From Critical Social Psychology to Critical Community Psychology: From One Crisis to Another?

Despite the growing literature in critical community psychology (CCP), little is known about its formation as a sub-discipline of psychology. This paper investigates the emergence and origins of CCP (Kagan et al., 2011), by taking into consideration the dialectic relationship between theoretical forces of critical social psychology (CSP) community psychology (CP) and sociopolitical, radical movements. Starting from the crisis in social psychology (SP), it is noted how the debates around epistemology and methodology during the crisis (Parker, 2007), lead to the emergence of CSP. CSP’S critical theory became fruitful in the development of CP’s critical orientation. CSP’s critical character has been adopted by CP. The multidisciplinary field of CP is approached as a move from CSP’s critical theory to community praxis. However, it is argued that CP should be simultaneously conceptualized as being in a perceptual crisis which led to the formation of CCP’s area. The radical departure from CP to CCP is discussed firstly on CP’s failure to articulate a collective transformative community praxis (Thompson, 2005) and secondly on some community psychologists’ need to contrast with acritical and clinically oriented North American version of CP in UK (Fryer and Laing, 2008), inspired by the theory of CSP’s and liberation’s psychology theory and praxis (Martín-Baró, 1994). Therefore, CCP’s development is concluded firstly as another critical counter-paradigm aiming to redress the relationship between critical social theory and critical community praxis. Secondly, CCP’s emergence is examined also as a possible outcome of the various crises of the sub-disciplines of CSP and CP.