the central issues and concerns of social psychology within a framework of critical scrutiny. It is suitable for first and second year undergraduates in psychology and social psychology.

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