Psychology and Diversity

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Psychologyand Diversity

• Tutor Paul Duckett
• Room E48
• Ext. 2552
• p.duckett_at_mmu.ac.uk

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Diversity of social identities
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Social Movements

• LGBT movement
• Womens movement
• Disability movement

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Binary Divides

• Black
• Disabled
• Child
• Female
• Gay/Lesbian

• White
• Non Disabled
• Adult
• Male
• Heterosexual

If you are disabled, female, non white, a child
or homosexual you may be denied income, social
status and voting rights.
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Difference Oppression
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Positivism and treatment of difference

• Whatever is other - difference, absence, madness,
  the female - becomes marginalised and devalued.
  The consequences of this are perhaps most obvious
  in the cases of male/female, reason/madness, and
  nature/culture, but the overall effects are much
  more pervasive.
• (Hollinger, 1994108-9)

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Valuing difference

• Positivist, experimental psychology
• White, male, heterosexual, non-disabled,
  middle-class
• Alternatives
• Psychology of Black People
• Psychology of Women
• Psychology of Gay and Lesbian People
• Psychology of Disabled People
• Derrida (1982) Difference

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Respecting human diversity

• Respect for human diversity means recognizing
  that people have the right to define their own
  personal and social identity. From a moral point
  of view, recognition and respect of people's
  unique identities is an ethical obligation
  equivalent to people's right to
  self-determination Rappaport (1977) argued that
  the value of cultural relativity and diversity
  suggests people should have the right to be
  different and not to be judged against one single
  standard.
• (Nelson, Prilleltensky MacGillivary, 2001)

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A Psychology that celebrates diversity

• Trickett, Watts, Birman (1993)
• Human Diversity and Community Psychology
• Watts (1992)
• A psychology of human diversity
• Sampson (1993)
• Celebrating the Other A dialogic account of
  human nature

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Identity Politics

• many of our demands for better representation
  were quickly accommodated by marketers, media
  makers and pop-culture producers alike though
  perhaps not for the reasons we had hoped.
  That's when we found out that our sworn enemies
  in the "mainstream" didn't fear and loathe us
  but actually thought we were sort of interesting.
  Once we'd embarked on a search for new wells of
  cutting-edge imagery, our insistence on extreme
  sexual and racial identities made for great
  brand-content and niche-marketing strategies. If
  diversity is what we wanted, the brands seemed to
  be saying, then diversity was exactly what we
  would get. And with that, the marketers and media
  makers swooped down, airbrushes in hand, to touch
  up the colours and images in our culture.
• (Klein, 2000)

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Positive Psychology

• The aim of positive psychology is to begin to
  catalyze a change in the focus of psychology from
  preoccupation only with repairing the worst
  things in life to also building positive
  qualities. . . The field of positive psychology
  at the subjective level is about valued
  subjective experiences well-being, contentment,
  and satisfaction (in the past) hope and optimism
  (for the future) and flow and happiness (in the
  present). At the individual level, it is about
  positive individual traits the capacity for love
  and vocation, courage, interpersonal skill,
  aesthetic sensibility, perseverance, forgiveness,
  originality, future mindedness, spirituality,
  high talent, and wisdom. At the group level, it
  is about the civic virtues and institutions that
  move individuals toward better citizenship
  responsibility, nurturance, altruism, civility,
  moderation, tolerance, and work ethic.
• Martin Seligman

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• Celebrating diversity may obfuscate attempts to
  share resources equitably across all.
• If people have different values, morals and
  ethics it is not possible
• to promote or extend universal rights
• to equally divide economic and political
  resources

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Cultural Capital(Bourdieu)
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The F word in education failure deferred
successDifferential achievement
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Celebrating diversity by ignoring deficits

• restricting our discussions to only positive
  aspects of diversity is an academic, middle-class
  luxury that detracts attention from research on
  social class and large, systemic inequities
• (Lubienski, 20037)

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• In a moment in history when there are few
  audiences willing to reflect on the complex
  social roots of community and domestic violence,
  the impossibilities of sole reliance on welfare,
  and few even with a willingness to appreciate the
  complexity, love, hope, and pain that fills the
  poor and working classhow do we put out for
  display the voyeuristic dirty laundry that
  litters our data base? At the same time, how can
  we risk romanticizing or denying the devastating
  impact of the current assault on poor and
  working-class families launched through the
  state, the economy, neighbors, and sometimes kin?
• (Fine and Weis, 1998 272)

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References

• Derrida, J. (1982) Differance margins of
  philosophy (Chicago, University of Chicago
  Press).
• Fine, M., Weis, L. (1998). The unknown city
  Lives of poor and working-class young adults.
  Boston Beacon Press
• Hollinger, R. (1994). Postmodernism and the
  social sciences a thematic approach. California
  Sage.
• Lubienski, S.T. (2003). Celebrating diversity and
  denying disparities A critical assessment.
  Educational Researcher, Nov.
• Nelson, G., Prilleltensky, I., MacGillivary, H.
  (2001). Building Value-Based Partnerships Toward
  Solidarity With Oppressed Groups. American
  Journal of Community Psychology, 29,5,649.